June 2024 – Page 2 – MagicShow.Tips

Trademarking Your Show

One thing that still amazes me is how often magicians complain about people stealing from each other but they don’t take the most basic steps to protect their ideas. The myth is that you can’t legally protect a magic trick, but the reality is that you can. It’s through a patent, the problem with patenting magic is that it’s an expensive and time consuming process.

There have been some very successful magicians who have patented magic tricks. Yigal Mesika patents a lot of his stuff and of course the D’lite is a good example of a magic trick that was very successful where a patent helped protect it.

I personally use copyrights to protect my instruction sheets, art and ad copy. So I’m able to remove people that are pirating those. Then I use a trademark to protect my name, so that even if someone changes my ad copy, they can’t use my name. I have started to trademark the names of my shows, this makes it harder for people to steal the concept of my that particular show.

The challenge with trademarks is that they still take time. The current one I’m working on has been in the system for over a year and hopefully will be approved soon as I just got the notification of publication for it. That means is passed all of the internal USPTO objections and now it just needs to be put out in the monthly publication for normal people to object to it.

If you’re worried about having your ideas stolen, check out copyright.gov and USPTO.gov, they will give you a lot of information about the differences in IP and the processes.

-Louie

Moving to a National Act

Years ago when I wanted to become a more “national” act, one of the things that I did was try to do something nationally newsworthy to send to agents twice a year. Twice a year turned into doing it quarterly and then monthly.

What exactly the definition of “nationally newsworthy” is, I’m not sure. Roughly it’s things that I can tell agents about and it raises my status from local Seattle magician to something bigger.

That’s where doing things like writing an article for a mainstream magazine comes in. It’s makes me an “expert” on magic, not just a local magician. Do things like this make the quality of my show better?

Nope.

Things like this raise the perception of the quality of my show. For getting work from a new agent or work at another level that’s something important!

-Louie

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

Snake Wand Surprise – Comedy Magic Wand

The magic show that I do for summer camps and libraries changes and material cycles in and out. I try to cycle material out and back in about every three years, especially for things that are memorable. One of those things is my Snake Wand Surprise. It’s something the kids remember, and doing it every year would lessen it’s impact. If the kids are anticipating the ending, it’s not as much fun.

Here’s what the routine looks like:

I’m making a batch of them right now so that I have ones for my show and some in stock for sale. One of the things that I do with my personal set is make three sets of “double snakes”. I take two snakes and sew them together and do this with a total of six snakes, giving me three snakes that are double long.

This makes clean up slightly faster as there are only 11 individual snakes to pick up instead of 14. I can repack the fourteen snakes into the wand in less than 2 minutes, so the time saving is negligible. It also gives the snakes more visual “texture” as they fly out.

I don’t do this for the ones that I sell as many people like the individual snakes. This is something that’s really easy to do and you can hand sew them together really quickly if you wanted your set like that.

The batch of Snake Wand Surprises that I’m working on will be ready and available for sale later today. I’m trying to have a bunch ready for this summer as my travel schedule won’t allow me time to make them once my summer performing schedule gets busy in a about a week.

If you want a Snake Wand Surprise, put your order in NOW!

-Louie

Father’s Day Magic Trick!

I was playing with an interactive “touch the screen” style trick for father’s day. This is the type of trick where someone starts by touching a object, then spells/counts several times eventually ending up on an object that you know.

The cool thing that I noticed is that if you spell the three words HAPPY FATHERS DAY the math works out for each word for to make it easy.

To do this you’ll start with five objects. These could simply be little pieces of paper that say things about dads, or whatever. You will line these up. For simplicity, I’m going to just use the numbers 1-5.

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5

Touch the one on the left. You are going to move one space per letter. You can move left or right, but only to the one next to it, you can jump spaces or from end to end. Spell HAPPY, moving one space per letter and keep touching that one.

You’re not on the one or the five, so I’ll eliminate those.

2 – 3 – 4

Now you’ll spell FATHERS moving one space for each letter.

You’re not on the four, so I’ll take that one away.

2 – 3

Now spell DAY, moving one space per letter.

You’re on the 2!

That’s a very simple interactive math trick you can do for father’s day!

-Louie

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Live From the Festival Part 3!

The is the lost live episode from the 2024 Moisture Festival! In this episode Louie chats with four different performers! We chat with Maria Margiyeva, Ricardo Sosa, Richard Hartnell and Steve Owens!

This fun visit with some Moisture Festival favorites!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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The Mobius Rising Card – Review

Last October I started working on a rising card routine for stage and it’s coming along. The routine is that two cards are selected, returned to the pack and the deck is put into a glass. The spectator holds the glass and the first card appears on the top of the deck in the glass, then the second card rises out of the deck.

One of the challenges is that when I’m out performing at fairs the traditional rising card weight method gimmicks doesn’t last long. I think the heat and dust are what make them less reliable after about a week. In my search for a better way to do it as I like the trick, I came across The Mobius Rising Card.

This is essentially the same as the weight gimmick, with a few improvements…but I think that’s what has fixed the gimmick for how I work it. First the weight is heavier, which will help the cards to keep rising after there’s a bit of gunk in it. Then the “string” which pulls the card has been replaced by something else, and I think this is a BIG improvement as it distributes the weight better and allows the gimmick to be thinner. They are selling the trick on the gimmick being only six cards thick, and for my routine that’s not something I need. I’m not complaining that the gimmick is thin, but since this isn’t a close up routine I’m working on, it’s not something that’s a huge factor for me.

I’ve only used The Mobius Rising Card for a handful of gigs so far and I really like it over the classic construction of the weight version of the rising cards. It’s actually an improvement, and not just another way to make the weight work.

If you do the rising cards, and are looking for a more reliable version of the weight, I like this one!

-Louie

Another Visit to the Magic Garage!

When I’m in the bay area, or near it I always try to visit the Magic Garage! It’s always the great to visit and chat with Will Chandler and he also makes an amazing Old Fashioned!

What’s fun about the Magic Garage is that it’s got magicians who hang out there who do all sorts of magic. From close up to parlor to illusions and magicians of every skill level!

I love hanging out here and chatting magic! It’s one of my favorite spots that I pop into!

-Louie

Wireless Mic Dropping Out…

Last week at the fair my good wireless mic system stopped working and I was using my back up wireless mic system. When I used it the first day it was intermittently cutting out, so I switched to the sound company’s wireless handheld and that was doing the same thing. That told me it wasn’t a hardware issue and I finished the day using their wired handheld mic.

Overnight the sound tech did some research and learned that vertical metal poles (especially aluminum poles) can affect how wireless mics work. At the stage the wireless receivers were on the other side of a stage wall that was made up of vertical poles!

We moved my wireless receiver to the stage side of the poles and everything worked perfectly! I’m glad that he did some extra research to figure out why it was doing that and now we both know how to solve the problem in the future!

-Louie

That’s Not An Introduction!

When I work as an MC, I ask for 1-3 bullet points that I can say about an act/show. That’s really all that you need in an introduction. The reason I ask for bullet points is that I can filter it through my voice.

Here’s an introduction that I was given recently:

That’s not an MC introduction, it’s the introduction that you group leader should be giving on mic, but not for the MC. Also it’s written in the first person from the band’s point of view, so I had to live update it as I read it. The other thing with LONG pre printed introductions is that I’m getting older an my eyes aren’t as good at they used to be. I can’t reasonably rewrite this in a larger size that’s easier for me to read. Where a simple paragraph would have been much easier and I could have rewritten it so that it was easier for me to read.

So for most MC’s that I know, we prefer bullet points, not a page of text. Figure out your three bullet points so that you’re ready the next time you need to give an introduction to an MC.

-Louie