In playing with the stand up, cup and ball routine, I came up with this move:
I like it, but it’s a little be angle sensitive. I like the ball going up into the mouth up cup more than I when the ball drops into a mouth up cup and comes out the bottom.
I don’t know if it’ll make it into the final routine, but it’s adding to my move vocabulary for this routine!
-Louie
It really annoys me when magicians complain about having their tricks ripped off when they haven’t taken the most basic steps to protect them. I’m not an advocate for knocking off magic tricks, but I am an advocate for magicians to put on their big boy pants and realizing that once they sell a trick, they are in business and it’s a different set of ethics.
Most magic tricks would require a patent to fully protect it, however those aren’t guaranteed to be approved, take time and costly. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea to patent a magic trick, but there are other easier and cheap. The good news is there are other ways to protect your magic!
The first way that I protect my marketed magic tricks is formally registering the copyright for the ad copy, art and instructions with the US Copyright Office. Yes, I understand that technically you have a copyright the moment you put the words/art into a physical/digital form, however it’s not enforceable until you get the registration number. I’ve have great success in having knock off products removed from eBay and AliExpress by using my copyright registration numbers.
Registering copyrights is cheap at under $100 if you do it yourself and it’s not hard to do.
The second way I’m trying to protect my business is new. I just trademarked the name Louie Foxx, so it’s now officially Louie Foxx ®. Having the trademark stops people from using my name on knock off or counterfeit products.
I filed for the trademark myself and while it wasn’t hard to do, I did have to do a little bit of back and forth with the examiner. It was more procedural stuff and not remotely difficult. I think it was less than $300 for the first 5 years. It did take 14 months for it to finally be approved, so it takes some time, I do think there is a way you can pay more to speed it up.
So there you have a couple of easy and relatively cheap ways to give your marketed magic tricks basic protection.
-Louie
PS I’m not an attorney, so you should probably contact someone more qualified for legal advice before making any decisions.
Check out this month’s Magicana column in Genii Magazine (Dec 2022)for a trick that I co-created with Chris Beason!
Indentation is a fun and strange little trick that uses a key and your finger. Once you know how to do it, it’s something that you can do in many impromptu situations!
-Louie
For years I’ve had an idea of doing a chop cup style routine that doesn’t use a table. The big drawback of a chop cup onstage is the table, it cuts blocks the view of anyone who is sitting below the table top.
Probably 20 years ago I saw Charlie Chaplin’s daughter’s husband do the chop cup in their theater show. I saw it twice, once from the balcony and it was great, and the second time from the floor and couldn’t see much.
Seeing that show really changed how I perform, I don’t have any action that happens on the table top in my parlor or stage shows. If they can’t see it, they can’t enjoy it.
Now, back to the chop cup, I’ve always said creating with rule makes creating much easier. Here are the main conditions:
1: Plays big enough for parlor/stage no table
2: No one from the audience onstage IF their only purpose is to use their hands as a table/surface
3: Quick set up, ideally just grab the cup and go
–I think this is the condition I may have to bend on as when there’s a final load, it’s usually not self contained.
The idea is that this will be something that could be used as an MC spot or a solo piece in a bigger show to break up things where you use people from the audience.
Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:
Here’s what I don’t like about what I have:
1: The steal of the second ball from the sleeve.
-I need to make a ball dropper/hold and steal it from the edge of my coat
2: Don’t like that my hand goes to the pocket.
-It makes the final load production more impossible if you never put your hand in your pocket.
3: It really needs a second kicker after the pool ball appears.
-Not sure how to make this happen…if you have any ideas let me know!
This is definitely something that I’m going to keep working on, I really like the idea. I don’t know if it’ll ever meet all of my conditions and desires for it, but you never know until you try!
-Louie
When magicians get together and have a magic jam playing with tricks they are working on, it’s a ton of fun!
I learn a lot at these magic jams, and get to hang out with some great friends! I don’t think I’ll ever understand magicians that say they don’t hang out with other magicians.
Do you self a favor and make friends within the magic community!
-Louie
Earlier this week I was at a tradeshow and one of the tricks that I was doing in the tradeshow booth was my ending to ambitious card where I peel off the face of the card that they’ve marked and stick to to the person. I call this Full Face Peel.
The nice thing about this trick is that it’s a very different moment from most card tricks, but then the people walk around all day wearing my cards and people ask them about the cards and it brings traffic to the booth I’m at!
Little visual things like this that people walk around with or things that they can keep and show people are things I love doing. Before you think that handing someone a card that’s simply signed, it’s not something they can show someone that tells an interesting story. With just a signed card they’d say, “I wrote my name on the card and he did a card trick with it“, which is OK, but with peeling off the face and sticking to them, it allows the to keep one of the magic moments. Or when I do mismade bill, I leave them with the bill and they can show people that (this gets me a ton of work!).
Look for ways to freeze the magic as a souviner!
-Louie
As I’ve been showing magicians the trick I’ve been doing where I peel the face off of a signed card, one of the comments that I’m frequently getting is that it must be a lot of work making the cards.
Honestly it is work, but not that much work. I’m frequently in hotels or AirBnB’s and have plenty of downtime. I can make big batches of them while I watch movies on Netflix.
Also, it’s worth mentioning how lazy and cheap many magicians are. Soo many magicians are amazed that I spend about $5 per show in things that get used up, or that I have to roll up balls of yarn for my show. That little bit of effort is what sets people apart from the pack!
-Louie
Recently I picked up the Card To Wallet from TCC’s Magic Wallet Universe. For my close up magic shows, I use the Real Man’s Wallet and love it. I’m not trying to replace it, but looking for something that’s more of an everyday wallet for me to have in my pocket when I’m not performing.
Here’s the video for the wallet:
Ok, so I watched the video before I bought and am aware that it’s a no palm method. Personally I prefer a palming for card to wallet as I think the physical separation of the deck and wallet makes the trick stronger. Also with something like the Real Man’s Wallet the card is in a sealed spot of the wallet, there’s no way you could slip it in there. The TCC wallet lacks both of those points, the strength for me is that it’s a minimalist wallet and something that I would have on me at all times (outside of a paid show where I would have the Real Man’s Wallet).
Just a note, the card can be loaded into the wallet from a palm, but it’s kinda clunky, but possible.
Overall for $20, it’s a decent Card to Wallet, and it’s nice that I’ll have that option on my all the time.
I’m working on an idea for a card trick that would be done on the stage…or at least not in a close up context. It uses two banks of cards that are duplicates, however in the course of the trick, they could get mixed up a little bit and I’ll need to sort them for reset.
The cards don’t need to be in a specific order other than the two banks being separate, so the simple solution to sorting them after the trick is marking one half. With these cards being used onstage and never handled by the audience, I can get pretty bold with the marks.
In the picture above I just took a red pen and colored in the face of the birds on half of the cards. After the trick it only takes a few seconds to sort them using the Green Angle Separation move to get the top and bottom halves separated.
It’s an easy solution for a stage routine!
-Louie
Oh man, so yesterday I posted a routine for a card split routine. Part of the routine you expose a double envelope and it got me thinking about what is exposure. To me 99% of the magic that’s exposed doesn’t matter…well doesn’t matter in the context it’s exposed. I think magic that’s exposed in the moment it’s being done is the 1% that matters.
Ok, now for some of my general thoughts on exposure. I think magicians are the worst at exposure. They routinely give away “secrets” during their shows without realizing it. How they do it is when they cancel methods. For example, simply saying “no stooges” or “we haven’t prearranged anything” in a mentalism routine exposes a viable method.
Other ways things are exposed unintentionally through cancelling methods are things like, “check out the box, there’s no trap doors, mirrors, hidden assistants…” That tips three methods right there. Or at the end of a prediction when the magician/mentalist tears apart the envelope and says, “there’s nothing else in here” also exposes a method.
In the card split routine that I posted, I’m exposing a double envelope. I’d argue this method is exposed by soo many performers in the context of cancelling methods, it’s really not a secret. Also, it’s a logical method for any audience member to think of, to have an envelope with more than one prediction in it. That’s why it’s a common thing that magicians or mentalists expose to eliminate a method.
If your trick relies simply on an A/B prediction where the mystery hinges upon you simply opening one side or another of an envelope, your trick probably isn’t very magically sound. You need to add a lot more layers to your trick to make it a decent trick.
-Louie
