Tricks – Page 55 – MagicShow.Tips

Mental Voice vs Inception

When Promystic’s Inception came out many years ago, I immediately got it. My routine with it has become a highlight of my show! It like everything about it, the only downside (and I don’t really think this is) is the price. The unit is about $1k, and for me it’s totally worth it! I use the heck out of it!!

I’ve been looking for a solution for a back up that’s not quite as expensive. Basically I want a unit that I can have around in case of an emergency and something happens to my Inception. In the past I’ve tried Alien Mind Reading and Echo. I didn’t like either of them because they required you to be connected to your phone via bluetooth. The more things you have attached and more connectors the more than can go wrong. Promystic’s Inception is a stand alone unit, there’s nothing additional you need and it’s not wireless connected to anything.

Recently Mental Voice by Blackbox Magic Creations came out and priced at about $200. It’s a stand alone unit and I would say it’s basically a stripped down Inception that’s got a few design flaws.

Here’s what I don’t like about Mental Voice:

It doesn’t have any sort of low battery indicator. They say it will last a month or so with regular use. I don’t want to have to remember which day it was charged last or how many shows its done since it’s last charge.
It has a physical volume sliding lever. This lever sticks out and the volume setting is easy to accidentally change.
The shape of very thick and kinda round near the metal panel. This shape make it difficult to get the bone conductor flat against the person’s head. It’s not hard, but you have to pay attention.
If you have more than one message on it, it’s clunky to toggle between them. If you want to use track #1 for your first show and track #2 for the second and don’t have access to a computer you’ll need to push a button twice for the second track. While this doesn’t sound like a big deal, during a show it is. There’s no feedback (haptic) or visual that you’re on the correct track.
Can’t use other props with it. I know I said that I prefer props that don’t have external things connected to it and that’s true. However I’d be lying if I said I’ve never used Inception‘s ability to connect to other Promystic devices. Mental Voice isn’t compatible with other magic/mentalism props.

With that said, I would say that Mental Voice is Inception with 1/5 of the features for 1/5 of the price. It’d be a good intro to using a bone conduction gimmick to work out a routine before investing in Promystic’s Inception. Then the Mental Voice becomes your emergency back up unit. I play on keeping my Mental Voice, but it will be my backup unit.

One more thing, I would NOT recommend buying direct from Blackbox Magic. I ordered from them it was a sh*t show getting the product shipped to me. I may write a blog post about my horrible experience dealing with Blackbox Magic. Murphy’s now distributes it, so order it from a dealer like Hocus-pocus.com or another reputable dealer.

-Louie

Golden Horseshoe at Disneyland

A couple of weeks ago I went to Disneyland with a bunch of variety entertainers after an event in Anaheim.

One of the things we saw was the piano player at the Golden Horseshow Review.

The format in the show (20ish mins) show was song, jokes, song, joke and that repeated. This is a solid formula for a show and format that’s great for a magician, just substitute tricks for the songs.

Why does it work? It changes him from an ambient act to an engaging show. The jokes also make you connect to him, he’s not just a piano player, he’s a person. That’s the goal with a magic show, to be a human. If you want to learn more about being a person on stage and not just tricks, check out Jon Armstrong’s Masterclass on Vanishing Inc. That master class is really great!

-Louie

Update For Nick Trost’s Mexican Monte

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Nick Trost’s Mexican Monte packet trick (read it here). I was thinking about it and the end with the card with a different colored back is okay, but I think it needed something a little punchier.

Here’s what I came up with:

@louiefoxx Vintage Magic Trick – Updates for Nick Trost's Mexican Monte #magictrick #packettricks #cardtrick #sleightofhand #louiefoxx #nicktrost #vintagemagic ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

The ending doesn’t play well on camera and from the straight down angle as well as in real life if the change is done by rubbing the card on your sleeve. The Tree of Hearts is think is a more visual ending and having the face change is more of a punctuation on the trick, than the original ending of simply turning the last card over.

-Louie

Cult Themed Magic Trick

The middle show of the three city tour I did last week was a cabaret show. This show was themed, and the theme was “cults”. I don’t normally do themed stuff, but came up with a way to use cults to get into something that’s normally in my show.

The premise was that my wife and I like cult documentaries. Then I had a list of them, someone picked one and it matched a prediction and that led me into my cat routine.

One of the jokes that I wrote that my wife didn’t like, but I did anyway was the final cult was “blue oyster”. It got a great laugh in the show! I think the demographic of the audience that night really helped it play, and my wife wasn’t really who that joke was for.

It was fun to do a bit of writing for something I don’t normally do. I also kinda like the premise of cult documentaries and I think people relate to them as they’re popular now. I may try to play with the premise a bit more and see if I can come up with something that I can use in my normal show.

-Louie

Multiple Parasol Production – Close Up

I’m still playing with using cocktail parasols. Here’s a quick video I made in my hotel room:

@louiefoxx World's Dumbest Magic Trick! #magictrick #cocktailumbrellas #cocktail #parasol #shimada #closeupmagic #louiefoxx #magician #hotelroom ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

I made up three of the self opening cocktail parasols and they easily fit into a thumb tip. I might be able to get one more and still get the thumb tip onto the thumb. However I’m thinking that the thumb tip may not need to fit onto them thumb and it could really just be a holder for the parasols.

I do think it’s fun to produce the little parasols and maybe it’ll be a running gag or something in the show. I’ll keep playing with them, maybe something cooler will come up.

-Louie

Production Cocktail Parasol

After goofing around with the cocktail parasols that I bought, I figured out a way to make them self opening.

To make them self opening, it just takes a little loop of elastic…and a lot of help from my reading glasses!

I’m not sure what to do with a parasol that opens by itself, but it makes the ending of most tricks better than if I had to manually open it.

-Louie

Parasol Magic

When I was 17 years old I won a magic contest at a magic convention. I don’t remember if there was any cash in the prize, but there was a lot of magic donated from the dealers. One of the things that I got was Shimada’s Stevens Greater Magic VHS tape. That tape introduced me to magic Shimada. One of the acts that Shimada was famous for was his parasol act.

I’ve always thought that producing parasols looked great and better than a more modern umbrella. I think that people connect umbrellas with the self opening feature and less so with a more Asian parasol. Yes, I understand that umbrella and parasol mean the same thing, and intentionally using them to refer to different things.

Parasol productions are very cool, visual and fill the stage, however I don’t think most routines pass the “drive home test”. That’s were people in the audience talk about the tricks on the drive home. Parasols pack small and pop open and everyone knows that. That’s the weak spot in parasol productions.

OK, so I’ve wanted to do a parasol magic for years, but is doesn’t really fit my personality (and costuming). Then the other day I was at the store and saw some cocktail parasols. I bought a couple of packs of them and started playing with different ideas of things to do with them.

Let’s see what I come up with…

-Louie

Custom Printed Gimmicked Deck

I finally used MakePlayingCards.com to have a custom gimmicked deck made! I’ve used them in the past to get large size double blank cards, but those weren’t custom printed.

There wasn’t much from a design standpoint as I just used their standard card faces. This deck is a deck of double faced cards, but the back is all the same card. I had these made to do my version of something that Eric Stevens had shown recently at the NW Ring of Fire magic club.

The cards came out great, and I would totally use them again!

-Louie

Nick Trost’s Mexican Monte

Here’s a packet trick from the 1980’s that I came across.

I think Nick Trost’s Mexican Monte is a pretty solid routine. Here’s me doing the routine and my thought on how to improve it:

It’s really a small change at the end, and I think Nick really nailed it with this one. I’d change the patter, but it’s good and worth checking out if you find one at a magic swap meet!

-Louie

A Day Booking Fairs

My core market is performing at state and county fairs across the USA. I do perform in a lot of other markets, but that’s the one that’s the biggest chunk of my income. Magicians and other performers frequently ask me how to get into fairs. Most fairs book at conventions, and here’s what a day looks like at a fair convention.

Get up and head to the coffee shop for breakfast and to do my morning writing and to get any work out of the way as I’m going to be busy until I go to bed. Then it’s a walk back to hotel to get changed and head to the convention center.

I’ll be exhibiting at the trade show as well as showcasing my act later in the day. I get the tradeshow floor early to chat with people and do some networking. You can get a lot of work from friends referring you for a gig because they’re unavailable, or from an unrelated act that a booker mentions they need a magician to.

The trade show was open 5 hours, so I spent most of that time talking to people and doing close up magic at the booth.

After a couple hours in the booth, I ran over to the showcase stage and did a 15 minute showcase.

After the showcase and briefly talking to people at the stage, I headed back to the booth to wrap up the tradeshow day doing close up magic. The trade show booth is immediately packed up once the trade show closes.

Now that the tradeshow day is over, I head back to the hotel room and freshen up before I head out for an evening of networking. This is where the real relationship building happens. I’m out around town meeting and hanging out with people. I normally just hang out and don’t do a lot of magic for people, but occasionally I do when it makes sense. Also when hanging out, many of the people who run fairs are my friends, so I’m chatting with friends and not always trying to sell my show.

Another thing that I like to do at these is find other magicians and jam with them.

Some performers think that jamming is a waste of time at these because you’re not out talking to bookers. I do it for a couple of reasons. First it shows bookers who are all around and see this know that I’m a MAGICIAN, not some dude that does a couple of magic tricks, and second I love jamming magic!

Then I go to bed, and get up and hop a flight home!

These conferences take place over several days and it’s exhausting, but also a lot of fun. I think they’re a great way to book shows, however they’re not necessarily the best way for everyone to book shows. Some people aren’t good in a trade show booth, or can’t nail their show every time at a showcase. Then there’s the financial consideration, these are expensive to go to, and without any sort of guarantee of a payout…and the gig won’t happen for months!

-Louie