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.
For the Polaroids to Envelope magic trick I’m working on, the last technical step is to clean up the handling. The initial handling had three Tenkai Vanishes, which is fine, but redundant. I also think that if you do the same false transfer over and over, you need a convincer to show both hands empty.
Here’s the tweaked handling:
One thing that I decided with showing both hands empty was that I didn’t want to make both hands being empty part of the vanish. I wanted to show both hands, just not show the dirty hand as a “moment” of the trick. In the video you’ll notice that I show both hands as I turn the envelope over.
The technical end is finished for now. The technical part is something that may evolve over time, and something that’s never completely done.
Yesterday I wrote about working on Albert Goshman’s Cards Thru Newspaper. Then I took out what I didn’t like, the newspapers and it left me with cards thru jumbo card. In the original effect the cards penetrated up through a newpaper that was laid out like a mat. In the reworked version of the trick, the cards disappear from my hand and reappear under a jumbo card.
My thinking was to have the four cards that disappear one at a time and reappear under the jumbo card be signed, or be blank cards with spectator’s signatures. With this change to each card being unique, I can’t use Goshman’s method that has a duplicate. I needed to figure out a new way get the cards there, or more specifically to do a switch or two.
I started working out a sequence that made sense. What I came up with, for the most part was identical to Albert Goshman’s routine, just without the newspaper and instead of the cards penetrating the newspaper, they teleport to under the card.
The video below wasn’t intended to be watched by anyone other than me. I’m posting it to show how I create. When working on a sequence, I’ll just turn the camera on and play around. The nice thing is that if something works, I can easily go back and find it. This was probably sequence number 43 of the evening. There’s not a lot you can see in the video, but enough for me to know what I did.
At this point, I’ve removed a prop, and reworked the method, so technically it’s an original trick. However it’s still a card trick right now, and I’m trying to not add card tricks to my show. I’ll talk about my solution to making it not a card trick tomorrow.
A few months ago festival artists Louie Foxx and Matt Baker started recording a podcast for the Moisture Festival featuring interviews with some of the festival’s performers, producers and people behind the scenes that help make the festival awesome!
Originally this was intended to help kick off the Moisture Festival, however due to the COVID closure of events, the festival was postponed. You can help support the festival by donating here: https://moisturefestival.org/donate/
In the first episode of the Moisture Festival Podcast we have René Bibaud in studio to chat about her life as a professional jump roper!!!
We’re now just over a month into the “Shelter in Place” on the West Coast and it’s interesting to have seen the boom and bust of virtual shows. I hesitate to call it a bust, because there was no real way of making any significant money from them…initially.
The amount of people that were putting out daily content has slowed to a trickle. The amount of time it takes to do that is much more than I think most people thought it would. It’s more than just turning on a webcam and talking into it.
This video sums up the virtual magic show situation about a week or two into us all being stuck at home:
The nice thing right now is that we’ve hit a point where creativity is king! I think people are running out of tricks that they can do, or buy. People who can do a lot with a little are crushing it! However, that will start to slow down and people need to start making money. I’m noticing more and more “ticketed” virtual shows. I think this is the way to do it. Treat it like a live show, there’s as start time and an end time and the show is only available to watch then.
Probably the most magical trick you can do is turn a one dollar bill into a one hundred dollar bill and give it to someone to keep. That will have more impact that almost anything else you can do. That’s why bill change tricks are popular, everyone has an emotional investment in them.
The nice thing about the standard Hundred Dollar Bill Switch is in a live show the folding process takes time which is good. Now let’s move the trick to Instagram where you have up to 60 seconds…and the attention span of the audience is even less. By the time you set up the premise and start folding the bill, you’re losing people. That’s why visual magic is HUGE on social media.
Another factor to consider in social media videos is that the bill isn’t borrowed, so some of the impact is lost. It’s always more amazing if the magician took MY dollar and turned it into a hundred, than used HIS dollar and turned it into a hundred.
Personally I think setting up a premise is important for a quick trick. There are a couple of ways to do that. You can do it in the video, or you can do it in the text of the post.
Here’s a video of a quick bill change for social media:
My friend asked me if I could turn a $5 into a hundred…yes I can!…….#magic #moneymagic #sleightofhand #nocameratricks
In the video I set up the premise, which is that it’s a “challenge” a friend gave me. I take up the problem, and solve it. I also solve it in an unexpected way. There’s a story there, I’ll admit, it’s a weak story, but it tells a story in about 12 seconds.
Personally I think it’s important to tell that story. Based on the analytics of my videos, the ones that are just quick tricks without the storyline never get the same amount of views as the ones that do. Of course this is my own experience, and I’m sure there are people churning out eye candy and racking up some big numbers in views.
Over the weekend I performed at a church camp for kids that were probably 10-12 years old. When you take kids out of their normal routine, they push a lot of boundaries that they probably wouldn’t push if they were at home, school, or their normal church. They are figuring out the rules, and the … Continue reading “Little Interuptions…”
Over the weekend I performed at a church camp for kids that were probably 10-12 years old. When you take kids out of their normal routine, they push a lot of boundaries that they probably wouldn’t push if they were at home, school, or their normal church. They are figuring out the rules, and the way a kid figures out the rules is to figure out how far they can go.
When the preshow started I had one kid doing yelling out things. If they are going to do that, that’s the time do it, not once we hit the body of the show. Also my preshow has good tricks and one of the reasons it’s there is to get the kid who is yelling out things to shut up.
The kid who was yelling things wasn’t being “malicious”, he was being a kid that didn’t know the rules, or lacked attention at home and needed to find a way to get it. When I was younger I used to be very confrontational with these kids. It worked, but it’s not the person I am any more. Currently, simply ignoring it and doing strong magic, that tends to work in most instances.
Today is Valentines Day and an easy day to generate social media content for. Think of a trick using a paper heart, a flower, or a valentine and you’ve got good content for you social sites. You aren’t limited to Valentines Day, you can do this for any of the wacky national holidays. You can … Continue reading “Easy Magic Content Generator…”
Today is Valentines Day and an easy day to generate social media content for. Think of a trick using a paper heart, a flower, or a valentine and you’ve got good content for you social sites. You aren’t limited to Valentines Day, you can do this for any of the wacky national holidays. You can find a list at: https://nationaldaycalendar.com/
In the past I’ve done tricks for things like National Light Bulb Day. If you simply visit the list once a month and look for days the next month you’ll have plenty of chances for an idea for a trick. I just took a peek at March and here’s some ideas:
National Pig Day: Get 4 small toy pigs and do a Coins Across
National Cheese Doodle Day: Broken and restored cheese doodle
About 16 years ago I started writing a book. I wrote a minimum of a page a day, and in a few months I had written a book! This book was about performing shows for the senior market, so things like senior centers or retirement homes. It’s had several bumps is popularity over the years, … Continue reading “Entry Level Performing…”
About 16 years ago I started writing a book. I wrote a minimum of a page a day, and in a few months I had written a book! This book was about performing shows for the senior market, so things like senior centers or retirement homes.
It’s had several bumps is popularity over the years, and just yesterday it was reviewed by Magic Orthodoxy:
Performing for the senior market is a great entry level market. They have a monthly budget for shows, it’s not a huge budget, but they have one. They also do shows monthly or weekly that they need entertainment. There’s really not many markets like that, especially ones where pretty much every city has multiple facilities to perform at.
They will also book you several times a year. If you have three retirement centers in your city, and you work them each 4 times a year, you’ve got an extra dozen gigs. I live in Seattle and if you expand the territory to my county, there’s probably over a hundred of these facilities to perform at. Sure, not all of them will book you, or have a realistic budget, but that will give you an idea of all the places you can perform and start building up your show.
While performing at the airport this week, one of the things that I”m doing is roving with a Girl Without a Middle illusion. I built this one so that I could get inside of it and walk around with it. That works well, I stop people, I get out, put someone in, chat about it, … Continue reading “Experiment…”
While performing at the airport this week, one of the things that I”m doing is roving with a Girl Without a Middle illusion. I built this one so that I could get inside of it and walk around with it. That works well, I stop people, I get out, put someone in, chat about it, then move on.
Today I tried something different. Instead of me walking around inside it, I just pushed it and then stopped people and put one of them inside it. This worked really well. I was really amazed at how much better doing it this way was. I think what made it play better was that I could put my hand inside the box and point to things, where I couldn’t.
One of the things I frequently try to do is look at things from a different angle. It worked out in my favor this time!
