school assembly – Page 2

Prestige Mentalism Trick

One of the ways to add a bonus trick to a routine, is to introduce the prop you’re going to use for the routine as part of a prediction. In the school assembly show that I’m working on, I’m doing a routine with a tennis ball and will be using it as the reveal of a prediction, then going into the tennis ball routine.

The way I’m going to be doing this is using a trick called Prestige. This prop is visually similar to Tom Stone’s routine Of Dice and Men. It has 5 numbered options on cards and someone from the audience names one of the numbers and on the back of that is your force item.

I picked up the dry erase version of Prestige, I’m not sure this was the right version as I have a feeling I’m going to have to keep redrawing the pictures on the cards. I guess I could draw them in Sharpie and it won’t be an issue.

The trick comes with numbers that stick to the cards with magnets.

The magnet numbers are used for a bonus trick where all the numbers disappear except for the chosen number. I’m not doing that and having the numbers removable add bulk to the folded up packet and makes setting up a little bit harder.

I took some vinyl numbers and stuck them to the outside of the sleeves.

This has less stuff for me to break, or lose while I’m on the road and a good solution for the routine that I’ll be doing. We’ll see how this trick goes next month…

-Louie

School Assembly Show…

In less than a month I’ll be debuting a new school/library show. I’ll be on a school assembly tour for five weeks. The show is called “Incredible Idioms” and is themed on idioms.

The great thing about breaking in shows by doing three a day for over a month is that the show gets really good, really quick…Or you realize by the end of the 5 weeks you don’t like the show and never do it again.

The key to these is actually putting in the work. I’ll be doing a lot of reviewing video and writing every night and the first week or two the show will be rough, but then it’ll be super tight for the rest of the tour. Oh, by rough, I mean just good, and not great. I’ve done school shows for a long time, and have a good general sense of what kids like (but the do surprise me sometimes).

Right now I have a ton of half built props and half written routines. It feels like the show won’t be ready in less than a month, but once one routine gets completed, they’ll all domino into being built.

-Louie

Elmo Magic Show…

Sometimes I end up watching magic videos on the internet and I’m not quite sure how I ended up on a video. I found of video of someone dressed as Elmo doing a magic show at a school:

I’m not sure who thought this was a good idea. Was it the school that wanted Elmo or the performer that pitched it? You get the initial reaction when Elmo walks in, but then it quickly turns into kids crying. Just because a booker wants something, it doesn’t mean you need to give it to them.

Based on the props set up in the video, it looks like they were doing a show, not just a short bit. I’m very curious how the perform kept any sort of control?

Also besides what looks like some copyright infringement, the Elmo character has a “character” associated with it, and I don’t think it’s pulling chickens out of a bag. Once again, just because there’s a paycheck, it doesn’t mean you need to do the gig!
-Louie

P.S. the video posted above is something that is publicly available on YouTube with sharing enabled. It’s being used to promote a show, so it’s fair game for me to comment on. I didn’t secretly record this, someone thought it was a good way to show what they do for potential buyers.

Using Gravity…

The current project I’m working on is making a couple magical cocktail demos for IBM convention this summer. It was an honor to be asked to do this for them, it also shows that I’ve got something unique that I’ve started doing during quarantine.

One of the hard things about making these demo’s is using only the ingredients and the utensils that are needed. There are people that do a mixology or cooking videos, but crowbar in magic tricks that aren’t really related to the drink or recipe they are making. In my opinion that’s the guy that does his normal magic show and then at the end says, “kids don’t do drugs” and sells it as an anti drug school assembly magic show.

For one of the tricks in one of the cocktail videos I’m using is the Joao Miranda’s Gravity reel which I wrote a blog post about recently. It worked great and did what it needed to do, however I did find the thing that I don’t like about it. You can’t just preload a crap ton of thread into it. You need to put in a bit more than you plan to use. If it breaks, it tends to get tangled with itself, which has led to me cutting out and wasting a ton of thread. You are better off simply respooling what you need. Honestly, it’s easy to respool the thread, so it’s not a huge deal. I’d just prefer to load a bunch of thread on it and then pull it out as it breaks.

Power Through It…

Before I went to bed last night I started feeling sick. I could feel the beginning of a cold coming on and this morning I’ve got a sore throat and a stuffy nose. I’m not dying, but don’t feel as good as I could, and this afternoon I’ve got a school assembly to perform at.

Luckily I’m not a singer, so a little bit diminished quality of my voice won’t hurt the show. There are a couple places where I do a falsetto voice that I won’t be able to do. The hard part of the show is going to be getting through the show and not showing how “tired” my body is.

Frequently you hear about performers saying they always rock the show when they are sick. I think this is because they are “acting” a lot more than they normally would in their show. They need to act well, they need to act for their reactions, they are acting the whole time.

Maybe in shows where I feel normal, I need to “act” a bit harder???