magic show – Page 3 – MagicShow.Tips

Mainstream Article on Suspension of Disbelief

About 6 months ago I was approached by Sorbet Magazine to write a little essay about the suspension of disbelief and how it applies to magicians. The article was based on a blog post that I had made here a long time ago that one of the editors had found. I rewrote and expanded it to fit what they wanted and it just got published in their magazine!

To be 100% honest, when I was contacted by the magazine, it felt like a scam…who would pay me to write a mainstream magazine article?! I did it anyway as if it was a scam, at least I would have practiced writing for someone else and hitting a word count with a non-magician target audience.

When I was finishing up the article, I was sharing an AirBnB with Dennis Forel and he helped me tweak my 5th grade, public school writing style into something a bit more grown up.

Here’s the original 3 paragraph blog post that the article was built on:
https://www.magicshow.tips/magic-show-tips/suspension-of-disbelief/

This is a fun thing to have out there in the world!

Now onto the next thing…

-Louie

Getting Them Talking About My Show!

When I was at an industry tradeshow on Wednesday pitching my show, one of the things I did at my booth was my card routine. This is the meat of the close up magic that I perform. It’s basically a multiple revelation of a signed card. It ends with the signed card as a sticker.

People at trade shows will usually put these on their shirt of badge and wear them all day. They end up being a walking billboard for me. people will ask them about the sticker and they’ll talk about me. I think I originally got the idea for having something visual that sticks around long after the trick from Michael Close. He talked about it in his lecture 20ish years ago and I think did a thing with a bill that turned to a bunny and left that with people.

When I’m at a booking trade show, especially when I’m new to the market, my goal is to get people talking about me. My sticker card trick is a great way to do that!

-Louie

Take Your Show on the Road!

Thumb Tie and the Linking Safety Pins

The last couple of days I’ve been working on using a giant set of safety pins onstage for a linking pin routine. Recently I started adding a thumb tie to it to add length. One thing I quickly learned is that there’s a ton of dead time at the end of the routine when I’m having the tape cut off of my thumbs.

My first attempt for fixing the dead time was to add a trick to the end. What I was doing was taking the tape and turning it into an animal balloon. That went over fine, but it’s not the right fix for the routine.

I think my second attempt is a reasonable solution to making the dead time of cutting the tape off my fingers worth it. I’m moving the thumb tie to the first half of the trick. After the thumb tie, the tape is cut off, then I move into the linking pins routine. This has been playing a lot better!

Now I need to keep adding meat to the routine to get it good.

-Louie

Linking Pins on Stage

In my close up set I do the linking safety pins and I love the trick. I’ve even gimmicked a larger set of about 5 inch pins to do the trick with. The 5 inch pins are good for about 30 people, there’s too small for a real stage show.

I found these giant safety pins and I think they’d be great for using on stage!

The challenge now is figuring out context to do them and getting more than a couple of minutes out of them. In my close up routine I use someone from the audience. Since I’m bringing someone onstage I really need to get at least 4-5 minutes out of the routine to make it worth the time it takes to get someone onstage.

In my writing this morning I had the idea of combining the linking pins with the thumb tie. The idea is the beginning phases will be my normal linking pin routine, then I’ll have my thumbs tied to “eliminate sleight of hand” and then the pins will end up going on and off my arms. That’s the idea, we’ll see how it plays when I get a chance to try it out!

-Louie

How To Show Them What You Do!

Five Simple Steps to Making a Sizzle Reel

Let’s start out with what a sizzle reel is, they are typically a short, fast paced promotional video. In variety entertainment they are usually some between one and three minutes long. The goal is to give a buyer a feel for you and what you do.

Here’s how to make sizzle reel for your show:

Step 1: Go to the movies and watch the trailers for upcoming movies. These are longer than a variety act’s sizzle reel, but they are a good reference for what you are going for. Notice that the movie trailers don’t show whole scenes of the movie. The goal is to give you the vibe of what the movie is about and this is the goal of your sizzle reel, to give the vibe of what your show is.

Step 2: Go through video footage and audio and pick the best clips. I’m assuming you have a bunch of video because you’re regularly recording your show. You should be doing this to work on your show to make your show better. Also, you’ll notice that I mentioned audio, your audio should be recorded separately from your camera. You want clear audio of your voice if you use it in your sizzle reel.

Step 3: Edit out most or all of the set ups to your tricks and just show the magic. An agent explained it to me this way when he said, “I don’t want to see your rope trick, I want to see that you do a rope trick.”

Step 4: Find music that fits the feeling of your show and put your video clips to that music. I use Envato Elements for mine. It’s a subscription service that you get the license to use the music for web purposes. This eliminates any YouTube or whatever copyright claims.

Step 5: Upload it to YouTube or wherever you host your streaming videos. In addition to YouTube I use JWplayer. I pay annually for this service, because there are no ads or suggested videos at the end of your video. This gives you more control over what the potential client sees and you don’t have to worry about YouTube suggesting another act after your video.

One thing I should mention, when you’re compiling the clips, you need to think about the flow and what you want your target audience to think about. For example, I just made a sizzle real for my Incredible Idioms school assembly show, and I want to show the fun vibe of my show, but I also needed to show that there is educational content in the show, it’s not just a magic show.

-Louie

P.S. Here’s the sizzle reel for the Incredible Idioms show:

Visual Obstacles

A couple of days I wrote about the podium struggle at a gig, but that’s not the only challenge at the gig. After I had set up, the event planner filled the front of the stage with prizes.

These were to be raffled off after my show. These create a huge visual distraction and barrier between the audience and me. Also, I was standing when I took the picture, so if you were sitting, you’d be looking up at them and they obscure more of performing area.

Not being able to see the whole performer does make a difference. Bob Fitch once told me “Acting is in the feet“, and while I’m not exactly acting, seeing as much of me helps. This is also why you want to try to avoid doing a low show. If you were sitting on stage left, anything I did that was below my belly button wouldn’t be seen.

You can read a post about removing stage monitors I wrote a while ago here.

During the opening of my show, I do something at events like this that no one thinks of. I ask the audience to turn their chairs so they are facing the stage. You’d think that would be instinct if your chair wasn’t facing the presenter, but hardly anyone does that until you mention it. While there’s that minute of shifting chairs, I looked at someone whose view was blocked and asked if they could see. I pretended to hear them say they couldn’t and I told them I’d fix it and started setting prizes on the floor.

Also I have verbal bits I do while people are moving chairs, so the show has started and was able to do them while moving the prizes.

Ultimately you need to know what you need for the show to work and for it to succeed and do your best to create those conditions. There’s nothing worse than a bad show that’s due to conditions that aren’t your fault.

-Louie
PS the show went great!

Yeah, Don’t Punch Me

Last month when I was performing roving magic at a fair, I had an interesting interaction with a family. A guy approaches me and asks me if I would show his family a magic trick. Of course I said YES, then he said, “I’m not going to watch because I’ll probably get frustrated and punch you.” Then he looked away and his family had a great time watching some close up magic.

I personally thought it was really cool of him to give his family a moment to see a magic trick. I should add that the guy looked like he’d punched a few people in his lifetime. I’m glad he knew his personal limitations and didn’t put himself in a position where he would punch me!

I mentioned this to another performer who was shocked at how “violent” and inappropriate this guy was. I look at this like someone who had a problem with alcohol not wanting to see me do a show at a bar. This guy wanted his family to have fun, even if it was something he wasn’t into. Did he need to tell my why he wasn’t watching? Probably not, but I would have wondered why he asked, then didn’t watch…and probably would have tried to engage him (and gotten punched!)

-Louie

Commercial Art Supporting Art Art

One of the fun things about performing at fairs is that you work with a bunch of other entertainers. In the green room someone was talking about a friend of theirs that has a very artsy act, but it isn’t getting much work with it. We were trying to come up with advice to be relayed to the artsy person, and here’s what we came up with.

They need a commercial show to support the act, it’s hard to get enough work to pay the bills with just an act (artsy or not). Making a living now with just an act is really hard, there aren’t as many variety shows, etc and enough of them to fill up a calendar. That’s where having a show comes in. There’s a lot more opportunities to do a full show than there are just an act.

If you look into it, while someone like Jeff McBride is known for several acts, he also has a full show to support those acts. Now let’s look at art, someone like Andy Warhol did a lot of commercial art which brought in money to pay the bills until he could make enough doing the art-art.

While it’s not bad to work on a passion project, you do need something that will reliably pay the bills. That’s why you also need a commercial show!

-Louie