My Eyes Hurt…

Oh man, someone sent me a video a Rich Freeman performing at a sweet 16 party. The guests seem to enjoy what he’s doing…but the video is unwatchable:

Here’s the thing, I’m not trying to crap on the guy, but he made the video publicly available and out there. There are a lot of things wrong with this video.
After the title screen, he opens with an immediate transition. That transition then ends with him yelling at a kid about toilet paper with no context. The constant shapes that appear in the video make it impossible to see anything that’s going on. Outside of his control, you have a kid sitting behind him the whole show that looks bored as hell.

I’m not sure of the purpose of this video. Is it to try to get him work, or for social media content? It’s listed on the video section of his website, so I’m guessing it’s promo to get him work. Whenever you put a video on your site, you need to think about what it’s purpose is. Is it a fun video or is it to get people to book you? If it’s fun, it belongs on your social media. If it ends up taking off and getting millions of views, then you might want to move it your main site.

Upload videos with a purpose…and make them watchable!

-Louie

Correct Banquet Seating!!!

Last week at the conference I was at, I finally ran into the correct way to have seating in a banquet hall! Normally when there are round tables, the chairs are seated around the entire table.

The problem with this is if there’s a show or presentation, one to three people have their backs to the stage. Commons sense thinking for event planners is “people will just turn the chairs“. Unfortunately the reality is that most people don’t turn the chairs. They start watching with their bodies contorted in the chair to watch the show. This gets very uncomfortable and even if you engage them the entire time, it’s still hard for them to enjoy the show.

The simple solution to this is to ask people to turn their chairs. What always amazes me is that this never gets 100% compliance. You’ll get maybe 25%-75% of the people to turn their chairs.

The banquet room I was at last week had the chairs arranged like this:

All of the chairs are facing forward and there’s no chair at the front of the table. That’s how you get good value from whoever you hire for a show!

Let’s hope this trend continues (it won’t)

-Louie

High Tech Hypnosis…

A while ago I saw Kreskin do his show and hypno show. One thing that struck me was his “induction” to people onstage. Kreskin handed them a card, and they passed it around while he played the piano. As they passed the card around the people (mostly) fell asleep. From the audience’s perspective it was really cool to watch.

I’ve been told that the card says something like, “Please play along and go to sleep”. I don’t know for sure, but that gave me an idea, here’s how it would look:
You have a big QR code and you have everyone onstage scan it. They all look at their phones and fall asleep. Also you turn the card around and have the audience scan it if they want to follow along. They see a “hypno wheel” spiraling. You then do your hypno show.

Here’s what’s really happening is one of two things. The first solution, is the QR code changes to another image at a certain point. So the first qr code has the message to play along, then changes to an image of a hypno wheel. When you have the audience scan it, it’s already changed to the image of the wheel and the play along message is gone. The other method would be a flap card, so the audience is actually scanning a different link. With this method, you’d still want the original scan to change so that no one could see the first message.

This is something I’ll probably never do…

-Louie

Great Tricks Suck on Low Stages…

A couple of weeks ago I was at a booking conference and one of the acts did Bowl-A-Rama by Kevin James. If you aren’t familiar with the trick, it’s a bowling ball production from a sketch pad. Here’s what it looks like:

This is a great trick…usually. Here’s a picture of the guy I saw doing it:

Do you see the problem with doing it in this venue?

If you can’t spot the problem, here’s what it is: The stage is very low
The production of the bowling ball happened below the guy’s waist, which means most of the audience couldn’t see it. This was his opening effect and totally wasted on the audience.

I don’t fault the performer. He was flying in to do a showcase set and probably only packed his showcase set. Replacing the bit probably wasn’t an option for this specific bit.

One thing I try to do is watch shows from the back of the audience. Another way to do this is put a video camera in the back, but at eye level as if you were sitting in a chair. If you pay attention you will see what’s visible and what isn’t. For me, I try to avoid anything where the action happens below my waist.

-Louie

Measure for Measure…

measure for measure by iain bailey

A few months ago I picked up the trick Measure for Measure by Iain Bailey on the used magic market. This is a tape measure prediction, where you pull the tape out and someone says stop and wherever they say stop, there’s a giant arrow on the back pointing to that spot.

What I like about the trick is there’s really no explanatory phase to it. You don’t need to set it up, you pull out the tape, they say stop, and the arrow is there. It’s really quick and direct.

Now what I don’t like is that the tape is really hard to manage once you get past a few feet. I think Iain in the video mentions he came up with the trick during the COVID shutdown, so I’m guessing he hasn’t really tried it outside of a virtual context before he released it. The big problem with the trick is that once you get past pulling out a few feet of the tape ruler, it gets very hard to manage. The tape gets floppy and makes the trick hard to present…especially from a technical angle, but also from a visual standpoint. It doesn’t look good with you struggling to hold a tape measure straight.

One solution is to have someone from the audience hold one end of the tape. That’s a decent solution, but it’s not always practical from a stage craft and technical end. My solution was to go to my trusty 3D printer and make a thing that will got onto the mic stand that I can put the tongue of the tape measure into. Here’s what it looks like on the computer:

And here’s what the initial print looks like:

Measure for Measure by Iain bailey

I made it a little bit bigger than it needed to be, so to tighten the gaps, I put the furry side of velcro inside of the holes. I also noticed that the flat end where the tape measure will sit shouldn’t be flat on the top, but concave. I didn’t want print another one, so I hit it with a heat gun, then pressed the tape measure down on it to make it concave. Here’s what the final thing looks like:

Measure for Measure by Iain bailey

That just slips onto a mic stand and I’m good to go.

Measure for Measure by Iain bailey

It holds the end of the tape measure very securely and low, so the audience hopefully can’t really see the backside of it. As a bonus the action of putting it into the holder hides the secret move that needs to take place at the beginning of the trick.

I’ve always said that most of magic is problem solving. Making this little holder took me about 10 mins to design another 10 minutes to alter and solves the big problem with actually doing the trick!

-Louie

Bigfoot…

Yesterday I finished making a video for the version of Interactive that I want to do. Interactive is a “touch the screen” type of effect, that doesn’t use counting. You can read my previous blog post about it here.

The version I’m working on uses bigfoot images over the background of the Pacific Northwest. In the end the audience will end up on the same bigfoot image and all of the other ones will fade away.

With touch the screen type tricks, something that I’ve learned in virtual shows, you need something physical to end the trick. Something that adds another layer more that you just pushing play on a graphic, or reading some instructions. For me, the physical thing I’m using is a cast of a bigfoot foot print. On the back of it will be the location of where it was taken, which will match the location of the bigfoot that everyone ended up on.

The reveal of the location at the end is a bonus effect. You aren’t doing anything extra to get the final reveal. If anyone thought about it, and you knew everyone was going to end up on the same bigfoot image, then of course you would have known what that location would be. However, in the moment people don’t think like that.

Is this the bonus effect the strongest effect?

Probably not, but in the moment it does strengthen the touch the screen effect.

-Louie

Interactive…

The other day I picked up Interactive by Danny Orleans and Mike O’Donnell as it’s on Sale for 25% off right now. Interactive is a “touch the screen” type trick, however it gets it right. There’s no counting or spelling, which ups the odds of you getting everyone to end up on the right place at the end of the trick.

I got the pro version as it comes with the some tutorials and templates to make you own custom versions. I think the pro version is the way to go, it saved me a ton of time making a custom version. Sure, I could have figured out how to make my own custom version from the basic version, but in time saved, it saved me money.

I’m doing a few library shows in 2022 that are cryptid themed, so I made a custom version of the trick using bigfoot. I’m hoping with the talk up, the trick and the extro that I can get about 3 minutes out of it. I see this as something that I can fairly easily customize for themed virtual events and live ones if they have projection. If you know me, you know I dislike doing tricks that are themed to events…however this is relatively painless and I’m not compromising (much) what I’m willing to do.

-Louie

Masters of Illusion Holiday Special…

I looks like tonight on The CW the 2021 Masters of Illusion Holiday Special will be airing at 8pm. Back in March I did a trick for this special, but don’t know if I’m in it or not.

That’s the crazy thing about doing TV, you don’t know what will make it or not. Of the stuff that I submitted for the next season of Masters of Illusion, I probably put the most work into the holiday trick as it was something that was totally new to me. Where the other stuff for the normal episodes were things that I had done before.

We’ll see if my trick makes it…

-Louie

MishMash Wallet…

For a while I’ve had an idea for a trick wallet…well for a wallet trick. The wallet w0uld be a Tyvek Wallet and you can have them custom printed with what ever you want on them. My idea is to have a bunch of card pieces put on it, and this is essentially Harry Anderson’s Mishmash Card, but printed on your wallet. The basic effect is someone thinks of a card they see and you reveal it.

In the sample above, there’s more force cards than in Harry’s trick. There’s 8 force cards above. I can now use a similar procedure as in John Kennedy’s Mind Power Deck to figure out the thought of card. I can verbally reveal it, or use a multiple out like in David Harkey’s Minds Eye Deck.

I think combining Kennedy and Harkey’s ideas may make it a stronger trick. I uses figure out what the card is without asking what it is and use that information to set up the reveal. I also like the idea of having your wallet be the trick, so you are good to go whenever!

I just ordered a wallet…I’m betting the design will need some tweaking and I’ll have to redesign it and order another one.

-Louie

Snappy Flappy Card Transposition!

In my virtual shows I started doing a card change with a flap card. I was isolating the card in a glass, then shaking the glass and the card changes to another card. I really like this, as it makes the change really impossible. The method is simple, it uses a flap card and the card it sitting at an angle. The weight of the card keeps the flap from flipping. Then simply shaking the glass allows the flap to flip for the change.

The other night I was watching a hockey game and playing around with using the flap card in the glass as a card transposition. Here’s what I came up with:

Here’s what the trick needs: It needs some scripting to call attention to just one of the cards. Mention that that jack of diamonds is in the glass, so that when it’s appears in your hand, they know something has happened. I think if you mention both cards, it gets confusing.

-Louie