When I posted the nut and bolt trick the other day I mentioned that what I posted wasn’t quite what I had envisioned the trick to look like. Ideally it would be a penetration type effect, with the nut penetrating through the thread of the bolt.
I just recorded a quick video of sort of what I’d like it to look like:
That video isn’t exactly what I’d like it to look like, but it’s pretty close. I think that makes for a more interesting effect than a visual animation of the nut unscrewing itself. Moving the nut while it’s covered by your fingers allows the spectators mind to fill in the whats happening may make it more magical.
The important thing is that if you have a gimmick, you should play with it. Figure out what else you can do with it besides simply what the instructions say.
Over the last few days I’ve been writing about social media magic videos and why to post them. Either the trick has to be good (amazing or entertaining) or the trick has to offer something interesting from method standpoint. Here’s a video I just posted:
What’s interesting from a method point of view is that I’ve take a trick and made it go backwards. Of the thousands of this trick that has sold, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the bolt tighten. Not that it’s a huge leap, but it’s something different.
The trick is typically done as an animation, where the nut moves on its own. My vision was for the trick to be done as a penetration. It didn’t quite work out that way for the video and I had limited time to record it, so that’s why it was put out the way it was. Ideally the trick will look like I grab the nut and slide it up the bolt, penetrating the threads of the bolt. Since the video was posted, I’ve gotten it to look like almost how I want it to, but it’ll still take some work.
The last couple of days I posted about a four ace production that someone posted on facebook, then posted one that’s better. It got me thinking about what are the reasons to post a magic trick on social media. For me, I usually do it because it’s interesting from a method standpoint, or something unique happens during it.
Here’s an example of a boring magic trick that’s interesting from a method point of view:
That video is a few years old, but what makes it interesting is the transposition of the pin and the ring. There are a couple of methods working at the same time to accomplish the trick. My reason for posting isn’t simply to have my friends tell me I did a cool trick, but to show something I’ve created.
Before you post a video, think about why you are doing it. What does posting it do to contribute to magic?
In yesterday’s blog post I wrote about a four ace production that I saw on social media and why it wasn’t good. This morning I’m going into my social media and found a four ace production from about a year ago. If I remember correctly this is from Principia by Harapan Ong.
Here’s why the is a better trick that the one that I shared yesterday:
I’m talking, it fills the dead space a bit better
No procedural shuffling
You get an ace production right away
The final ace production is magical and puts an punctuation on the trick
Is the ace trick that I did the best? No, however it’s way better than the one that I shared yesterday. Think about what you’re sharing before you put it out there.
After being in magic most of my life, I still love it. That’s not to say that I unconditionally love any trick, there are plenty of bad ones. For example I had this one come through my Facebook feed:
For a four ace production it’s pretty bad, and the payoff after all that procedure heavy shuffling doesn’t justify the time it took to get there. After all of that shuffling, at least give me a flash production of the four aces, don’t just take them off the top of the deck.
For a social media video, a better trick would be a couple of riffle shuffles and then a flash production, and you’d be at less than 30 seconds of video and it’d be a much stronger trick. For one minute to simply turn the top cards over, you’d need some novelty or cardistry type shuffling to make it interesting.
With my state finally starting to reopen, I got to do my first in person magic session with a friend of mine! He sent me a text to hop on Skype and I suggested we go to a brewery. Jamming in person is much more fun and productive that over the internet.
The one drawback of meeting up in person is that you don’t have your whole house of supplies to pull from if an idea comes up. For example, let’s say one of us came up with an idea that needed glue, we can talk about the idea, but we can’t try the idea. Over Skype you have more options for things like that.
The BIG advantage of doing a magic jam in person is that you can try things out on people around you. We did some magic for people at tables next to ours. It was from a distance of at least 6 feet, but it worked! People were really into it and I learned a few things I thought were great were just OK.
With the conversion to virtual shows, I’ve been tweaking routines that I already do to make them stronger in a streaming show. I recently wrote about how I’ve switched the loads of my Cee-Lo dice trick from using my pockets, to not going to the pocket at all.
One thing that I noticed was that depending on the angle, my dice cup which was black would sometimes disappear on the black table top. This isn’t desirable, so this morning I recovered it in natural tan leather. This makes the cup more visible and the whole routine easier to watch. An unexpected bonus to this is that the large dice actually appear a smidge bigger next to the tan dice up than the black dice up.
If you’re starting to do some virtual shows, look at your props and see what disappears to the background, then take steps to make it more visible. Changing the color of the outside of a cup was something really simple and took less than 5 minutes to do.
A couple of weeks ago I was asked to do a “pass the prop” video to promote a virtual show that I’m in. I’d never really done one before and there were a couple of things I needed to consider. The big one was was that I was quarantining with another act, so we had to decide whether to embrace being in the same place or try to hide that.
We decided to embrace it and you can see what we put out here:
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The show came out a while ago, I had just forgotten about this video until now. The show turned out well and the host really did a great job, hopefully there will be more!
Normally I don’t produce shows, it’s a pain to deal with many acts that aren’t full time pros (and some full time pros as well). During the current “shelter in place” I’m co-producing a variety show that takes place over zoom. There are a lot of approaches to these streaming shows. Our theory is to do them live, and it give it the feeling that anything can happen. Also a live show that is happening while you are watching it has a different energy for the viewer than just watching a youtube video.
Here’s highlights from our last show:
We’re going to a fun, hanging out vibe and I think we’ve gotten that. It’s not just a show it’s a hangout. If you’re doing a streaming show, what separates yours from just a camera on your show?
I’ve been making tricks that I do is to make them more “bullet proof” on camera. One of the things that I’ve done is to use a gimmicked table to avoid going to the pocket to ditch or to steal things. This is changing how I think about a lot of close up magic.
One thing performing for the camera and not live close up is that it’s hard to get your face and table in frame at the same time. That is when you use a traditional table height, which is about weight height. You end up with either a very wide shot and it’s harder to see the action or just the tabletop and your crotch in frame.
Personally I’d rather people see my face open space on the table. In the past I’ve done a couple things, first having a smaller table top that’s slightly higher than normal helped. I also try squat down to physically get my head closer to the table. This is uncomfortable and wouldn’t want to do a whole show this way, but it helps allow me to get my face in the video.
Here’s an example from video of mine:
My daughter invented part of this trick a couple of years ago.She makes me pay a licensing fee to perform the trick!…..#magic #magictrick #cupsandballs #sleightofhand #dicetrick #nocameratricks #magician
You’ll see in the video above that the table is at about belly button level, instead of at the bottom of my crotch. What I’ve recently done is raise my table up to a couple of inches below my armpit and shrink the size of the tabletop. That makes it a lot easier to show both my face and the tabletop!
For me when I perform, I want to have my face in frame as much as possible, that’s just as important as the magic. Sure there are times when you want to focus on the trick, but for me the overwhelming majority of the time, I want my face also in frame. Keep in mind, this is for a static one camera video, when you have a moving or multiple cameras, you have more options to show your face and highlight the magic.
