This week Jennifer Wensrich drops by the Odd and Offbeat studios to chat with Matt and Louie. We chat about how she became the Director of Smooth Operations at the Moisture Festival and what it takes to put on the festival every year!
We also get into her background in dance and learn a little bit about sailing!
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Right now I’m working on finishing up some videos for a client and I’m just over halfway finished. I had and idea for a little routine, I wanted to essentially do the Sucker Silk To Egg, but take it a bit further. If you’ve seen the lecture that I do for magicians, that’s the message of the lecture, take your magic a step further!
I remembered reading in a Karrell Fox book about a method for the Silk To Egg that he called Super Simple Silk-2-Egg. The was a great method for the Silk To Egg that got rid of the gimmicked egg, which then eliminated the switch of the real egg and the fake egg.
My next challenge was to figure out what direction further I wanted to take the trick. My original idea was to turn the silk to the egg, do the fake explanation and peel off the sticker. The ending would be the silk was then actually inside the egg! The problem with this is that the silk would really need to be signed and that doesn’t really work for a pre-recorded video.
With my original idea not going to work for this specific gig (but I may work on it for other shows), I kept thinking. Then I remembered a book I picked up in a discount magic bin for about a dollar. The book was Hatching by Nefesch, which is a signed coin in egg. This is an interesting effect as the coin is actually inside the egg with all off the egg goop when you crack the egg open.
The sequence of the routine was now starting to take shape. A coin will turn into a handkerchief, which then turns into an egg. At that point I’ll do the “sucker explanation”, and when it’s time to crack open the egg, the coin will come out of it.
It’s not the most amazing magic routine out there, but it definately taking the Silk To Egg to another place (not sure if it’s a good place).
A couple of weeks ago I attended KIDabra’s online convention and it was a ton of fun. One of their events a late night balloon jam. I’ve never been to any balloon jam, but then I don’t do balloons. I stopped doing them a long time ago, and when I did it was one balloon animals.
It was a lot of fun to see what balloon people are doing. It’s light years ahead of what they were doing when I decided I wasn’t going to do balloons anymore.
It was very interesting to hear them talk about the business and its challenges. It was good to get out of my comfort zone (magic) and do something I was unfamiliar with. I’d recommend trying new things, I’m not going to start doing balloons, but it was fun.
Currently I’m working on making a bunch of video content for a group and I got to make a fun prop. In the video I’m talking about nachos, and needed a sight gag, so I made this:
For the gag which lasts less than 10 seconds, I probably spent too much time building it, however it was fun and it’s a fun prop!
The actual build is pretty simple:
The hardest part was driving around town to find the striker. There’s a specific type of lighter that has a striker that can be removed. Once I had source that, I had to figure out how to attach it to either my hand or the jalapeno. I was going to 3d print something, but then tried stabbing it into the pepper and it worked perfectly! Sometimes the simplest way to do things is the best.
Lately I’ve been busy creating digital content for events. This is different from virtual or live stream shows. I’m creating tricks and routines specifically for their groups and they are using them to promote their online events. It’s fun, and very much a different mindset than performing.
Here’s a practice video for one of these videos:
Ultimately we didn’t use the final trick, however this is a good example of having fairly well rounded knowledge of magic techniques comes in handy. Personally I never thought I’d be doing any illusions at this point in my career, but know a little bit about them has come in pretty handy lately!
Looks like I’m back on another encore edition of The CW’s Masters of Illusion tomorrow (9/11/20) night!
The trick that I do in this episode was my opener for corporate and theater shows for a long time. The trick does a good job of setting the audience up for what they are going to see for the next 45 – 60 minutes. It tells them that what they are about to see isn’t a traditional magic show. It also established me as a “talker” and that the show is going to be joke based, but not your typical magician-y jokes.
This trick has gotten me a ton of work whenever I use it at showcases, it quickly becomes the talk of the event!
When you’re doing virtual shows, a lot goes into them. More than just the tricks. Someone recently posted their “promo video” for virtual shows. There are some good elements to this, like the people reacting, then some bad elements, like everything else.
Here’s the video:
The big problem with the video is the guy’s lighting is horrible! Yes, I understand that some of the effects he’s doing require special lighting, but he’s not even doing that right, you can light the effect correctly and make it not look like you’re performing in a closet.
Here’s a screenshot from the above video:
Does that look like something you’d pay money to watch?
Not me.
Does that mean it’s a bad show?
Not necessarily.
Right now we all need to learn about lighting, video production, etc and we all need to learn the basics about all of it.
Your opening is important, and that hasn’t changed with shows moving over to Zoom. Recently I was performing on variety show that took place on zoom and one of the acts opened with a “frozen screen gag” where it looked like his screen was frozen, but he was really just holding up a picture of himself in front of the camera. I guess, it’s funny, it’s not a particularly clever gag (Mario’s card gag with a frozen screen is way better and very clever).
Here’s the problem with the gag, if you do it and you’re really having technical difficulties it’s not good. Most of the issue’s I’ve noticed with zoom variety shows are right out of the gate when you first pop on screen. Doing a technical difficulty gag at that point is rough if you are actually having technical difficulty. The act I worked didn’t have their audio on, and the guy running the tech had no way to give that info to the act.
It was awkward.
Had the act not done the frozen screen bit, it would have gotten resolved much quicker. Just imagine if he did have tech problems with audio (which was real) and if he had planned to do the frozen screen gag later in the show, but then pulled that out, it would have played 10 times better and been super funny.
Your opening is soo important, it’s a risk vs reward thing. Is the risk of doing a frozen screen gag before you’re aware that you aren’t having tech problems worth the reward of a laugh or two?
I don’t know.
It’s an artistic choice the performer has to make. Every trick is a risk vs reward scenario.
Sometimes there are moments when as a magician, you get to feel like someone who isn’t a magician. I was having a magic jam with a couple of other magicians and Jonathan Friedman did this:
What you see me expressing is complete surprise of the trick. It was great. He gave me all the clues in the set up as to what the pay off would be, but I didn’t see it coming. It worked out like a great joke.
How can you get that level of surprise from your audience and still have the trick make sense?
About a month ago I added a new trick to Zoom that’s been doing really well. It’s an interactive trick, where someone thinks of someone in the Zoom room and I tell them who they are thinking of. It’s a pretty good trick because it’s so customized and uses what’s happening now. It’s “propless mentalism” in a zoom room!
What I do is make a progressive anagram for the first names of the people in the Zoom room and have someone think of a person. I then go through the flow chart and tell them who they are thinking of! It can be instantly repeated, and if people join later, you can simply add their names. It’s great!
One of the advantages of doing it people’s first names in a zoom room is the person thinking of the name is looking right at the name. That makes if very difficult for them to misspell it!
Give it a try, you’ll like it!
