If you’re not following Mario the Maker Magician on the social media, you are missing out on seeing some amazing, fun and totally unique magic! He built a cardboard robot that does magic tricks, and it’s better than most magicians!
Hopefully something will pick him up and start using these. I can see that being a bit on Saturday Night Live, or a reoccurring bit on a family variety show. The robot would also crush it on America’s Got Talent!
He’s doing some interesting things from a method standpoint because he can’t use a lot of traditional methods. These videos remind me that I need to work harder!
Last night I was walking my dog and was thinking about an amazing idea of my friend Bri Crabtree. She uses a green screen spot, which is a genius idea! My idea was to use it as an xray for a vanish. Here’s a rough idea of what I’m think of:
I’m thinking if I get a ping pong paddle that’s green on one side I can make it work. Show the non-green side that says “x ray” then flip it over, show the skeleton of my hand with the coin and d do the vanish.
It’s not the deepest mystery in the world, but it is fun!
One of the first tricks that I started working on since the COVID pandemic started a year ago was my Polaroid to Envelope trick. This trick started as Goshman’s Cards thru Newspaper, but then evolved a lot. It’s pretty much been unchanged for months, here’s what it looked like:
Yesterday I was going to work on it some more as I was going to be doing the Nashville Magic Company’s Tricks of the Trade magic open mic in the evening. That’s when it hit me, I don’t need four pictures, I just need three. One of them doesn’t do anything, it cleans up some clutter and tightens up the routine a little bit.
After the open mic they do a little bit of a workshop for the performers to ask other performers for thoughts on what they performed. I got a couple of great suggestions and ideas. Someone asked why the pictures appeared face down, instead of face up. This is a great idea, that because I was building from a another trick, I didn’t think about that.
I started playing with having the pictures face up and I think I got a workable sequence out of it. Having just three pictures is soo much more manageable than four! I’ll probably record a video of the new sequence later today and post it when I get a chance.
If you’re not using these virtual open mics to work on material they are a huge resource that didn’t really exist a year ago. Not only to practice material, but to get specific feedback from other performers.
About a week ago I did a little chat with Nick Lewin and Fielding West about performing comedy magic. It was a live Zoom chat and it was a lot of fun and the feedback was very positive. A few people have asked if it would be available afterwards. It looks like Nick has it as a download on his website www.lewinenterprises.com
If you missed it, here’s a little video teaser
One of the key takeaways from this talk is that most magicians that call themselves comedy magicians don’t understand comedy. You need to go out and learn to write jokes, and create comedy. There’s a real interesting moment in the talk where we create a joke to fill a spot in the show that’s just expository patter. Not only do we create the joke to fill an slow spot, we tweak it and add a tag to it!!
I was honored to be part of this panel and it was a lot of fun!
Last night I was playing with a set of mini cups and balls that I have. This particular set was made by Leo Smesters. These are a great little set, however honestly I don’t have much of a use for them. When I originally bought them I had an idea, but haven’t done much with them.
I had the idea of doing a vertical three shell game. The ball would switch places vertically while the cups were stacked. Here’s a quick video of the basic idea:
There’s a little bit more to the full idea I have. Right now the cups are ungimmicked and they will stay that way. However the balls have magnets in them and they stick to each other through the cup. So the cups can sort of function like a chop cup or regular cup depending on the positions of the two balls.
My idea is to have one ball with a very strong magnet in it and then two others with smaller magnets in them. The audience is only aware of one ball. You will steal the ball with the strong magnet and use that magnet like you would a use thumbtip with a magnet inside of it. That will give much more options with what you can do with the cups.
Here’s a little four ace production I thought of a few nights ago.
I have a feeling the book Principa by Harapan Ong led to this, it feels like several of the ace productions in that book.
The work is pretty simple, you need the four aces on top of the deck. They alternate face down and face up, with the uppermost ace face down.
Take the deck and slip cut two cards (a face down and face up ace) off the top of the deck on the lower have. Do a faro shuffle, it only needs to be a perfect faro for the first four cards and leave the cards outjogged (don’t complete the shuffle).
Your left index finger pops the top card off the top forward half and the thumb on your other hand does the same with the top card of the inner half. When you do that the four aces will be face up.
It’s it the best, or most practical four ace production? Probably not. Was it fun to play with? yes
I’m trying to free up floor space and visual clutter in my performing space for my virtual shows. One of the ways I’m doing this is switching from using camera tripods to using mic stands. I found some mic stand camera mounts and using them to attach the camera.
The mic stand in the picture is a tripod style, but also using the pedestal style. Visually there’s a lot less clutter that I have to see while performing. Also these pack down much smaller than a traditional cameral tripod.
I’ve done one gig using these and I like it. I really like having to see less clutter while I perform. Got another gig tonight and hopefully I’ll still like using them.
One thing that’s been life changing for my show is learning to use a 3D printer. Recently I was part of a panel that was talking about 3D printing for performers and I made a quick video tutorial that took you through the entire design process of making a holder for a thumb tip and dollar bill holder.
Here it is:
Hopefully this took some of the mystery out of 3D printing. Honestly I thought it would be much harder, until I got one and learned to do it!
For a while I’ve been dinking around with a coins to glass routine. Here’s an early version of it:
The problem with the early version of the trick is that it needs some specific lighting. That’s not a problem for virtual venues, but I’m hoping this is something that could transition to my in person shows via video projection or in a some specific cabaret settings.
A couple of weeks ago I did it at the Mostly Magicians Virtual Open Mic and got some great feedback that had me start to explore ways to do the trick that relied a lot less on the lighting. I remembered going to a Tom Stone lecture a few years ago and some of the things he talked about helped me solve the problem.
Here’s what I the current version of the trick looks like:
Would this version hold up to repeated viewings as a stand alone social media video?
Probably not, but that’s not the intention. It’s for live performances, whether it’s in person or virtual and I think it fits the bill. The nice thing is that now I’m working on a trick that has a bigger life than just a virtual show!
People love to crowd source information on the internet. The problem is that you don’t know the quality of the information you are getting back. Recently someone posted a picture of a prop they had acquired, but didn’t know what it did. It was a dice cup with a hole in the back, four dice and a jumbo die.
The misinformation starts when people don’t know what they are talking about start it tell the person what the cup is for. Here’s the first couple of responses:
Then a couple of people took the dice stacking suggesting a bit further and said you could look through the hole to see the number on the top die. Let’s start with that idea of using it to see the number on the top of the top die. Learning to stack the dice is hard…once you can do that, knowing what number is on top of the stack without a gimmicked cup is VERY EASY. It makes no sense to make the stacking aspect harder without make knowing the number uppermost easier.
Now let’s look at the props. You have regular game dice, where any marketed dice stacking set would come with casino dice which are the standard for people who stack dice. In the picture below, the casino die is on the right.
Yes, I’m aware you can stack game dice, however it’s much harder than on casino dice due to their size, rounded edges, and lack of consistent 90 degree angles. I learned to dice stack with a drinking glass and game dice, so I know it can be done, I also know who much easier it got when I had proper tools.
Next if you look at the cup, it tapers and is not straight sided. Some people stack with dice like this, however most people use straight sided dice cups. On it’s own the tapered cup wouldn’t say it’s not for dice stacking, but then you look at the height of the cup in relation to the dice. Once you get them in the up and ready to stack, they have a long way to fall, which is where you will give you trouble.
Looking at the whole picture, the style of dice and style of cup, I’m 99% sure it’s not for dice stacking. I’m leaving 1% as it’s some strange homemade prop that was never marketed.
I made a quick replica of the props shown and here’s the style of routine that I think the props are for:
The internet is a great way to crowd source answers, but the problem is that it’s hard know the quality of those answers.
