magic show tips – Page 200

Finding the Right Gaff…

In my hotel room last night I made a ton of color changing card gaffs. I made them with latex and with elastic. I made them flip vertically and horizontally. Here’s what I learned, I prefer using the ones with the seam the goes across the length of the card. I also prefer them to … Continue reading “Finding the Right Gaff…”

How to make gimmicked cards for magic tricks

I think trying a lot of different ways to make the gimmick will let you know for sure which is right for you. Sometimes what’s available to buy isn’t quite right for what you are doing. For example my hands prefer the gimmick to be latex and with the flap’s seam going across the short sideof the card. However how the gimmick is used an elastic thread gimmick with the seam running the long way visually looks better.

It’s important to know why you use a gimmick over another one or variation of it. If I stuck to what feels good in my hand, what actually looks better to the audience would be lost. In theory, it’s all for the audience!

On The Road…

This morning I’m at the airport heading to California for a week of shows. I packed my mobile gimmick making kit and am hoping to get some work in on a couple of gimmicks that I want to use for a more formal close up set. One of my goals this summer is to get some sort of a close up show in the works.

My mobile gimmick making kit consists of two zip lock bags with variety of items that can be used for making gaffed cards and general magic gimmicks. Here’s some of what’s in there:

Dental Dam
Elastic Thread
Rubber cement
Hobby knife
Cutting mat
Magnets
Double stick tape

That’s not a comprehensive list, but gives you an idea of what I travel with to make gimmicks while I’m on the road. Being able to make or repair gimmick while travelling has saved me a ton of headaches over the years!

More Thoughts On Shin Lim…

After having a day to think about the Shin Lim show I saw in Vancouver, I’ve got a few more thoughts. I’m still disappointed that the majority of the show wasn’t him, Colin Cloud (who did the majority of the show) is great and I think he’ll end up with his own big show out of this. However I was buying a Shin Lim ticket, not a Colin Cloud ticket.

First of all, I think one of the amazing things that he did was do close up and actually perform for the camera! Previously magicians had simply done their act, and it just happened to be on camera. While a small shift, what Shin did was perform to the camera, not the audience or people sitting at the table. This makes it soo much more fun to watch.

Playing to the camera is a subtle shift, but will change how magic is done on projection. Just like how David Blaine changed how magic on TV is performed. Blaine turned the camera to the audience and made it about their reaction, this also made it more fun to watch.

Shin performing to the camera feels like he’s performing for you, not that you are watching a performance for other people. I like this, and something that I need to consider as I thing more about putting together a formal close up set.

Shin Lim’s Show…

shin lim magic — pic from www.shinlimmagic.com

It was a long day, I went to Canada and back to see Shin Lim’s show. This was the first stop of his tour. I’m going to be completely honest, the show was a bit of a let down. My ticket said “Shin Lim” but the show was Colin Cloud with Shin doing a few things here and there. Colin is great, but it was sold to me as a Shin Lim show and I really wanted to see what a Shin Lim show was.

Colin opened the show and carried it. Shin has a long way to go to carry a whole theater show by himself. Shin’s opening trick was the “love card trick” that Penn and Teller do, which is a good trick, but not an opener. The worst part was we got halfway through it and they Shin said that he “messed up the math” and told us to throw the cards on the floor. The family next to me was confused. At the end of the show, he also referenced messing up this trick. By that point in the show, we had forgotten about that, and he didn’t need to bring it back up.

Unfortunately every routine that Shin did had something that didn’t work. sometimes it was just a card peeking out that we shouldn’t see, to the Love Card Trick that just didn’t work at all. It was interesting leaving the theater, people were talking about how underwhelmed they were, and that his stuff looked better on TV.

Here’s my takeaway, if your name is on the ticket, you should be on the stage the most. And that simply putting a camera on close up magic doesn’t make it engaging for the audience. There still needs to be more. That’s why Colin Cloud stole the show. I have a ticket to the show for six months from now when it’s in Seattle and I’m excited to see the show, and hopefully what an awesome show in that time it’s grown to!

If You Build It, They Will Come…

There’s a place in McMinnville Oregon that I’ve always wanted to visit called the Evergreen Air and Space Museum. Every time I’ve driven by it, it’s either closed, or I don’t have time to stop. It’s in a town about an hour from Portland, kinda in the middle of nowhere. This is a huge museum … Continue reading “If You Build It, They Will Come…”

This is a huge museum with water park and people come from all over to visit. Why to do they travel so far to look at airplanes, or go down a water slide? Simple, they have a couple of pretty unique offerings. The museum has the Spruce Goose, which is the largest wood plane ever constructed. In addition to the Spruce Goose, the water park has a 747 that’s been converted to a water slide!

How does this relate to a magic show? Simple, if you create a product that people can’t get else where, they will come to you. This is more than just a unique personality, every air museum has a personality, this one has the SPRUCE GOOSE and that’s the only place in the world you can get that. What unique offering does your show have where you are the only place an audience can get it?

Gaffed Cards…

One of the things that I want to play with this summer are gaffed cards. More specifically, I want to use flap cards to do some changes. I’ve got a few ideas for what I want to do with the flap cards. Ideally I want to put together a close up set that’s 5 mins that can be projected onto a screen.

This is one of the places where a flap card will shine, because people can’t reach for the cards, and it allows you to more easily ditch things. The formal close up allows you to do some fun magic that’s highly visual…and doesn’t require a lot of space in the luggage.

Last night I was playing with more traditional “dental dam” flaps. They work great, however they have seams in them that the more modern “Hondo” style flap cards don’t have. Hondo has really solved a lot of problems with the dental dam flap cards. However, the Hondo flap cards do have their own disadvantage, and that’s that you can potentially see the elastic as it’s on the outside of the card.

All in all, I think both gimmicks have a place where one is better than the other. Now to figure out what I want to do in my card set….

Redemption!

After having a horrible show two days ago, I crushed my show yesterday. There were some huge differences in the two. The big one was that the show I did horrible at I was an act, where the show I did great at I was the whole show. That’s a huge difference in situation.

Having a bit more control of the flow of things leading up to the new material is really helpful. In the show yesterday, I did my standard opening jokes, however magic wise it was all new. It played well, and having a fresh audience on my terms was great.

I feel a lot better about the new material. It’s still got a long way to go, but having a good show has brought me new confidence in it!

Sometimes New Things Hurt…

It’s been a while since I’ve really bombed at a show. Last night I got to remember what that feels like. I was doing a show in a comedy room, and I was only doing a 10 mins, however it was ten mins of new material. They put me as the show closer, no big deal with my normal stuff, but with new stuff, I was already uneasy.

It was a long show, and by the time I got up the audience was tired. I’m not making excuses for myself, that just made it harder for me to pull them up. I didn’t bomb, but I wasn’t happy with the show. They audience was with me, but they the material I was doing didn’t have any jokes or premises, it was simply the trick. There was nothing for them to really engage with besides the trick.

Effect wise everything went well, but there’s soo much more than that. It’s encouraging that the tricks work and are deceptive, but I need to sit down and write some jokes, figure out some premises and make these routines better.

Gypsy Thread…

I posted a while ago about the Gypsy Thread trick and trying to figure out how to make it work in my library shows. The problem I was having was kids had two ridiculous explanations of how the trick worked. Either magnets or trick string that just goes back together. I heard both enough that it’s something I need to address.

Here’s my solution, I bring a kid on stage to help with the trick. This is good and makes the trick play bigger. The kid tries to put half of the pieces of string together and they can’t on the first try. This effectively cancels out the theory of magnets or trick string. Then the kid ends up holding all of the string and it restores while they hold it. After making this little change, it’s playing a lot better.

However there is a change I want to make to the trick. I just need to find time to work out the handling. I want the kid to hold all of the strings at the first failed restoration attempt. There are two ways to accomplish this. The first way is that I could add in the length of string with the ball of string on it after they’ve handled the string the first time. This wouldn’t be hard to do. The second method would be much bolder and have them hold all of the strings including the one with the ball of string. I’d just shove it into their fist and have them hold it.

Either way I think would make the trick stronger from someone trying to back track it. I know it’s a trick I’m doing in a kid show, but what makes art is going a step further.

P.S. I think Nick Lewin sells the best thread for the Gypsy Thread trick…at least for how I do the trick.

10 Card Poker Deal…

In my continuing quest to make the Ten Card Poker Deal play on stage, I did four shows for middle school kids yesterday and included it in my show. I was a bit worried, about whether or not they understand the rules of poker. The poker craze peaked 15 or so years ago, so it’s not a huge as it was. They all were aware of poker and I helped them out with the order of hands.

What I love about the Ten Card Poker Deal is that the whole thing seem so fair. I basically told the kids I was going to cheat. It was interesting, they started to put conditions on the deal. Of course due to how the trick works, they can pretty much do anything they want, I just might have to guide it a little bit.

The real reason for the trick is to get to the kicker ending I’ve come up with. I prediction the outcome of the final hand of cards. This ending has been playing really well. I like this ending and it makes the trick feel less like I got lucky three times, and puts an ending to the trick. As is (95% of the time) , the ten card deal really has no finale.