Category: magic show tips

Being Present…

Frequently something cool will happen to me and my wife will say, “how do things like that always happen to you?” The answer is simple, I’m present in life. I look at things, I talk to people and an generally aware of what’s happening around me.

Here’s an example of being present, I was at a history museum in New Mexico and saw this medical display. Can you spot the juggler’s prop that was put in there?

Here’s a closer loot at it:

It’s a diabolo! It even says it on the edge of it. How did it end up there? I’m guessing it belonged to a doctor and whoever was putting the display together just assumed it was medical.

Noticing this wasn’t a huge life changing thing, but it’s being aware of the things around you. When you are creating magic, or performing being aware of the situations around you can lead to some great discoveries!

That Was Cute…

For the last twenty years or so, I’ve tried to have a show that people don’t call “cute”. I want what I do to have some edge or be amazing, and not simply cute. However recently a show producer called something I did cute and I was excited for that comment! I was doing my new routine to my Polaroids to Envelope trick that I’ve written about on this blog.

What makes the trick “cute” is the story, it’s a personal story about my family. It’s a real, honest and true story. It’s also something outside of my comfort zone. I do joke based magic tricks, and while I do reveal personal things about my life, this is the first thing I’ve written that was more about the story than the jokes.

The show producer commented that she had a kid and the story was really relatable. Maybe it’s me getting older, but that comment really warmed my heart. Performing is about connecting with people. Usually I do that through fart jokes, but I did it through parenting this time. This routine took me out of my comfort zone and it paid off.

Is my show going to have a huge shift because of this one success? Nope. This trick does add some texture to my show and I will continue to explore writing like this in the future.

Words Have Meaning…

For some reason today I had the song Burn Down the Mission by Elton John stuck in my head. Here’s the funny thing, I’m not an Elton John fan and didn’t think I was familiar with the song. I found it on YouTube and it turns out I knew most of the words.

If you don’t know the song, here it it:

This is a song that relates to a lot of what’s going on right now in the USA. How does it relate to magic blog? Simple, the words have meaning, he’s telling a story and a very powerful story. When you do a magic trick that you bought or read in a book, are you giving it the same emotion that Elton John is?

Here’s an example of a cover version of the same song:

It’s a different story being told in this cover version of the song. It’s not a struggle of the poor versus the rich. It’s something else, something less powerful, and stripped of all of its meaning.

Before you say that Elton John’s version has more emotion because they are his words, remember that Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics. That kinda makes Elton John doing a cover of Bernie’s song.

Now listen to Phil Collin’s version of the same song:

The Phil Collins version carries heavy emotion with it and I think is true to the songs lyrics. He cares about what he’s saying. Think about the words you are saying in you magic tricks, they don’t need to be a heavy with emotion, but they need to be true and honest.

More Nut and Bolt Action…

When I posted the nut and bolt trick the other day I mentioned that what I posted wasn’t quite what I had envisioned the trick to look like. Ideally it would be a penetration type effect, with the nut penetrating through the thread of the bolt.

I just recorded a quick video of sort of what I’d like it to look like:

That video isn’t exactly what I’d like it to look like, but it’s pretty close. I think that makes for a more interesting effect than a visual animation of the nut unscrewing itself. Moving the nut while it’s covered by your fingers allows the spectators mind to fill in the whats happening may make it more magical.

The important thing is that if you have a gimmick, you should play with it. Figure out what else you can do with it besides simply what the instructions say.

What’s the Purpose…

The last couple of days I posted about a four ace production that someone posted on facebook, then posted one that’s better. It got me thinking about what are the reasons to post a magic trick on social media. For me, I usually do it because it’s interesting from a method standpoint, or something unique happens during it.

Here’s an example of a boring magic trick that’s interesting from a method point of view:

Safety Pin and Ring Trick

Here's the first Magic Trick in a Hotel video for 2018!

Posted by Louie Foxx- Magic and comedy on Monday, January 1, 2018

That video is a few years old, but what makes it interesting is the transposition of the pin and the ring. There are a couple of methods working at the same time to accomplish the trick. My reason for posting isn’t simply to have my friends tell me I did a cool trick, but to show something I’ve created.

Before you post a video, think about why you are doing it. What does posting it do to contribute to magic?

Ace Production…

In yesterday’s blog post I wrote about a four ace production that I saw on social media and why it wasn’t good. This morning I’m going into my social media and found a four ace production from about a year ago. If I remember correctly this is from Principia by Harapan Ong.

Here’s why the is a better trick that the one that I shared yesterday:

  • I’m talking, it fills the dead space a bit better
  • No procedural shuffling
  • You get an ace production right away
  • The final ace production is magical and puts an punctuation on the trick

Is the ace trick that I did the best? No, however it’s way better than the one that I shared yesterday. Think about what you’re sharing before you put it out there.

Too Much Procedure For The Payoff

After being in magic most of my life, I still love it. That’s not to say that I unconditionally love any trick, there are plenty of bad ones. For example I had this one come through my Facebook feed:

4 ace from shuffle deck

Find the 4 Ace ace from shuffle deckSleight of hand trick

Posted by Panha Magician on Friday, June 12, 2020

For a four ace production it’s pretty bad, and the payoff after all that procedure heavy shuffling doesn’t justify the time it took to get there. After all of that shuffling, at least give me a flash production of the four aces, don’t just take them off the top of the deck.

For a social media video, a better trick would be a couple of riffle shuffles and then a flash production, and you’d be at less than 30 seconds of video and it’d be a much stronger trick. For one minute to simply turn the top cards over, you’d need some novelty or cardistry type shuffling to make it interesting.

Interactive Virtual Shows…

The other day I paid $15 to watch someone’s virtual magic show. It was interesting to see what other people think “interactive” means. I was disappointed that the guy that I watched and what he thought interactive meant.

He did a lot of do as I do tricks where when you follow the instructions you end up finding you own card sort of things. In my opinion you can only do one of this type of trick before it gets old. The dealing of cards is gives away the method as procedure if you do it more than once. The other problem with doing many of this type of trick is that if you don’t have a deck of cards, or only one deck and multiple people, you’ll probably be bored as YOU can’t do the trick in your own hands.

The bigger issue I had with how he interacted was that when he used people in the Zoom meeting room, their function was to simply pick a card and that was it. He never talked to them and to me, it really didn’t seem like he gave a sh*t about them. They simply said stop while he was dealing and that’s it.

Here’s a clip of a new bit from my show after I’ve introduced my producer, she’s waved at the audience and I’m explaining what her role in the show is:

At the end of the clip, you’ll see I’m talking to someone in the audience, without unmuting them. I’m engaging them and talking individual people in the audience. This is more than just when I’m specifically someone to help in a trick. I think this gives more of a live show feel, I can talk directly to or about people. It makes the show less of a poorly produced TV show and puts it into its own “live show” category.

In your virtual shows, look at how you are interacting with people, are they simply a prop or are you living a moment with them?

Fask Masks…

Well, here’s the thing about doing live, in person shows that have to be outdoors in Seattle, you have to deal with the rain. The types of places I’m doing these “socially distant” magic shows at are typically indoors. I’m doing them outside because of COVID regulations. Guess what happened to yesterday’s shows, they got rained out.

In yesterday’s blog post I mentioned I’d be talking about doing your show wearing a face mask. I was going to play a bit more with mic placement, but here’s what I learned. Having a mic inside your mask works much better than outside. You don’t have to project your voice as hard to get it to pick up on the mic. The downside of having it inside your mask is that sometimes the audience can hear you breathing.

Now to performing, it’s hard to use your face to convey feelings. You really need to use your body and posture to do that. After our first “socially distant” shows a couple of days ago my daughter said, “it’s like being in a broadway show, you need to use your body to express yourself” and she’s 100% right!

My First Socially Distant Show…

It’s been over three months since the last show that I did for a live audience. Yesterday I did a “socially distant” magic show for a summer day camp for younger kids. It was a lot of fun, but it was also a lot of work. There are a lot of challenges with these shows, but I still prefer it to a virtual magic show.

I did three magic shows at one location yesterday, and each show had nine kids and one adult. Then they put space in between each chair. I’m not 100% sure if I understand why the kids need to space out as they’re together playing all day, but I’m just happy to perform, so not going to complain too much. As we all know, if you want to build any crowd energy, it’s much easier when they are sitting next to each other. With this set up it was much harder to “warm them up” than it would have if the chair were next to each other.

Another big challenge was that I can’t have anyone from the audience come up and help me on stage, or handle any props. This removes a lot of places to play with the audience. I’m lucky that my daughter performs in these shows with me, so she can help with things that I would normally use a kid from the audience for.

In a few hours I have three more “socially distant” magic shows, and I’m going to experiment with something and that’s mic placement. That brings me to probably the biggest challenge in these shows, and that is I have to wear a face mask, so the audience can’t see my face. I’ll write more about this tomorrow.

Overall I think “socially distant” magic shows are a workable solution to doing live shows.