The last ten days I was sharing the stage with another act that used a lot of magic tricks. One of the tricks that they used was my Snake Wand Surprise!
I always love seeing my props out there in other peoples shows! This is the first time I’ve shared the stage with one of my props used by someone else. It’s a good feeling knowing that people are out there using my stuff and making a living with them!
-Louie
The last week I’ve been working on a thumb tie using electrical tape. The routine is starting to figure itself out, but I keep noticing dead spots or spots where the blocking is rough and hard for the audience to see.
One place in the routine that’s both dead time and not really audience viewing friendly is when the guy on stage cuts the tape off my fingers. About half the time they try to cut into the gimmick, which obviously is no good. Then I also have to make sure they don’t cut my thumb! While the whole process probably takes 5-10 seconds, it’s a hot mess onstage.
My solution has been to hand the guy the scissors, then take them back, but with my now free hand and cut the tape off my left hand. It gets a laugh at the surprise of my hand being free! I can cut the tape off my thumb really quickly and while facing the audience.
I think this is the solution!
-Louie
I was browsing through reddit and came across a post with an picture of an old bread slicer:
I immediately made a connection to a prop that I assumed was simply a strange magic prop. The bread slicer resembles Lester Lake’s Disceto that was put out by Abbott’s Magic!
A quick internet search shows that bread slicing machines were invented in the 1910’s and Disecto was put out in 1942. It’s entirely possibly that the Disecto was trying to mimic a common object.
Crazy.
It’s also interesting that if it’s supposed to be a bread slicer, that people still use a prop that mimics something that used to be something people were familiar with, but hasn’t been common in my lifetime.
This is why it’s important to look at our props or lines and take out things that people aren’t familiar with. A good example of this is when I hear a comedy magician use a line about someone’s picture in the post office. That’s something that really hasn’t existed in my lifetime. I’ve encountered it once in my life about 10 years ago in a small town. I do know the reference from Bugs Bunny cartoons, but those were made decades before I was born. Because of this I don’t find the “post office joke” funny or something I can relate to. Look at your show and remove old references whether they are verbal or physical objects.
-Louie
This week I started working on routine using some giant safety pins that I came across (read about them here). My initial plan was to see if I could make my close up linking pins routine work on stage with the the giant pins which are about 14 inches long.
The routine works onstage, but it needs more. It’s hard to justify the time it takes to bring someone onstage for a quick trick. I needed to build out the routine and add more.
I think that adding a thumb tie to the trick adds time and texture to the trick. The idea is after my normal linking pin routine, I would add the thumb tie using the giant pins as the “ring” that would normally go on and off my arms.
I’m thinking of using electrical tape for the tie as it’s easy to get almost anywhere. Method wise I’m thinking of using Irv Weiner’s Red Tape thumb tie, as I have all the stuff for it.
We’ll see how it plays onstage…
-Louie
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
One of my favorite types of show are shows were there are a lot of other performers. It ultimately feels like more of a team effort and you’re not out there working alone. Sure, my time on stage I’m alone, but before show and after show it feels like a group effort!
That said, you can check me out on 3/16/24 at the Hermosa Community Theater in California. This should be a fun show as I don’t know any of the magicians that I’m on the bill with, so I’ll get to meet some new people and see some new acts!
-Louie
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:
I don’t do a lot of bar gigs anymore, I’m not opposed to them, but they don’t normally make sense with my schedule. Last week I headlined a comedy show at a speakeasy. It was a fun gig!
One of the skills you need for these gigs is to be able to follow any act. The act before me was a comic that was fairly blue, and I do a “TV clean” show, so there’s contrast and the audience has to shift mental gears from his style to mine. There’s nothing wrong with what he was doing, that’s his art. When there’s contrast like that, you need to come onstage with confidence, you’re bringing the audience into your world.
Before the show I always try to do some close up magic, that will have people in the audience already on your side!
The “green room” was in a back corner of the bar and the cool thing was I could watch the show on the TV!
Also I don’t normally have merch to sell at bar gigs, but I took some of my faux children’s books C is for Conspiracy: The ABC’s of Conspiracy Theories and pitched them from the stage.
They sold well after the show, so that was a bonus!!
Bar gigs have a lot of challenges, like sight lines, rowdy crowds, challenging stages, however I find them very rewarding as a performer. Because they are typically smaller venues you can connect with people a lot more than in a larger venue.
-Louie
Recently a booker of a gig send me a screenshot from a magician inquiring about performing at an event that I was already booked at.
This is where the magician who was trying to get a gig could have let it the conversation drop, asked for the gig next year, or talked bad about me, but here’s his reponse:
The guy called me a “legend” and that I was “top rank”. That was really cool of him to do! When everyone is out there being awesome and a good experience for bookers, it’s good for everyone!
-Louie
Way back in about January of 2020 I added a task to my To Do List, and that was to remake my promo video as it was about two years old at that point. It was a low priority item, so I didn’t immediately get to work on it. Then the whole “2020 thing” went down and making a stage magic promo video became super low priority!
Well, four years later I finally got around to making a new promo video for my stage magic show.
This one took me about a 20 + hours to make. Most of that time wasn’t the actual editing, but going through 6 years of video to find the videos that I wanted to pull clips from. It’s pretty easy to know right off the bat if a video is useable based on the background and general video quality. That removes about 60%-70% of videos right way, but it’s still a time consuming process!
The other super time consuming thing is watching the final video over and over again to notice small things, correcting them and then making a new final video. Then repeating that until I’m at final video version 12 or so. There is a point when you just need to be done with the video and barring something crazy you didn’t realize, it’s time to put it out into the world!
I’m glad I finally did it and can remove it from my To Do List!
-Louie
