Whenever I’m out doing shows, I always try to spend time any magicians that are in the audience. Sometimes I don’t know who is a magician, so I apologize in advance if I don’t hang after the show.
I am still very passionate about magic and really enjoy watching and learning it. If you come out to one of my shows and be sure to mention you are a magician. Sometimes I don’t have time to hang after the show…but if I am available, I always love to jam for a little bit!
Last week I was at Disneyland and went over to the California Adventure park to see the Dr. Strange show. Essentially this was a 12 minute magic show. The magic trick were essentially used as “live special effects”, and not as magic tricks. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing them this way, it’s just a different mindset.
There were basically four tricks: Devils Hank, Ring to Flower, Zombie, and an Appearing Pole. This show was a great example of a themed magic show. Every trick was used with a purpose to further along the story. The Zombie was well motivated, but went way longer than it should have gone.
Here’s video I found online of the full show:
This show is also a good example of why when I do themed shows my role is more of a lecturer than a character that’s presenting a show. Performing as someone other than me doesn’t really interest me, and I’m not a good enough actor to do that.
The November issue of Vanish Magazine has come out and it’s got the review for my trick Out For Beers:
I finally got around making a trick that’s been on the back burner for a couple of months. I really like the trick 52 B Wave 2.0 by Vernet. This is essentially a brainwave deck with the kicker of all the cards being blank at the end. It’s got a great three beat ending.
There’s one thing that I don’t like about it. What I think is the weakness is that you have to force a color (red or black), which isn’t a huge deal. I do see how adding a second bank of reveal cards would bump up the price and possibly make working it a little more complex.
I decided make it so that I could do the trick and have any card named. I went out and bought some matte finish spray to make some rough cards. It was a pretty easy process to make the black deck, the one surprise I had was the Vernet jumbo cards are a tiny bit shorter than the Bicycle Jumbo Cards, so I had to trim down my reveal cards. Other than that, it was pretty painless.
The routine I’m doing has people throwing cards, and before I had to force half of the card initially, then after that it was a free choice. Now I don’t need to do the initial force, just toss the pack to the audience and they start tossing away cards. It should be much cleaner this way.
A couple of days ago I finished up my run at a 22 day gig (that took place over 30 days). I’m reflecting on all of the work I got done on the show over the 66 shows I did. Every show I was working on something. Sometimes it was a full routine, and sometimes it was small, like adding some confetti to a bit in the that I do with a kid.
For me, it’s all about trying to get better every show. Yes, there are some shows where you shouldn’t be trying or tweaking and you do just all A material. However I have the most fun when I can get on stage and play with ideas.
Here’s my stats for new stuff over the last month:
Hand held mic technique went from a D to a C+
Invisible deck like routine went from D to a B
Spoon and Fork went from C to B
Drawing routine went from B to A
Foam hand went from D to C
Game show went from D to B
Having 66 shows to start to level up routines is a good use of the run of shows! I feel like I left there a better performer, writer and magic creator!
-Louie
A few days ago, I wrote about post about rewriting a prediction on larger paper and the trick playing better (you can read it here). I’m now running into a new challenge with the prediction, if there’s a little bit of wind, it will warp and it’s hard to read the whole thing.
The nice thing is that the prediction is revealed and read 1/4 of the page at a time, so if the top bends, that information has already been revealed to the audience. However seeing the whole thing is a better picture.
While I probably won’t have time to try this in the next few days, a solution would to be put a line of tape on the back of it. Maybe just around the edges and and X across the middle. That would give it some support. If that doesn’t work, I could completely line the back with tape. That would essentially be laminating the back of the prediction.
-Louie
I thought I was done with the virtual shows, but last night I was back at it! Doing this show as a nice change of pace from the three shows a day I’m doing at a state fair all month.
This was a corporate gig that was for the employees and their families. This was a fun group! One thing I’ve noticed with virtual shows is the time really flies by, compared to a live show. I think that with an in person show, time travels soo much slower. I think it’s because I’ve done it in person soo much that I have to think less. With the virtual I’m constantly on my toes.
In my virtual show my daughter usually runs the production end of the show and in it I normally do a prediction that she helps me out with, but unfortunately she wasn’t available last night. So I had to had to do it all solo. Running the production part is easy, but doing the prediction was going to be a bit of a challenge. Normally the prediction we do is my “Wheel of dinner”. I was going to modify it to a “wheel of costumes” as the client wanted some Halloween themed tricks. The problem was how I was going to accomplish the trick. With the wheel there are 20 options and it doesn’t force. There are ways to force from the wheel, but I really like just spinning it. It feels random.
It hit me, a while ago I had bought Manifest by Danny Weiser, which is a prediction on a luggage tag and never used it. I hung the luggage tag in the background, and during the course of a trick, I asked someone what they were going to be for Halloween. Then at the end of the trick, I did the reveal of the prediction. It played really well. I like a prediction, where the prediction is not the routine, but a bonus…especially because I takes a lot of the heat off of the method!
-Louie
One of the tricks I’ve been working on, sort of on and off all summer is based on Alan Wong and Luca Volpe‘s The Key of Fate. I’m using their basic framework for the trick, but have changed the props a lot. I’m using totally different forces for the prizes and the method for forcing the winner. The basic effect is you predict the outcome of game and what prize the winner gets.
When I first started doing this I was using a larger piece of paper, but the paper got damaged and all I could find was a smaller piece of paper. The small piece was about 15×10 inches, so still fairly large. The trick wasn’t hitting, but due to my schedule I was having trouble finding time to hunt for bigger paper. The effect was playing just OK with the smaller paper and I was thinking of giving up on it. I was attributing the OK response to my performance. Then I had time to hunt down some giant paper, that’s 30×20 and rewrote the prediction.
Here’s the size comparison:
The new prediction is soo much bigger than the previous one. Much to my surprise, the trick is hitting soo much harder with the bigger paper than with the smaller paper. Sometimes it’s small changes that can make a huge impact to a routine.
Now I’m wishing I had done thing a long time ago, I would have gotten a lot more work on this routine done this summer.
-Louie
It drives me nuts when magicians complain about magic tricks being “knocked off” or “stolen”, but they didn’t take the most basic steps to protect them. It doesn’t take much to register a copyright on the art and instruction for whatever trick you are putting out.
Before you say it, I’m aware that in the USA your work is “copyrighted” the second you create it. The issue is that you can’t enforce that copyright without a registration number. Sure, you can send a “cease and desist” letter, but without a copyright registration, you really can’t legally enforce it.
Magician’s love to say that “show business” is two words and the business is important. It is, and it’s time for magicians to actually look into the business part when releasing tricks. If they did what businesses do and legally protect their intellectual property it really wouldn’t be an ethical issue. It’s pretty cut and dry.
It’s a business decision to not patent a trick that you are releasing due to the cost or time it takes to get a patent. That’s fine, but you have to live with that decision.
Recently I put out a trick called Out For Beers. This trick uses an original visual gag combined with the Out To Lunch Principle. I really like the gag, and wanted to protect it as it’s something that would be easy to knock off. For $65 in filing fees, I was able to copyright the gag. I’ve copyrighted stuff in the past, and it’s always taken 6-9 months, however somehow I got lucky and this one was process in less than a month!
What this certificate and registration number does is allow me to quickly force sites like Ebay or AliExpress to remove the knock off or unauthorized version of the trick from their websites. This doesn’t guarantee that my stuff won’t get knocked off, but it’s gives me a tool to fight people who are knocking off my stuff!
When it comes to prop management, I’m not the best, but I do have a system. All of my hand held props are in a bin on my table. I don’t do any performing on the table top, it all happens in my hands, so the table simply holds my props. Here’s a peek into my table top bin:
As things get used they either go back into their space in the bin if the trick is instantly reset at the completion of the trick. If the trick doesn’t reset, it goes into my case which is to my left and holds a two larger props I use. This system works well for me when doing three shows a day at fairs. It makes it easy for me to assess what tricks need to be reset and make sure nothing gets missed.
I’m sure there are better systems. I know some two person acts have the “assistant” bring out each routine and then remove the props at the end of the routines. The advantage of that is the show is getting packed up while the show is happening. I’ve used this system in the past when I’ve performed with my daughter. It’s a really nice way to do it, but it’s not something in can do in 90% of my shows.
What’s probably the most important thing is that you have a system of some sort to try to eliminate or shorten dead time while getting or putting away props. Sometimes a joke or interesting patter can fill this time. Other instances, simply having a prop that’s easy to grab is the best option.
-Louie
