Category: Video

Practicing For Fun!

It’s been a while since I just spent a good chunk of the day practicing for fun, not for something that’s intended to be in the show. Way back at the beginning of February I had an idea for a coin trick. I played with it a bit back in August, you can read the post and watch a practice video here.

Here’s what the routine looked like yesterday:

It looks way better than the video from August. Honestly I haven’t put too much time into it between February and August and between August and yesterday. It was fun to really spend the day trying to work out the sequence and make it happen!

Flying Chicken…

It’s interesting the little magic fads that pop up on Instagram or other social media. Usually it’s a trick that’s cheap or easy to make, that’s really visually and easy to do. One that was going around recently was a floating pen by Rodrigo Romano:

It’s looks good, but it’s much inferior version of The NEW Incredible Floating Pen by Patrick Snowden and Kyle Elder. Their version can actually be done easily in the real world, where Romano’s version is basically for video.

Seeing all of these people float pens on their social media makes me wonder why you’d want to do that?

What I mean, is why would you also float a pen and not something else?

There are plenty of other pen like objects you could make something else float. I made up a version of the trick using a chicken wing and a dish of ranch dressing:

The two props make sense together, unlike a pen and a folded up playing card. For me, I think this is better social media content than floating a pen like everyone else. It visually it looks a lot different. The chicken wing and dish look like a different trick than the floating pen. Also for me, where my “brand” is doing less common things, it fits what I do much better!

How can you take the more “standard” tricks you do and make them visually different?

The Living Room Sessions…

One of the best kept secrets in magic is Nathan Coe Marsh. All of the material he does is well thought out and super solid! A year or two ago he sold a series of videos called “The Living Room Sessions“. These videos were in depth teaching videos of routines he performs around the world. I just noticed he’s got a special on them right now, and you should check them out:

https://nathancoemarsh.com/black-friday/

All of the routines work in a stand up / stage context and don’t need someone from the audience to physically come on stage. This is going to be a very important condition for at least the next year.

Here’s a sample of one of his routines:

That’s a solid opening routine. He walks out, and gets right into the trick. The trick is good but the kicker is AMAZING!

Thanksgiving Creativity…

Well, today is Thanksgiving in the United States, and I’m going to remind you that holidays are a great way to be creative. Here’s a trick that I made for Thanksgiving 4 or 5 years ago:

It’s an easy way to take an existing trick, theme the prop and you’ve got a unique feeling routine. Every now and then I take a look at the list of “National Day’s” and use that as my starting point to work on new routines. Usually these routines aren’t for my show, they are a creative exercise.

15 seconds on TV…

Doing stuff for TV is a lot of waiting, followed by we need stuff in 10 minutes. Recently I contributed to a bit on the news in Seattle, and it’s something that initially contacted me about a week prior. Then the day that it aired, they contacted me a few hours before they needed video. While doing 10-15 seconds isn’t a lot of work to produce, when you only have a few hours to do it, it is.

Here’s the news segment:

I sent them a 15 second bit where I just talked in front of the camera. That’s the audio that was used. Then I sent them a 15 second trick montage, of which they only used one trick. The trick they used was the only one that was beginning, middle and end on the video.

They made a good choice!

Notecard Magic…

It took some work, but the MC videos are finished. These are tricks I was doing for a virtual MC gig. I had to do 7 introductions and wanted to have some magical things to happen while I did them. The thing was I didn’t want to do any full routines. This is an interesting shift from live to prerecorded virtual hosting. There aren’t any stage delays to cover, you really just need to move the show along.

Of the seven tricks I planned on doing, four of them turned out alright. There other ones are just straight intros. Here’s a highlight reel of the four tricks:

I think my favorite is the floating card. I’m not sure how subtle it is, but just letting go if it and it not moving is fun. You’ll notice by gesturing with my hands as I talk, I’m waving them over the top to show “there are no strings” without saying it.

I’m hoping people like that style, I’m having a lot of fun doing things like this. It’s making flex a creative muscle that I don’t normally use. The event happens on Thursday of next week, so we’ll see how it was received then.

Work in Progress…

One of the current projects that I’m working on is a video from my kitchen. It’s a magical video, and I needed to do a trick with a lime. I had written up a bunch of ideas like:

  • Lime that moves out of the way when I try to cut it
  • Lime that cuts itself
  • Bouncing lime
  • Finding something needed later inside the lime

While driving to the store to buy some limes, I hit upon this idea:

That’s just a quick snipped taken out of context, but it’s a lemon that turns into a lime. I originally read this in a book years ago that turned a red apple into a green apple as you ate it. I think the method works better with a lemon / lime due to the texture. Also, in theory it’s changing to a different fruit, not just changing color which may make it a better trick from an effect standpoint.

Ultimately the video above didn’t make it into the final project, an expanded version of the trick did that used two lemons and two limes. I’ll probably post it in the future, once it’s used by the group I’m creating it for.

Putting It All Together…

This week I’ve written about putting together and interactive coin trick. Today, we’re putting it all together the force and the coin gimmicks. Here’s an example of what the trick could look like:

I like how the vanish at the end gives the trick a feeling of closure. It also builds off of the mini effect of knowing they picked the dime.

This is my first attempt at creating an interactive virtual magic trick from scratch. I think I did alright.

Behind the Virtual Curtain…

Performing a live, virtual show over Zoom it a lot more involved than most people think. Last night I gave a talk about and demonstration about Hand Shadow Puppets and taught a magic trick for the Washington State Parks Great Camp In over Zoom that was broadcasted on YouTube live.Here’s a side by side of what’s happening in the room and what is going out on YouTube.

The person I’m talking to is the host of the show, who is in another location.

The person in the room is my daughter who is running production for me.

For a bit of context, the speaker before me just gave a presentation about bats.

One of my goals when doing virtual shows is to do something that makes my daughter who is running production to laugh. I want to try to crack her up. During the bat presentation before mine, I quickly downloaded the flying bat graphic and added a button to my stream deck. Right before I was live, I told her she could hit the bat effect button anytime during the intro interview or the extro interview. She added the throwing of the physical stuffed bat without me knowing.

I got her to laugh, but also it puts energy and fun into the presentation! A lot of the virtual shows I’ve seen are missing energy and fun. I’m not saying you need to be bouncing off the walls, but so many are performed like they aren’t people watching at the other end of the camera. Figure out how to make the virtual show fun for you to do, and that goes a long way for the audience!

Halloween Shows…

I’m not a fan of doing shows for Halloween (you can read a post from last year here). I do have a no contact, socially distant magic show today, and I’m not really looking forward to it for the reasons listed in last year’s post. I am looking forward to seeing how my 30 min no contact magic show plays. Up until now I’ve only done 20 mins, so it’s a lot longer of a show.

Here’s a Halloween magic trick I created for another performer called Up The Candy Ladder, and published in Vanish Magazine (edition 75):

The nice thing about right now is that a trick like Up the Candy Ladder that uses no one from the audience and heavily gimmicked props is super practical right now!