stage magic – Page 29 – MagicShow.Tips

Packing The Right Size…

Here’s what loading in my 60 minute stage show looks like!

That’s actually not quite right, the doctor bag on top isn’t part of the stage show, and neither is the brown tabletop on the left side of the luggage cart. I just didn’t want to leave them in the car. So the actual props I’m moving is slightly smaller.

I’m not a believer in the “briefcase show” where you have 60 mins in a briefcase. There are a handful of people that can pull it off, however most look like every trick was selected because it’s flat and the show has no visual texture.

So my advice is to pack as small as your artistic vision allows!

-Louie

Adding Effects to Sizzle Reel

I’m playing with adding some visual effects to sizzle reels, or social media videos. Here’s two versions of a sizzle reel, one without effects and one with some visual effects.

Here’s the one without:

And here’s the one with:

The goal is to not use the visual effects simply because I can, but to hopefully use them to enhance what you’re watching. I don’t want to be like soo many of the videos in the early days of consumer level video editing where every transition was a a huge deal, with star wipes or whatever.

Let me know which you think is better!

-Louie

Justin Willman’s Show

A few days ago a few of us Seattle magicians went out to see Justin Willman‘s show at the Moore Theatre. Justin does an amazing show that’s super smart how it’s done. From his opening effect that’s a “sucker” effect, but not really done like a traditional sucker effect. It really gets everyone in the audience on his side.

Justin’s show is a great example of how you don’t need a lot of props to fill a theater. Sure he does use video projection, however it doesn’t feel like he’s using the projection to make small things play big. His use of the projector enhances what he’s already doing. There were no close up tricks that needed the projector AND he only used it few times for close ups and they felt fun when he used it.

He did have the show on the projector behind him, and his is kinda the standard thing now. Micheal Carbonaro also does it that way as well. It just makes the show play better in the back.

One of the tricks that Justin does is a “roulette” with a borrowed cellphone and a hammer. The beauty of this trick is how it connects with the audience. Our lives are in our phones. At it’s core, the trick is a Key R Rect or 7 Keys to Baldplate, but after seeing this, why would anyone do it with keys. There’s literally no attachment with keys.

That’s where Justin shines, he’s great at finding relatable hooks for everything in the show. He’s also great at creating places for real interactions with people and then finding the comedy in those places.

If he’s playing in your area, this show is a great example of how to play a theater with a parlor size act!

-Louie

Building Applause Please 2’s

Yesterday I started work on the current batch of Applause Please 2. This is the prop used for my “object in lightbulb” routines. The base and outer shell of the applause sign are made by Brian over at Magic Crafter and look amazing!

Yesterday I added the switch and lightbulb holder to the bases.

Applause please 2: the encore by Louie Foxx

I also made all of the electronic parts and added the remote controls.

Today I’ll be adding the electronics to the boxes and packing everything up. Hopefully I can get all of my preorders out in the mail tomorrow!

I only have one left if you want to order the Applause Please 2 from me, however four of these are going to Hocus-Pocus.com, so they’ll have them in a few days.

How I Like To Book Gigs

One of my preferred ways of booking gigs is through showcases. A showcase is where you do a sample of your show in front of people that book entertainment. These exist for pretty much every market that uses entertainment regularly.

What I like about this is that I get to let my show do the selling. If my show is good, I get booked. My calendar has nothing to do with how good I write ad copy or can layout a brochure.

There are downsides to booking gigs through showcases. Normally I have to travel to them, so there’s plane, car and hotel costs. Then there’s usually a fee associated with showcasing (not always) and that’s not cheap! Also the caliber of entertainment is usually fairly high, so you need to be able to deliver a good, short version of your show. Another challenge is that you could have a bad show, and it’s no fault of yours. Like the audio or lights could be bad, or someone in the audience has a heart attack right before you start or you could just be off that night.

This isn’t a good way for beginners to get work, there’s no do overs, you have to crush it every time!

-Louie

Small Changes

I do a routine that I call my “choices” routine. This started as an invisible deck sort of routine, and methodwise moved to the Al Koran Five Star Miracle. Essentially the effect is a card is picked and it matches a prediction in an envelope.

Previously I used a red jumbo deck and a red card in the prediction envelope. Recently as I was getting to the reveal of the prediction and said, “…if this card is the same as yours…” and someone from the audience said, “it won’t there’s only one five of diamonds in the deck“.

They were right, I wasn’t selling that the prediction was from another deck. However, I think it’s wasted energy to tell that’s it’s from anther deck. To save time explaining, I found some blue backed jumbo cards and I’m not using a different colored deck for the prediction card.

This slight change isn’t a very big change. Probably only one person in fifty shows would have the same thought that the prediction couldn’t be the same as the selected card. However of 1 in 50 mentions it, probably 1 in 20 thinks it. By changing the back color, that makes the effect a little bit more clear, with virtually no extra work on my end during the show.

The takeaway from this is listen to your audience!

-Louie

What the Audience Sees…

There’s the meme that shows a plate juggler performing for the audience and the audience isn’t aware of how many plates were broken to get that the point they are seeing.

When I was in Mexico City one of the large venues has a cutaway model of their stage and it reminded me of the plate juggler meme. There’s soo much that that audience is unaware of, they only see a small sliver of it.

If you look at it, such a small percentage venue is what the audience sees. It’s kinda crazy, especially for someone like them that’s basically a “curtain act” that doesn’t need the full depth of the stage! The space I would use is equivalent to about 2 or 3 rows of the audience’s seats! The audience never really thinks about how little of the bigger picture they see!

-Louie

Salt Pour Collection!

I passively collect salt pour gimmicks. I think they look interesting and display well for a magic gimmick in my collection. I’ve had the salt pour in my show a couple of times. It’s been in themed shows, but never in my main show. It’s a trick I keep coming back to, but it’s missing something to make it work in my main show.

Ok, back to the gimmicks. A while ago I bought some salt pour gimmicks to add to my collection. I recently bought a bundle of salt pour gimmicks from Scott Alexander’s estate.

The first two I was able to identify. The one on the right is the older style salt pour gimmick that Jim Riser made. The black one on the left is the Bob Kohler salt pour. This is a new one to me, took a bit of work to figure out who made it.

Jim riser salt pour and bob kohler salt pour gimmicks

Then I got these two salt pour gimmicks:

I haven’t been able to identify who made them, if you have any idea, let me know!

And finally I got a bunch of parts to make salt pour gimmicks:

These parts appear to be trying to replicate the two unidentified gimmicks above. The main difference is these have a shorter neck. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the parts, maybe I’ll have them assembled…or just one and display it with the parts???

-Louie

Call and Response…

There’s a common street performer “trick” to unite the audience and it’s call and response. If you’re not familiar with what that is, it’s typically used when the performer says something like, “Would you like to see another trick…say YES!” then the audience responds by saying YES.

This an effective technique uniting the audience, they’re doing something together and it helps them start to become an audience and not just a bunch of individuals. This is especially important for an outdoor show where you may have a transient audience. Another thing it does is forces the audience to invest energy into the show. The more they are invested in the show, the more they will stay and watch the show…and like it!

I like the technique, but I personally don’t like how most people do it, they’re doing it simply because it’s effective. There’s no real purpose besides filling a hole in the show because you don’t have a segue to the next routine.

When I use it in my show, I give it a bit of meaning. In my Drawing in Ball of Yarn routine, I do it to have the audience vote on whether I should buy the person’s drawing. It accomplishes the same thing and just telling the audience to say “yes”, in fact it actually moves the show forward!

With a little bit of thought, you can find ways to use this technique to move the show forward, instead of a hack bit.

-Louie

Rope Magic Routine

One of the tricks that I’ve been working on this month is Four Nightmares, which is a rope trick.

louie foxx performs four nightmares dx rope trick

Here’s the rope routine that I’m doing:

-Show long and short rope
I have a long piece of rope and a….Albino worm. I’ll do four tricks, and I’ve given each a cool name.
-Ropes become the same size
I call this the equalizer! I had a lady tell me she didn’t like that because it made her feel stupid.
-tie the two equal ropes together
If you don’t know how a trick works, that means I’m doing my job. I don’t understand how an airplane flies, but when we land I clap for the pilot!
-move knot to one side of the rope, untie it to reveal the short rope
I call trick number two, the de-wormer!
-put away the small rope.
Trick number three…
-tie the double knot
a double knot…
-slide the knot off the rope to reveal the circle of rope
I call that OOhhh whaaat?!
-put the loop onto the rope
Trick number four, I call it…the end
-reveal the loop become part of the single rope

This particular trick is doing a trick for the sake of doing a magic trick. There’s not really anything about me, my life or a point of view in the trick. I think that sometimes you need that stuff in the show, just a fun trick.

This routine is still in its very early stages for me, so we’ll see what happens with it in the future.

-Louie