Pictures – Page 107 – MagicShow.Tips

Premonition…

One of the card magic plots going around right now is a “Card To Pocket” that’s done in the style of Eddie Joeseph’s Premonition. Right now Max Maven’s Pocket Nightmare and the Other Brother’s Card To Pocket are just coming out. The trick is a card is selected, the cards are gone through and there … Continue reading “Premonition…”

One of the card magic plots going around right now is a “Card To Pocket” that’s done in the style of Eddie Joeseph’s Premonition. Right now Max Maven’s Pocket Nightmare and the Other Brother’s Card To Pocket are just coming out. The trick is a card is selected, the cards are gone through and there are only 51 cards, their card is missing. It’s then produced from your pocket.

Last night I was reading the book Concertos for Pasteboards and there’s a Card to Pocket by Roberto Giobbi called A Case For Premonition. This one uses one normal deck, which is a huge advantage for me than the two marketed ones. The disadvantage is that I need to deal the cards instead of letting a spectator go through the cards. Personally I think the condition of the audience dealing is a that impresses magicians more than non-magicians (in most cases).

After working through the one in the book, I did a couple of tweaks. There’s a moment where you need to spread through the cards to find selected card that had just disappeared. I didn’t like that, so in the dealing process I deal them a bit sloppy and side jog the card before the selected card, which lets me find it without spreading the cards. The other thing I changed was the need for a cull palm. Instead as I pick up the deck I do the pass that’s used in Bob Farmer’s Bammo Card Walloper to bring the card to the top and simply palm it.

I’m excited to try this out on real people to see how it plays. I think this will be one of the tricks that I do as part of an informal card set. I always like reading a trick and immediately know that if I change a couple of things it will work with my body vocabulary.

Kid Show vs. Family Show

One of the big changes in my career happened when I learned the difference from a Kid Show and a Family Show. A kid show is when the audience is a large majority of children, so something like a school assembly or birthday party. A family show is when kids are about less than half … Continue reading “Kid Show vs. Family Show”

One of the big changes in my career happened when I learned the difference from a Kid Show and a Family Show. A kid show is when the audience is a large majority of children, so something like a school assembly or birthday party. A family show is when kids are about less than half of the audience. This is an important distinction.

Yesterday I did a show at a community center and the audience:

The audience was mostly adults. For a show to be successful you need to be able to engage the whole audience. In family shows there really aren’t any “kid magic tricks” that have low magical effect. Every trick is a good trick.

The humor is aimed at the adults, I make the kids step up, instead of making the adults step down for laughs. I don’t do any “turn it around” type gags, I have to dig a bit deeper for the laughs. For me this is the secret to my success on a local level.

After The Force…

The other night I finished up reading After The Force by Ron Frost. I think it’s important to keep learning. There are tons of magicians I know that don’t learn magic for fun. They only learn something when they have to, which I think is the wrong approach. I think that magicians need to keep … Continue reading “After The Force…”

This book’s title is a bit misleading, I expected just endings to card tricks. The first part of the book teaches you how to force cards in a variety of ways. I agree with Ron’s assertion that the Classic Force is the best force. Then he teaches you a lot of tricks that uses forces, but in the context of the whole tricks. It’s the trick start to finish. Not that it’s a bad thing, I just thought it’d be something a bit different.

I’m glad I read the book, and worked through the stuff in it, however I don’t think anything from it is moving into my working set. It’s not that the stuff is bad, it’s just not for my show. There is one move in the book that will move into my “toolbox” or moves that I use when a situation calls for it. The big thing is to keep educating yourself on techniques and grow as a magician.

Hold on a Moment…

About a week or so ago I saw a local magic show in Seattle. The show was good and one of the performers asked me for some notes on his performance. The thing I told him, and this is something that I consciously have to do in my show is to pause to display the prop after the magic has happened.

In my show I do a trick where a drawing disappears and reappears inside a ball of yarn. When the drawing comes out, I unfold it and show it to the audience. When I show it, I pause and silently count in my head from one to three. This lets people process what they are seeing.

One of the challenges as a performer is that you know what it happening, so your brain doesn’t need to process what it’s seeing. The audience needs a few beats to figure out what’s going on. Simply holding a item for a dedicated amount of time makes a huge difference in audience reception!

More on Projection…

Yesterday I wrote about using projection in my show. The key is to enhance the live action, not to replace viewing it from the stage to the screen. Basically the idea is to have the action happen live on stage and visible to the audience, but then using the screen to verify or highlight smaller details.

A good example of this would be a Signed Card to Pocket. The main props which are cards are large and can be seen in a large theater. The signature or specific card number is smaller. Having a screen to project the signed card onto will make the effect play larger.

My idea for working solo is to have a dedicated table with a camera on it and then the projector and screen. In a lot of venues I won’t need to provide the screen, as they will have one already, or I may be able to directly project the image onto a wall behind me. Projecting onto the wall as needed is the ideal situation.

Using Projection…

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about using projection in my stage show. I’ve been looking at how other magicians and performers are using it. It’s something that can make a lot of difference in how visible something is. For magicians, David Copperfield was the first that I was aware of to use in it his four ace routine. Currently using video is pretty common.

The best use of video that I’ve seen so far is Darren Brown in his Broadway show Secrets. Most people when it’s used, it feels like you are either watching the screen or watching the performer. When Darren did it, it felt like your attention wasn’t torn between two places. You were watching him perform and the video enhanced it.

That’s what I’m going for, using video to enhance what’s happening. Projection would be used for showing the signature of a card, but not the whole card trick. I think when the action happens on the table and the only way you can watch it is through the screen, then it stops enhancing the live show and becomes the audience watching TV.

Fight For What You Need…

The way I get a lot of work is by doing showcases. These are things where a lot of acts perform 15ish mins and buyers watch them to decided whether or not to book them. Here’s how today’s showcase wanted to run our music: They wouldn’t let us plug into the board. I had to … Continue reading “Fight For What You Need…”

They wouldn’t let us plug into the board. I had to argue for about an hour with people all up the chain of command to get them to allow us to plug in. The organization thought holding a microphone up to your phone was a viable way to run sound for a show. Doing it that way is your Plan B, not your “professional set up” that’s provided initially.

Finally I convinced them that that was an unacceptable set up. We pay a lot of money to perform in front of these buyers, and the least they could provide us with was to be able to plug into the board. I finally got all of the showcase acts to tell the organization about why the sound won’t work. What changed their mind is when we all joined together to tell them why that set up was unprofessional.

I think I burnt a few bridges with people to get the sound right, but it was the right thing to do. If anyone insists that running sound that way is professional, I’m OK burning the bridge as I never want to work for them.

It’s The Little Things…

When I’m doing roving magic, one of the tricks that I frequently do is the Mismade Bill. I have two versions that I do, in the most basic I borrow a dollar, rip it in half, and restore backwards. The other version is my marketed “Splitting Image” trick. In this version I take a picture … Continue reading “It’s The Little Things…”

When I’m doing roving magic, one of the tricks that I frequently do is the Mismade Bill. I have two versions that I do, in the most basic I borrow a dollar, rip it in half, and restore backwards. The other version is my marketed “Splitting Image” trick. In this version I take a picture with a spectator’s phone of them holding the bill, then I tear it, restore it backwards, and make the picture change from a normal bill to the mismade bill.

In the basic version, I let the person keep the bill, in the second the keep the picture on their phone. Occasionally I’ll have someone try way to hard to figure it out. They’ll track me down an hour later at the gig to tell me the bills serial numbers are different. If they are going to look at the bill that closely, they’ll also notice the bill doesn’t exactly line up.

Normally I don’t care if they notice something like that after an hour of examining the bill. However, I’ve got a TV spot coming up and with the super high def TV’s, I don’t want people to be able to freeze the show and check numbers. The odds of anyone checking are very slim, but wanted to have that covered.

Here’s my bills:

It’s a small touch that took me 10 mins to do, so it wasn’t a huge undertaking. It’s the small touches that will make the experience for that one guy who tries to check the serial numbers more “magical”!

Travelling…

Newer performers frequently ask me about how I travel with my show on an airplane. People are worried about lost luggage. Unfortunately the only thing you can really do about that is to either carry everything on, or accept that can happen. I guess there’s a third option and that is having a show where you can find all of your props in your destination city. Then there’s combinations of the three.

Unfortunately for my show, I can’t do it all in my carry on. Some of the items I use can’t be taken in the cabin of the plane and can’t be sourced locally, so I’m stuck checking at least some of my show. Since I have to check a bunch of stuff already, I check almost everything.

Currently here’s what I carry onto the plane in my backpack:

The white tube has my vanishing birdcage. If that wasn’t so easy to break by someone who examining it, I’d check it. In the zipper compartment is my cage pull, a thumb tip, mismade bills and a thumb drive with everything the people running the theater would need (cue sheets, video, music, intro, etc). Then in the yellow case is my audio gear (mics, mic packs, audio ape, etc). Everything else in the backpack is my personal stuff, so books, my laptop, etc.

I’ve had my luggage “lost” by the airline once, and they had it delivered to me within six hours. I also have had TSA screen my bags and forget to put a couple of things back into it, luckily after weeks of phone calls I tracked down my props!

What do I do if my luggage gets lost?

I’m lucky that I can do a lot with simple stuff and in the past I’ve done a lot of standard magic, so I can source a show locally. It’s not the ideal situation, however I can go to the Walmart in any city and pick up a two deck of cards, rope, scissors, yarn, pad of paper, duct tape, a couple of handkerchiefs and some markers and I’m good to go. This isn’t the show that I want to present, but I can do a decent show with that.