Video – Page 3 – MagicShow.Tips

Father’s Day Magic Trick!

I was playing with an interactive “touch the screen” style trick for father’s day. This is the type of trick where someone starts by touching a object, then spells/counts several times eventually ending up on an object that you know.

The cool thing that I noticed is that if you spell the three words HAPPY FATHERS DAY the math works out for each word for to make it easy.

To do this you’ll start with five objects. These could simply be little pieces of paper that say things about dads, or whatever. You will line these up. For simplicity, I’m going to just use the numbers 1-5.

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5

Touch the one on the left. You are going to move one space per letter. You can move left or right, but only to the one next to it, you can jump spaces or from end to end. Spell HAPPY, moving one space per letter and keep touching that one.

You’re not on the one or the five, so I’ll eliminate those.

2 – 3 – 4

Now you’ll spell FATHERS moving one space for each letter.

You’re not on the four, so I’ll take that one away.

2 – 3

Now spell DAY, moving one space per letter.

You’re on the 2!

That’s a very simple interactive math trick you can do for father’s day!

-Louie

Jeki Yoo’s Vanishing Birdcage!

Here’s a great version of the Vanishing Birdcage by Jeki Yoo.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 🎩 𝗗𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗠𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗰 𝗧𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗸𝘀 🎩 (@magichustle)

The cool thing about this is that he’s wearing what he normally wears for all of his videos. The downside is this method isn’t practical for a normal stage show presentation. In my opinion any different method for the cage is great, no matter how practical or impractical it is for different venues. The normal stage version of the Vanishing Birdcage is already a very impractical trick due to the set up when compared to pretty much any standard magic trick, so it’s hard to say any method isn’t “practical”.

-Louie

Coins Thru Glass

Many, many years ago I saw a video of Daniel Cros doing Coins Thru Glass. You can watch it here. Basically the effect is the coins go thru the bottom of the glass into another glass one at a time, then the final coin uses a spectator’s hand. I never really like the ending of the trick and the switching from a glass to a hand.

Last night in my hotel room I was playing with the trick but added a hat to it. That gave a slightly different frame to the trick and allowed me to have a “kicker” ending that still followed the frame work of the first coins to go thru the glass.

Here’s what I came up with:

While not great, if I put a little bit more time into figuring out the blocking, the trick would flow a lot better and look a lot less like I just thought of it and don’t know where the props should go.

It’s a fun little thing to work thru, but I don’t know if I’ll put much more time into it as I don’t think I’ll ever do it.

-Louie

Linking Pins and Thumb Tie

I’m still working on the Linking Pin and Thumb Tie routine and it’s slowly making progress. I started this in mid-February, however I’ve only done it about 30 times. For me that’s a pretty fresh routine. I haven’t figured out where all the moments are.

I wrote a couple of new jokes and changed it so there were three magic effects in the routine instead of three and took it out to an open mic the other night. It can be challenging at a bar open mic when it’s in a big room and there are 13 people there and only two of them are actual audience members, the rest are comics waiting to do there time onstage. In my opinion most bar open mics are to figure out how to do something onstage and just work that part out, you’re not there to try to have your set crush. Yes, you should try and ideally it’ll crush, but you should be bringing things that need work, not polished material.

Here’s bad video with bad audio of the trick:

The trick went well, but more importantly the new jokes worked and I added another penetration, so there are four instead of three in the in the routine. There’s actually normally one more at the end that I didn’t do because I “got the light” and had to wrap up.

The intro to the trick I think needs to be tightened up and be a bit more clear. That comes with time and rewriting and reworking. I think by the end of the summer this will be a strong piece in the show!

-Louie
PS If you want to learn more about how I work on my shows, check out my download The 6 R’s To Working On Your Show!

Working Out New Material!

Over the weekend I performed at a four day fair in California and I learned a lot! I’m working on my half circle show and it’s gotten better but still has a long way to go. I’ll write more about this in the next few days.

Here’s a highlight reel of some of the magic that I did:

@louiefoxx Magic at the Glenn County Fair! #countyfair #orland #glenncountyfair #magicshow #louiefoxx #escape #fairmagicshow #orlandca #magician #comedymagic #closeupmagic #haunteddeck #cardmagic ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

When I perform at a fair I always put an odd prop or two into my pocket and do it throughout the day. These are usually things that I never intend to do in my standard act, but it breaks up the monotony of doing the same set all day.

The “new” tricks I took were Bob Ostin’s Auto Suggestion and Matchbox Mambo by Paul Richards. I used to sell the heck out of Matchbox Mambo in the early 2000’s when I was at Market Magic Shop in Seattle. Here’s the problem with Matchbox Mambo, it doesn’t work for kids. No matter the conditions you put on it, they can’t see why pushing one matchbox drawer in shouldn’t make the other come out. Handing it to them after doing it the first time and explaining why it doesn’t work the way they think it does is a waste to time. You end up spending more time explaining WHY it’s a magic trick than performing the magic. It was fun to play with last week, but Matchbox Mambo isn’t going to graduate into my main roving magic set.

I’ll write more about Bob Ostin’s Auto Suggestion later.

-Louie

AirPod Magic Routine

Almost a year ago I started thinking about doing a little routine/sequence with AirPods. I haven’t been consistently working on it for a year, it’s been something that I’ve thought about time to time.

I finally put the routine together and I think it’s a good little sequence!

@louiefoxx Super fun thing with some old airpods! #airpods #appleairpods #sleightofhand #louiefoxx #magic @Ellusionist.com #magician ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

The main difference I would make in a live, close up magic setting would be the final transposition from the case to my hand, I’d probably put the case into a spectator’s hand. That adds a “condition” to the final transposition, from their hand to mine.

This little routine is a great example of taking something that exists, it’s basically a coin routine with AirPods in place of the coins. Then the properties of the new item will lead to new possibilities. This is very effective way to create magic that feels “new”.

-Louie

Silver Release by Stuart Judah

I love my vintage magic tricks and this is an interesting idea that was created by Stuart Judah called Silver Release. Here’s what it looks like:

@louiefoxx Vintage Magic Trick: Silver Release by Stuart Judah #magictrick #vintage #magic #antique #stuartjudah #louieFoxx #historyofmagic ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

It’s interesting that I’ve come across this now as I’m working on something that uses a similar principle in a wacky way to have a coin disappear and reappear somewhere else.

As for the trick, I think a huge improvement would be using bigger coins, like a Scotch and Soda set. However I do understand that from a marketing angle, using a Scotch and Soda coin set would immediately tip the method. Also making the trick with Dime and Penny sets makes the much cheaper to make.

-Louie

My Injury Story LIVE

About a week ago I attended a magic and hypnosis show and got injured by the hypnotist.
You can read about it here.
Last night I was a guest on on Hypno News Live and got to share my experience.

You can watch it here:

I really hope that my story highlights the need not only for you to have insurance, but to show some compassion for people you use onstage. The people you bring are stage are people and not props. If something goes wrong, don’t get defensive, show compassion. In my situation, while I’m going to live and be OK, if I wasn’t a performer who knows what it’s like out there, I’d probably be way less sympathetic and also come at this from an adversarial way.

-Louie

Straight Suit – Comedy Escape

It brings me soo much joy to see other people use the tricks that I’ve released. Here’s Todd Bogue’s promo video and my Straight Suit makes an appearance!

Todd does the Straight Suit better than anyone (including me) and I’m honored that he uses it in his show!

Also his promo video is a good example of how using high def video and clear audio makes him look super professional!

-Louie