magic show tips – Page 71

Magic on the News in Fresno

Here’s an OK news appearance I did last week while performing at The Big Fresno Fair:

It’s an alright appearance, nothing crazy amazing. It’s a decent spot, but could have been much better. I was told I’d have about 3 minutes, but then that changed to two minutes and then at the last minute it changed to 90 seconds.

The change of the length totally threw my plan out the window. That’s why I typically will show up to news spots with material to fill 30 seconds, 90 seconds and three minutes. I try to plan something special and fun for the set length I’m told I’m doing, but that doesn’t always happen! That’s why it’s important to have a lot of material on you when you show up. There are some exceptions, like when you do in studio stuff you’ll normally know exactly how much time you have…but they’ll forget to tell you about a quick little “bump” you’ll be in and need a visual 5 second trick you can do.

Being prepared is the key to these news spots!

-Louie

Demi Deck – Review

I bought into the hype and picked up a Demi Deck while I was at Hocus-Pocus in Fresno. Here’s a quick review of it.

First of all, it works exactly how I thought it would work. If you think about it, there’s really only one way it can work. I wasn’t buying it to figure out how it works, but it’s an interesting prop.

Let’s get into actually doing the trick. I was doing it for the groups of people who showed up as I was packing up the show. I would tell them when my next show is and then offer to show them a quick trick and would do the Demi Deck. It got good reactions from the people.

Next there’s the angle issues. It’s pretty solid from the front, I probably personally wouldn’t take this out for a roving gig where I’m going to be surrounded. But for a group of 4 or so people in front of me, the angles are pretty solid.

Now here’s what I like and why I bought this trick. This reminds me of old school Tenyo tricks where the method is frequently more interesting than the trick. It’s just a gimmicky trick that’s fun to do!

Personally this will probably never be in my “paid” close up work. Is it something that I’ll show people who are at my house…yes!

-Louie

Working on the Rising Card

The rising card routine, that I’m working on right now is missing something. What is missing is time. The routine is really bare bones and is very short, I think without any bits it’s maybe two minutes. Since the routine involves bringing someone onto the stage, I need to get at least three minutes out of it. Ideally if someone is coming out of the audience, it needs to be closer to about five minutes.

One of the ideas that I had was to have a kid do the most “epic” card trick. I have the kid show me their epic, hero face and walk. That didn’t hit the time I tried it, but the kid was younger.

The next time I used an older kid which played better and framed it a little bit different. I had said that they are in show biz now and had them show the audience their show biz smile and walk. That played a lot better than the doing an epic trick with a younger kid. I’m not sure if that’s the route that I want to take, but it’s a step in the right direction!

The other thing that the trick is lacking is music and a punctuation when the card rises out of the deck.

-Louie

Trying to Read More

I’m trying to do a lot more reading in my free time. I have a huge stack of things to go through and I just started reading From Witchcraft to Card Tricks by Stephen Minch.

This is a short paper backed book follows the history of card and close up magic and it’s very interesting! Lots of things that became popular 200 years after they were first invented. It’s a real eye opener, ever you wonder who invented the double lift or at least the first place it appeared in print? This book answers that!

I totally recommend it if you’re a magic nerd like me!

-Louie

Commercial Art Supporting Art Art

One of the fun things about performing at fairs is that you work with a bunch of other entertainers. In the green room someone was talking about a friend of theirs that has a very artsy act, but it isn’t getting much work with it. We were trying to come up with advice to be relayed to the artsy person, and here’s what we came up with.

They need a commercial show to support the act, it’s hard to get enough work to pay the bills with just an act (artsy or not). Making a living now with just an act is really hard, there aren’t as many variety shows, etc and enough of them to fill up a calendar. That’s where having a show comes in. There’s a lot more opportunities to do a full show than there are just an act.

If you look into it, while someone like Jeff McBride is known for several acts, he also has a full show to support those acts. Now let’s look at art, someone like Andy Warhol did a lot of commercial art which brought in money to pay the bills until he could make enough doing the art-art.

While it’s not bad to work on a passion project, you do need something that will reliably pay the bills. That’s why you also need a commercial show!

-Louie

UnPlanned Rising Card Routine

A long time ago I had an idea for a rising card routine. Most of the rising card routines that I have seen have either a singular rise, which is the whole routine, or it’s multiple rises. The thing I have against multiple rises is that it’s essentially the same trick over and over, you just may add conditions each time to make it more impossible. I understand it gives it a sense of build, but why wouldn’t you just do it the “hardest” way the first time if you could, the previous ones were wasting the audience’s time?

In the idea for my rising card routine, three cards are selected and the deck is put in a glass. An interesting point is that the cards never leave the glass after they are put in. This is one of the interesting parts of this trick, the hands off nature of the trick. I do touch the cards, but only the top card to show it’s not a selected card. So the deck is in the glass, and first two cards appear one at a time to the front of the pack. Then for the finale the final card rises up from the middle of the pack.

It’s a good one, two, three set of reveals. It’s also done with me solo onstage, so no one physically has to come up on stage and it ends with a nice applause pose.

There are some challenges with the original routine. The placements of the gimmick in the deck and best way to hide the lock that I built into my rising card gimmick are some of the more major challenges. I took my props for this routine to the green room of the fair I’m working at and was showing it to Mickey O’Connor and Bri Crabtree for their thoughts. While messing around with a different idea, I came up with a way to use a someone from the audience as a way to “lock” the rising card in the down position. It was a real “break through” for the routine…also it marked a complete change of the routine. It’s now a two card revelation with someone onstage, and that person does the magic. It is a better routine after the changes, and this is a great example of how bouncing around ideas with other people can make a huge difference!

-Louie

Hocus Pocus Magic in Fresno!

One of the things I like about the two week gig in Fresno that I’m at right now is that I get to hang out at Hocus Pocus magic shop! It’s fun chatting with Max, Paul and Betty, they’ve got a cool shop!

One of the fun things they recently did was release a limited run of “hocus pocus” square circles.

These look great and work great! It’s a fun idea and they say they’re thinking of making releasing a special hocus pocus magic prop every year. That’s a fun idea!

Of course while I was there I visited some of my magic tricks

I think they have the last two of my Slow Poke coin tricks. I don’t think I can get them made anymore.

If you’re in the Fresno area, shoot them and note and arrange a time stop by!

-Louie

Shot Glass Production

I’ve been playing a lot with a shot glass production lately. There’s not much to it, or pretty much any shot glass production. Basically you sneak it into where ever you want to produce it and uncover the shot glass and show it to the audience.

The real challenge is having an airtight seal on your shot glass cover that can still be easily removed. Here’s the idea that I’ve been doing:

@louiefoxx How to cool off instantly! #tequila #drink #magic #tequilashots #nebraska #louiefoxx #magictrick #backstage ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

One of the lesser challenges is what to do with the cover after you’ve removed it from the shot glass. For probably 80% of productions from things like an egg bag, you can simply leave it in the bag. However for a production from something like your shoe, you need to get rid of the cover.

My solution is simple, hide it in plain sight!

This is something that’s working out for me, however I still consider it in the testing phase for me.

-Louie

Three Card Prince

There are some tricks that I’ve always wanted to do and Harry Anderson’s Three Card Prince/Monarch is one of them. It probably comes from me getting the book Wise Guy when I was a teenager and just getting serious into magic.

You can watch the routine here:

There were two version of this put out. The Three Card Monarch and The Three Card Prince. The difference was size, the prince was the smaller size, however both haven’t been made in years.

I recently came across a used set…a very used set.

This set was gross, it very discolored from use. I bought it and hoped I could clean it up. I took a Magic Eraser and started to clean them up. Here’s a before and after of the face of one of the cards:

They now look gently used instead of beat to crap! I’m excited to learn the routine and try it out in a show. I don’t know if it will work in the show, but even if I only do it once, it’ll be good to have done it and gotten it out of my system!

-Louie

Six Steps to Being the Best in the World!

Years ago I broke my first Guinness World Record (I’ve broken two now) and it’s something that has definitely helped my career! When you look at magicians in your market, most are “award winning magicians”, but I’m going to guess very few magicians or other variety performers are Guinness World Record Holders. This is a very unique credit to have that carries a lot of weight with people booking you. According to Guinness, you’re the best in the world at something. It doesn’t have to be magic related, mine aren’t for magic, but it implies a level of quality or skill that you have.

Breaking a record isn’t hard, and recently I helped my several people navigate the Guinness World Record system to break world records. It’s not very hard, but can be daunting if you’ve never done it before. You want to make sure you do everything correctly. The worst case is to have claim rejected on procedural grounds.

Before we go any further, I technical have more than two Guinness World Records, as I’ve been involved in group things, like the “largest toast” with beer. I personally don’t consider those as me having a record as I’m not listed as the record holder, usually the event organizer is listed at the record holder.

OK, so how to you become a Guinness World Record Holder?

Step 1: Find a record to break.
Go to the Guinness World Record website and do a search for things you’re interested in, or good at. You’ll be amazed at how many things are out there!

You can create a new record, however this is usually harder than breaking an existing one. Keep in mind that Guinness won’t accept everything submitted. For example, let’s say someone has the record for running a marathon with a baseball on their head. If you try to create a record for running a marathon with a softball on your head, they’ll probably reject it as it’s basically the same as doing it with a baseball on your head.

Step 2: Contact Guinness to get the rules.
When you contact Guinness, you’ll create an account on their website and file a claim attempt. There’s not much to this, you’re filling out paperwork and then they send you the rules. There are a few ways to do this, you can pay to have it fast tracked, or do it the slower, but free way. I’ve only done the free way.
Once they send you the official rules to the record you’re going to break, now you’re ready to get started.

Step 3: Practice
When you practice, be sure to follow the rules exactly. A good example is a TV show that I was on that read me the rules wrong. They told me I needed to be six feet from the target, when in reality it was two meters (6.6 feet). I had practiced at six feet and when I arrived on set right before my official attempt, the Guinness Adjudicator informed me I was six inches too close. This small detail in conversion cost me a world record on TV!

Step 4: Set up the attempt
This involves notifying Guinness of what you intend to do and when you are going to do it. You will also need to line up your witnesses and physical location. This is also when you write your press releases and start to contact the media about the attempt.

Guinness wants you to break the record in a place that’s open the to the public, so not your basement. They also prefer it to be done at events, as there’s something to promote in the press releases you send out to the media.

Step 5: Nail it!
At your official attempt, do you best and break the record!

Step 6: Submit your evidence
Send all of the evidence (video, witness statements, news reports, etc) to Guinness. Now you wait for them to approve it or deny it.

That’s it…easy peasy.

What are you waiting for, hop onto the Guinness World Record website and start digging around for a record to break!

-Louie