A few day ago I ordered Jon Allen’s download All or Nothing. It’s fantastic! For about $20 usd you many methods for going a very cool routine / concept.
I tried it last night and it got a great response and I’m using it as a lead in to another trick. For the price it’s a steal, hit up Jon and order it!
Today I’m doing a workshop on Shadowgraphy for the KAX convention. Here’s my act condensed down to 10 seconds:
If shadowgraphy is something you’re thinking of learning, you can get the special cap I use on my flashlight along with a video of the workshop from KAX for $20. You can order them here:
http://www.magicshow.tips/shadowgraphy-light-cap/
In an effort to streamline things for my virtual show, I picked up some foot pedals. Each pedal acts as a button that you can program to do a specific task.
The first thing I did was something that Richard Lake mentioned in the talk he did with Nick Lewin and made them up and down arrows. I then went through my show in OBS and made a scene for everything, so my show basically went straight down. It was a pain to do, but useful if I’m doing the show without a producer.
Normally I have a producer in the room running my OBS scenes, so I changed the foot pedals to activate a camera shot. So I have my general, tight, and close up that I can control with my feet. I’m really liking having the control of the cameras with my feet.
Last night I was cleaning out my phone and found a video of an idea. It’s an interesting idea, however one that I’d probably never use, but might be good for an instagram video.
I’d have to play with it a little bit more to get the ditch cleaned up…but honestly it doesn’t really fascinate me enough to put the time in for a 20 second video.
I feel like I’ve put a lot of work into the table I’m using for virtual shows. I think it’s really made a difference in the flow of the show. It’s soo much more efficient use of space than how I was previously doing it.
Here’s one view of the shelf:
And here’s the shelf rotated 180 degrees:
The nice thing with having holders is that I can look down and immediately know if something isn’t there as it’s holder will be empty. There are two wild cards as far as set up goes, the rest of the props can stay set up all the time. Those are the Gypsy Yarn and the silk in apple/peach. Both of those routines I set up on the day of the show.
You’ll also notice some redundancies, like each trick that uses a pen has it’s own pen. This is because I don’t want to be searching around for a pen, and it makes sure I have a back up pen if one dries out.
One of the ways I get a lot of work is through showcases. These are where you perform in front of people who are in a position to book your show. This year has been interesting with them happening virtually. I think a lot of “newer” musicians are struggling in this format compared to what a variety act can do.
Recently I was at a showcase and took this picture of this band’s virtual showcase:
They had their tip info on the video!!!!
I can’t believe their agent didn’t look at it and tell them to take it off. I think it’s not only disrespectful to the viewer, it’s just lazy. The band added the tip info to an existing video, that means they have a copy of it without it.
Show that you respect your audience and don’t ask them for a tip, when you’re trying to get a contract worth thousands of dollars!
When I’m working on my show, I’m not trying to make giant leaps in getting better, but more smaller things that get better more frequently. What I mean by that is instead of trying to put together a finished show piece before adding it to the show, I get it good enough, add it to the show, and then keep improving it. It’s this constant action that hopefully keeps things evolving and improving.
For my virtual shows I’ve been using a mic on a stand that pics up the audio in the room. It’s a repurposed podcast mic, and while the sound is decent, I think I’m going to be switching back to using a mic pack and lapel mic. This will give me consistent audio as I move around my performing space. It will also allow me to easily mute myself if I need to say something to my producer.
One little challenge this is adding is getting the audio into my production software. One of the main reasons I had switched to the podcast mic was that it was a USB mic. With my mic pack, I can’t plug it into the 3.5mm port in my laptop because I’ll lose the speakers on my computer. That’s where a quick amazon search lead me to a 3.5mm to USB adapter. So far in my little tests today the adapter works great.
Not only will this improve my audio, but it will clear up some floorspace eliminating the mic stand that held the podcast mic. I’m excited to try it for real in my show next week!
Having a second set of eyes helps a lot when working on things. Every now and then when I do virtual shows I’ll sneak a friend into the zoom and have them write notes on the show. Recently my friend noticed a rookie mistake I made.
In my three shell game routine (my Russian Shell Game routine) I have a graphic overlay pop up with the numbers 1, 2 and 3.
I wear a white shirt and the numbers are white. My friend pointed out that they blended into my shirt. It was a simple fix to add black borders to them for the future
Now they’ll work with pretty much any background.
Having a fresh set of eyes watch your show for little things make a big difference!
One of the things that’s been a challenge for me in virtual shows is using my space wisely. My virtual studio is in the office I share with my wife and I need to build the studio every show virtually from scratch. It’s much more work that driving to a venue and setting up.
About a week ago I did a post about adding a rotating shelf to below my working table top. I’m liking it and have gotten to use it in a couple of shows. I’m adding holders to the props, so that they can just stay set up. Here’s what I’ve 3d printed so far:
The goal is to hopefully cut down on my set up time. I just need to set up the studio, and not the studio plus all of my show props. The silver lining is that the holders also keep things from falling off the table when it’s moved or the shelf is rotated. I still need to make the holders for the rest of the table, but this is a start!
Last week I did two virtual open mics, I did Tricks of the Trade on Tuesday and The Mostly Magicians Virtual Open Mic on Wednesday. I’m trying to hash out my torn and restored postcard. It’s been hit and miss and I’m trying to figure out why. Here’s a compilation video of the two tear and restore sequences from both shows back to back:
In the first clip I’m going a little bit faster than in the second clip. In both clips I’m in a hurry to ditch the pieces. At the Mostly Magicians open mic that was a piece of feedback I got was that the ditch that time was obvious. That’s great feedback! There’s no reason that I can’t hold out the pieces longer. In fact I can hold them out the whole time, either palming them or holding them behind the postcard.
I also still think it lacks a “tah dah” moment. I think by that I mean a magic moment. I think the unfolding of the card visually isn’t very triumphant. When I was a teenager I put together a jumbo torn and restored playing card for a friends act. The tearing sequence was JC Wangner’s, but the restoration was something I thought of. The four pieces just popped open quickly into a restored card. I had forgotten about that flash restoration until now. I’ll have to give it a try!
