Check me out tonight (5/15) tonight on Masters of Illusion on The CW! There are two back to back shows, the first at 8pm and the second at 8:30pm. I’ll be on the 8:30pm show.
You can check me out doing an original magic trick on the show tonight. Hope you enjoy it!
In my magic lecture I talk about how you should be taking your magic one step further than what’s already out there. This is especially true if you are doing stock magic tricks. One of the twists I’ve put onto a standard magic trick is my finish to the Midmade Bill trick. It’s a trick I call Splitting Image, it was just reviewed by a magic reviewer:
With everything I do, I try to move it a step beyond where the store bought version is. This is advancing the act, simply doing sponge balls doesn’t.
For the Polaroids to Envelope magic trick I’m working on, the last technical step is to clean up the handling. The initial handling had three Tenkai Vanishes, which is fine, but redundant. I also think that if you do the same false transfer over and over, you need a convincer to show both hands empty.
Here’s the tweaked handling:
One thing that I decided with showing both hands empty was that I didn’t want to make both hands being empty part of the vanish. I wanted to show both hands, just not show the dirty hand as a “moment” of the trick. In the video you’ll notice that I show both hands as I turn the envelope over.
The technical end is finished for now. The technical part is something that may evolve over time, and something that’s never completely done.
Oh man, we’re hitting the homestretch here! A few days ago I started writing about wanted to do Goshman’s Cards Thru Newpaper and how it has morphed into a completely new magic trick.
The final change to the physical props was to get rid of the jumbo card that the pictures reappeared under. I was texting my friend Terry Godfrey, who is a very smart magician and we came up with the idea of changing the jumbo card to an envelope that starts out holding the pictures.
I ended up making the envelope, so it’s not a standard size. It’s a little bit smaller than the jumbo card that I was using.
At this point I have an original magic trick. The next step is to clean up the handling a little bit.
The last couple of days I’ve been writing about doing Goshman’s Cards Thru Newspaper and how it morphed to Cards To Jumbo Card. Today we’re going to talk about the next leap it’s taking, and that’s starting to get rid of the cards. In place of the four regular cards, I’m using Polaroid pictures of my daughter and our pets.
The cool thing about these is that they are slightly smaller than playing cards, which makes a lot of the sleight of hand much easier! The nice thing about coming up with a method that doesn’t use a duplicate, they pictures could be of people from the audience, or of a company’s products, or whatever.
Once again, the video below wasn’t intended for people to watch other than me. It’s a “proof of concept” video that was for me to watch and see how well everything worked and also to remind me of what I was doing.
Things are starting to come together, but there’s still one thing I don’t like, and that’s the jumbo card. Tomorrow we’ll talk about how I got rid of that.
The other night while watching TV with the family I was fiddling with a deck fo cards and came up with a strange color change. There’s a lot wrong with it, and in its current state it’s not a good color change.
The main problem with it is that it’s not good for video. I can see the flash that happens when you palm the card being hidden in a live show, but not on video. Also there are better ways to do a color change.
It was fun to play with.
A magician friend of mine a few months ago performed Albert Goshman’s Cards Thru Newspaper for me. I remember reading it in Goshman’s book, however I remember reading it and working through it and it didn’t feel spectacular. I was also probably 17 years old at the time, so that might have affected my opinion of the trick.
If you haven’t seen the trick, here’s Goshman doing it:
Compared to a lot close up magic, it’s pretty slow. It’s still a good trick for non magicians and had a couple of good moments in it. I like it as a “formal” close up thing that could be done via video projection. However, I have to look at what I don’t like about it. The biggest thing I don’t like is the newspaper.
In the trick there are two newspapers, the one laying flat on the table and the one being used as a cover. The cover newspaper was easily replaced by a jumbo card.
Replacing the flat newspaper on the table made me have to rework the method of the trick. There’s a couple of moments in Goshman’s routine where you need that newspaper. I could replace it with something like a handkerchief, but decided to rework the routine.
What I ended up with is something complete different than Goshman’s Cards Thru Newspaper, and an original trick. Taking a trick as a starting point and then continually removing what you don’t like is one way to create original material.
I found the trailer for the upcoming season of Masters of Illusion and you get to see a trick I invented at the 27 second mark:
One of the great things about creating original material, not just presentations is that when you are pitching acts to a TV show you don’t have to worry if something has been done before. This applies to more than just TV, it’s a huge advantage for variety shows as well. You don’t need to fight over who gets to do what trick.
Original content is king!
Several months ago I hinted that I was putting together some material for a TV show. I always assume that I’ll have my bit cut and end up no being on the show. I recently got an email of the list of acts that will on the show, and I’m on the list!
I’m excited to be a part of the 7th season of Masters of Illusion on the CW network!
It was a lot of fun getting to work on a TV show and hanging out with all of the acts!
I’ve now gotten my first live virtual show completed and it was a huge learning experience. First of all, it wasn’t a full of show of me, it was a variety show that I co-hosted. Pulling together all of the technical things to make it work was a huge challenge for me. There’s a huge learning curve.
In the show we did, the format was Matt Baker and I hosted live acts. Bringing in those acts was a bit of work after reviewing the video I’ve learned to make the transitions much smoother.
I think the key to doing virtual shows is to actually go back and watch them and see what you could do better. Treat not just the show as something that can be improved, but the medium it’s delivered in. Would the show be better if it had title cards, or a canned video as a transition? Things like that, you’re not doing a magic show, you’re doing a live TV show!
