Pictures – Page 14 – MagicShow.Tips

Working on a Snake Basket…

For decades, I’ve wanted to do a snake basket that combined the two popular versions from the late 1990s. Those two were Terry Lunceford’s Viper and Collector’s Workshop’s Khyber Kobra. I wrote a blog post about those two a few months ago, which includes videos of them; you can read it here. In a nutshell, I wanted to combine the two of them, so there’s the byplay of the Khyber Kobra with the ending of the Viper.

I’ve been working on learning to use Arduino and over the summer I made a working model on an Arduino simulator, but haven’t had time to actually make it, until a few days ago.

The arrangement above has a lot of wires, but it works! All of the functions do their thing. Like any project, once it becomes a physical thing, it will change. I realized I could eliminate one motor and have one servo handle two tasks. The motor would make the snake rise, then the servo would make it move back and forth. I decided to eliminate the motor and have the servo make the snake rise and shake. That simplified this a lot, and here’s the new wiring:

Usually, simpler is better; here’s less to go wrong, and it’s easier to diagnose if something does go wrong.

The next step will be to move it from an Arduino UNO board to an ESP32 board and put everything onto a PCB board for more sturdy final version of this.

-Louie

Unforeseen Challenge!

Right now I’m writing a show that I’ll be doing for a elementary school assembly tour in April. One of the challenges is that I’m trying to avoid the whole 6 7 thing.

That makes counting tricks a challenge and there’s a card across type trick that I’ve written into the show. I don’t want to lose control halfway counting a packet of cards, and that needs to be done four times!

Right now is that my plan it to talk about the objects as I’m counting them. That would break up the 6 to 7 with dialogue between them. I’m not sure if that will work, but it’s an idea. Another idea is to use 9 items instead of the traditional 10. Then if three items move from one packet to the other, that will reduce the counting that will have the numbers 6 and 7 from four times to three times.

Another option would be to not have the trick about counting, but about specific items moving from pile to pile. So three red backed cards end up in a blue backed packet.

I’m not sure how this will play out…

-Louie

Evolution of a Joke

I had an idea for a joke about Houdini. The line I thought of was:
“Once it took Houdini 8 hours to escape a jail cell, a could lawyer could have done it in two.“
I wanted to make it as a cartoon, so I put some basic prompts into AI to make the basic picture:

Then I had AI add the caption:

For some reason it had a cropping issue at the top. Once I saw it, I didn’t like the lawyer, he didn’t need to be in the picture, so I had him taken out.

Looking at the picture above, I decided it didn’t need the word “once,” so I had it removed. Now it’s a nice, tight joke with a setup and a punchline, and the image doesn’t distract or give away the punchline.

I also rewrote the punchline, so there are two versions:

I’m not sure which I like better. I think the one on the right, as it’s tighter. The one on the left really takes the audience to the punchline, while the one on the right makes them think a little.

That’s a little insight of what goes into writing a joke.

-Louie

Coin Matrix Layout

One of the things that I’m playing with is a Coin Matrix. One thing I thought about is why the coins are in the corners of the performance area rather than in some other shape. I get that there’s a lot of tradition, as the modern coin matrix is based on Yank Hoe’s Sympathetic Coins. Then, when Al Schneider created the modern version, he called it Matrix, and I think in math, those are traditionally a square or rectangular shape.

I was playing with some other shapes and layouts for the coin matrix. A straight horizontal line, a diagonal line, however I think I’ve settled on the classic Ace Assembly layout. With a leader coin in front and the three follower coins in the back.

I really like this layout, as in my routine, there’s some other stuff that needs to happen, and it moves all of the empty spaces once the coins travel to my edge of the table, which makes the next part for me a lot easier to do!

I want to say there’s nothing wrong with the standard coin matrix layout; however, there’s also nothing wrong with changing it!

-Louie

Christmas Mindreading

Here’s a quick little mindreading trick that I came up with a few years ago.

Effect: You ask someone to think of one of the following Christmas things:
Gift – Stocking – Candy Cane – Santa – Snowman
You then tell them letters in the word they are thinking of, then finally the word!

This is a simple progressive anagram. There’s really not much to it, you follow the card below:

I remember the word NASM for the flow of the letters named. Then, for the order of the items, think of a “Gift left in a stocking, which is a candy cane from Santa.” Then if it’s none of those, it’s a snowman.

There you go, some propless mentalism for your family gathering.

-Louie

Five Minute Magic Spot

While I was on the cruise ship I was asked to do a 5-7 minute spot in the farewell shows. I don’t do short spots as often as I used to do them a couple decades ago. They stress me out because you don’t really have time to establish a character or vibe and you don’t have time to win back the audience if you lose them.

Here’s my props for the 5-7 min spot:

Here’s what I did: My stand up chop cup routine (see my lecture notes) which ends with the production of a tennis ball. Then I did a card to pocket routine with a signed card. The routine ends with the signed card coming out of the tennis ball.

One thing to note is that aside from these props, where everything happens in my hands, the only other thing I used (but not necessary) is a stool to set the tennis ball on after it’s produced, so that it’s visible the whole set. The stool was already on stage from the act before me and the one after me, so there was zero moving of props for my spot.

Oh, the black string thing is one of Nick Lewin’s Ultimate Microphone Holders. That allows me to use a handheld mic, so I don’t need to get mic’d up with a head set.

It’s an action packed 5ish mins, with a nice little surprise at the end.

-Louie

Everything Has Already Been Invented

I always hate it when people say, “Everything has already been invented.” I think it’s a way for the person who said that to:
1: Justify them not trying to be creative.
2: Used as a way to trivialize someone else’s creativity.

That said, there are a lot of ideas that are reinvented, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Many tricks from a long time ago weren’t complete because they couldn’t find the final piece of the puzzle. Sometimes a technique or material didn’t exist that would take the trick from just “meh” to amazing.

I was reading The Bat magic magazine from the 1940s on the plane home from Florida and read the Bowman’s Bullseye. Read the circled effect:

Does this sound like a modern trick? If you said The Stranger, then you’re correct! The effect is the same, but the method is quite different and wouldn’t work today. In fact, I’m not sure Bowman’s Bullseye was practical in the 1940s.

What the stranger did was create the same effect, but using techniques that would have been impossible 15 years ago, and made it practical! The two tricks are light years apart (OK, actually like 90 years) and can’t be compared, other than they are both based on the telephone tricks that were invented pretty much where the telephone was.

Keep creating!

-Louie

Back on Land!

Today I wrapped up my contracts on the cruise ship, and I’m heading back home for the holidays.

It’s always great to perform in nice theaters, but even better when I get to perform with stage/tech crews that are amazing! The stage/tech crews on cruise ships work with magicians and variety acts a lot, so they already kinda know what to do with an act like mine.

We’re entering the slower time for performing (for me). One of the things that I want to do is work on the transition from using ShowCues to GoButton for my audio. There’s a bit of a learning curve in the way you interact with GoButton. I’ve been using ShowCues for over a decade, so it’ll take some work to unlearn the muscle memory.

-Louie

Main Theater Shows

Last night was the night for this cruise itinerary that I did my two shows in the theater on the ship.

I had a weird brain fart in the middle of my show where I didn’t know what was next. I quickly figured it out when I glanced at the set list on the back of the pop up bins I keep my props in. It’s been a while since I’ve needed to look at the set list. The main reason they are there is for setting up and for the actual flow of the show while I’m performing.

Today is another day off, and then I’m performing a quick 5-minute act in tomorrow’s farewell show.

-Louie

Getting Props on the Ocean

It’s been a few days since my last show on the ship, my next shows are tomorrow. In my show I use a orange for my drawing routine and a banana for my whip routine. You’re not really supposed to be bringing fruit on/off the ship, so I get those two while onboard.

One of the challenges can be that they’ll have something like bananas all week, but then they’re out the morning of my show, and I can’t get them. Typically, a day or two before my show, I’ll go down and grab what I need and keep them in my room. Then on the day of the show, if they have them out at breakfast and they look better than what’s in my room, I’ll upgrade my oranges and bananas.

This is one of the challenges of performing on cruise ships: if you need something or break something, it can be hard to source it. I try to travel with what I need to fix things or backups. For example, I do Promystic’s Color Match in my show, and I travel with a spare set in case one stops working.

-Louie