While I was performing last week in King City, CA, I drove a couple of hours to the Magic Garage and had a blast!
One of the highlights for me was chatting reels with Will Chandler! I showed him my silk thru coat hanger routine and he showed me the silk thru ring routine he does! There are very few magicians around that I can jam the silk thru ____ effect.
I love being near the Magic Garage, their weekly hang out is amazing!!!
-Louie
One of the tricks that I’m working on is the Silk and Coat Hanger. This is basically a silk and ring routine, if you dig around this blog you can find more about it. Basically the silk goes through the coat hanger in different ways. It’s a fun trick for me to do as a … Continue reading “Selling a Trick Onstage…”
One of the tricks that I’m working on is the Silk and Coat Hanger. This is basically a silk and ring routine, if you dig around this blog you can find more about it. Basically the silk goes through the coat hanger in different ways. It’s a fun trick for me to do as a perform, and so far the audience seems to enjoy it as well.
Here’s the problem with it, I’m having trouble selling it on stage. Most people who do it, do it to music, not talking. I think I need some jokes upfront and then do the trick to music. Music is nice because it fills the gap while I wait for the audience’s brains to catch up with the effect. As a talking act, you stand there for what feels like an eternity while the audience processes the trick.
I really like the trick, and it’s semi unique to me. I’m going to keep plugging away with it and hopefully I’ll figure out how to make it work better on stage!
After much experimentation, I’ve landed on using the Tango Ultimate Reel (T.U.R.) for the Silk Thru Coat Hanger trick. I’ve played with most of the major reels and ended up on this Tango reel. There are some things I don’t like about it, but so far it’s the most reliable. The T.U.R. has the smoothest … Continue reading “Silk Thru Coat Hanger…”
After much experimentation, I’ve landed on using the Tango Ultimate Reel (T.U.R.) for the Silk Thru Coat Hanger trick. I’ve played with most of the major reels and ended up on this Tango reel. There are some things I don’t like about it, but so far it’s the most reliable.
The T.U.R. has the smoothest pull and one thing that I noticed was that the spring is rolled in a different way than I’ve seen in any other “magic reel”, or commercially sold badge / key ring reel. I’m not positive that rolling the spring this way contributes to the smoothness, but that’s the big difference between this and other reels.
I’m glad I kept searching around for a reel, this one makes me feel more secure when doing the trick. Having a bit of piece of mind when doing something mechanical, that’s a bit knacky is bonus!
When I have a new trick, I typically do my audience testing before shows. I do it as “preshow” warm up for people that get there super early. I’m also very clear that they are tricks I’m working on, and not part of the show. Yesterday I performed at a school assembly and had a … Continue reading “Audience Test…”
When I have a new trick, I typically do my audience testing before shows. I do it as “preshow” warm up for people that get there super early. I’m also very clear that they are tricks I’m working on, and not part of the show. Yesterday I performed at a school assembly and had a class show up 10 mins early, so they got to be my test audience:
I was worried about people not understanding the trick when the silk went through the body of the hanger and ended up on the hook. My solution to this was to simply tell them why what they were about to see made it impossible.
The test run of the silk thru coat hanger seemed to go over well, and I think I’ll be working it in more this summer and hopefully have a solid routine in a few months!
The main reason I’m playing with the silk and coat hanger trick is that I had an idea for a move. I think this is an interesting move, but it’s also fairly subtle. Here’s just a quick video of me running some moves with the props: The first move where the silk goes from the … Continue reading “More Silk and Coat Hanger”
The main reason I’m playing with the silk and coat hanger trick is that I had an idea for a move. I think this is an interesting move, but it’s also fairly subtle. Here’s just a quick video of me running some moves with the props:
The first move where the silk goes from the body of the hanger to the hook is what interests me. However I think selling the idea of the penetration to an audience may be hard. The concept of going from a locked place to a place that’s not locked in will muddy the effect. I’m worried audience will thing the trick is that the silk go onto the open hook, and not that it got off of the closed body of the hanger.
It’s more about where it started, not where it ends for the first phase. That’s a very subtle difference in effect, but I think that will make a world of difference to the audience.
Right now I’m getting to the writing phase of the Silk thru Coat Hanger trick that I’m working on. The hardest part it to come up with a hook for it. by hook, I mean a presentation hook, not the literal hook. I need to figure out why I’m doing this. So far I have … Continue reading “Hook for Coat Hanger”
Right now I’m getting to the writing phase of the Silk thru Coat Hanger trick that I’m working on. The hardest part it to come up with a hook for it. by hook, I mean a presentation hook, not the literal hook. I need to figure out why I’m doing this.
So far I have a sequence of four moves to do with the silk and coat hanger, that gives me a starting point. One of the moves is similar to the linking ring gag where you show it’s an “optical illusion” with the rings linked, then turn your body 90 degrees and the rings are unlinked. With that used in the routine, I could use the optical illusion angle.
Personally I don’t like using optical illusions as a hook for the routine. Whenever I see someone do it, it feels like they didn’t try to come up with something better. This is probably the biggest challenge for the routine.
Playing with the Silk Thru Microphone Stand concept, and starting to do some research on it, I’m amazed a how little there is about it out there. I guess that part of it is that I’m searching for a specific trick, that really only has two methods. It’s also a quick trick, so there’s a … Continue reading “Researching the Silk Thru…”
Playing with the Silk Thru Microphone Stand concept, and starting to do some research on it, I’m amazed a how little there is about it out there. I guess that part of it is that I’m searching for a specific trick, that really only has two methods. It’s also a quick trick, so there’s a lot le
Then I realized I should be searching for a Ring and Silk routines, as that’s much closer to what I’m going to be doing. Once I searched that, I had a bit more success. Here’s a good example of something similar to what I want to do:
I’m not using a ring, but a coat hanger, however the moves are similar. The size and shape of the coat hanger lends itself to a couple of things that a ring doesn’t. This is what I find exciting. Also the routine I’m going to do, will probably be a talking routine, where I’ve only seen silent ones (not that that’s a huge differnce).
