Category: Tricks

Raise Your Game and Your Table…

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

Posted by Louie Foxx- Magic and comedy on Tuesday, April 7, 2020

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.

Don’t Apologize…

This morning I watched recording of a local magician’s livestream of magic. It was pretty rough to watch, it was almost four minutes into the video before he started doing a trick.

What happened the first four minutes?

He spent that time apologizing for not being able to do a coin trick. Then explaining why he couldn’t do it. Finally he apologized for his livestream being a livestream and not an in person show.

When you perform, you should be performing! Don’t tell me why you can’t do something, or the limitations of the venue (yes, livestream is a venue).

In a live show, would you start by apologizing and having no entertainment for 4 minutes?

Heck no.

Do your opener, once you’ve established yourself, you can mention a limitation as it becomes relevant.

A Servante…

One of the things I’ve never really explored much was using a gimmicked table. The main reason is that it doesn’t really work in the venues that I perform in. I rarely have an audience that’s just in front of me, so the stuff hanging off the back of my table would be visible.

Yesterday I 3d printed a dice holder and it worked great. This was to avoid loading from my pocket. Then it got me thinking that I should remove the “two in the hand, one in the pocket” sequence from the routine so that I don’t got to the pocket at all. That would make the routine more deceptive, so I made a servante to ditch the dice into:

I was playing with a new routine and I’m liking it. I’ve come up with an interesting ditch of the one of the dice, that’s built upon something that I saw Tom Stone do at a lecture. It’s a way to get rid of one of the dice without having to put my hand on the table’s edge. It was part of his talk on “crossing the gaze” and something that’s stuck with me for years.

The new routine is starting to figure itself out, but it’ll be a bit before the sequence starts to get finalized. I’m happy I finally built this.

Table Loading…

I’m excited that my table dice holder that I was 3d printing yesterday turned out and works great! It’s for the final two dice production of my Cee-lo cup and dice routine. Here’s the finished holder:

magic dice holder

The holder has a notch in the bottom for my finger to contact the bottom of the dice and then to lift straight up to load them into the cup. Here’s this loading procedure in a test video:

This is way better than loading from the pocket for video! I’m glad I spent the time to make it and wasn’t okay with doing it the way I’ve always done it.

Cee-Lo for Virtual Shows…

One of the tricks I’m adding to my virtual magic shows is Cee-Lo which is my cups and dice routine. One of problems going from an in person show a virtual show is that you can’t move the audience’s focus around as easily. At one point in the routine I need to load the cup and doing it in the room with people there is super easy, however it’s much harder with the focused eye of the camera.

Normally I would load this from my pocket, however that won’t work for the reason above. What I’m going to do is load from the table. I designed a holder for the dice and they will slide up into the cup from behind the table’s edge.

This holder is currently printing out and I’ll try it out later today. This is something that I normally couldn’t use in my live shows because I perform in conditions where people can frequently see behind my table. This is one of the interesting things about working on a virtual show, I can use techniques that don’t work for my in person show.

Perfect Fishing Trick…

Yesterday I wrote about using “fishing techniques” on streaming magic shows, you can read the post here. Today I’m going to deal with a specific trick. Let’s not forget that I think that if you are doing a trick where you are asking questions to figure out what someone is thinking of, you need to have something physical as your prediction. That makes it harder to back track and figure out the method of the trick.

Okay, let’s get to the trick. I just got mine in the mail a couple of days ago and have done it a few times already and it’s playing great. The trick is John Kennedy’s Mind Power Deck!

John Kennedy mind power deck

If you aren’t familiar with this deck, you can show it to be normal, have someone memorize a card and with asking just a few questions you can tell them the card they are thinking of. It’s great! The trick has a built in cheat sheet, but I simply printed out a flow chart and taped it to the wall behind my webcam. This is easier to read that the hidden in plain sight cheat sheet he gives you.

How I add a physical prediction to the trick is I have an envelope that I’m holding in my hand before the trick. The envelope ends up having the card they are thinking of in it. Having the card in the envelope makes it so that someone can’t say, “the magician just asked questions until he figured out the card“. Unfortunately that’s the logical solution that a non-magician would come up with and the correct one. Always add a physical prediction!

Fishing on Zoom…

One of the methods that I still think is a great method for live stream magic shows are progressive anagrams, or tricks that use “fishing“. I’ve written a lot about progressive anagrams in the past, so today I’m going to talk about using “fishing” techniques over streaming video.

When you are “fishing” you are asking a series of questions to determine what a person is thinking of. This isn’t always a linear thing where you ask question A, then question B, etc. The answer to the question or statement will lead you to the next question. Sometimes these are general statements, like “I’m sensing water…” that would cover a range of things like a boat, a fish, or a cup. With something like a progressive anagram you are naming specific letters.

This is a technique used in a lot of book tests. You’d use statements like “your word is a long word…” which narrows down the list. Tomorrow I’m going to write about a specific trick that uses this technique that is perfectly suited for streaming shows!

Adding Some Heat to a Bill Change

Not too long ago someone sent me a video of a magician doing a visual bill change. The trick in the video wasn’t very good as you only saw a small portion of the bill and didn’t see the whole bill until after the change. I sent a quick video back of how I would improve the trick, however personally I wouldn’t do the trick as I don’t think it’s a bill switch is good if you can’t show the most of the bill before it changes. If you only show me fraction of it, it’s not as impressive.

Later that night I was playing around with the gimmick I had made and added some lighter fluid to add some razzle dazzle to the bill change. I was kinda amazed that it worked, and made a new gimmicked bill where I could show the whole face of the bill. Here’s what I came up with:

The fire justified the shaking of the action for the bill, which is necessary for this gimmick to work. It adds a “magic moment” to the trick. It’s not just a visual change that happens with a shake. It also makes the trick longer than a 2 second trick, which is nice.

Learn About Your Props…

There are some amazing tricks in magic, one of them is the lottery prediction. It’s the answer to the question everyone gets (even if you aren’t a mentalist), which is “can you tell me the winning lottery numbers“.

There are a lot of solutions, and the best I think is Cesaral’s CUPP. The cool thing about that is at the end the audience is left with a physical lottery ticket they can keep. Right now I think there are several that use a picture of you holding the lottery ticket. Honestly I don’t think this has the impact of a physical ticket, because the easiest way for an audience to guess how it works is actually how it works.

This picture came across my facebook feed of someone doing a digital lottery prediction:

Here’s the problem with it. He’s using a prop (lottery ticket) that everyone is familiar with, but he’s using it wrong. Tons of people play the lottery, it’s a very popular game and because of that people know the rules. In Powerball you can only play numbers up to 69 for the first five numbers. That means that the 85 on that ticket would be impossible to play. Then the last number, the 99 is in the power ball position, which you can only play up to the number 26.

There have to be people who notice that. It’s a simple thing to fix by giving people a number range. I did the lottery prediction in my show for a couple of years, it’s not hard. That little bit of realism makes the trick soo much stronger.

That’s something that drives me nuts, when someone uses a prop to customize their show, but they know nothing of the prop. Look at how most people do the mismade flag…it’s very disrespectful to the flag.

If you use a prop that is something in real life, learn about it!

Dino Card Trick!

Sometimes things pop up on my Facebook Memories and I forget how long ago they happened. I just had this picture show up:

This was from the debut of a new trick. Essentially it’s a card sword, but instead of using a sword, it uses an inflatable dinosaur costume! This picture was taken 3 years ago, it doesn’t feel like I started doing it that long ago. I created this trick for a library tour and did it over a hundred times that summer. Then the trick made it into my school assembly show, and I’ve even done it on TV!

This particular trick is a great example of taking an existing trick and altering it soo much that it’s no longer recognizable. I could do this trick in the same show that someone does a tradition card sword in without a feeling of duplication.

That’s my end goal, to be able to be in any show with other magicians and not have to worry about duplication. Sure a vanish is a vanish, but they don’t have to be done the same way.