Yesterday I wrote about an idea of doing a matrix with pickles on the bun of a hamburger. I made some mock up bun shapes out of cardboard and gimmicked some pickles and worked out the trick.
Here’s it in its proof concept video:
Obviously it’s still got a long way to go. Figuring out a way to make the bun rigid will be my next challenge. I also need to buy or make some fake pickles that are all uniform in shape. Those are the next two challenges (that I’m aware of).
Normally I don’t watch a lot of TV, especially live TV, so I don’t see a lot of commercials. I just saw a Therabreath commercial that came out in June that has a magicians in it. Here’s the commercial:
What I like about this and the current trend with magicians in commercials or TV shows is that they are using actual magic tricks. It’s way better than doing a quick cut and then showing someone pull out bunny out of a hat. I think most people can tell the difference between CGI or a camera trick and someone actually doing it.
Also I think it’s worth looking at how that 15 second commercial frames the magic. It’s just the “punchline” not the “set up“, we really don’t see the whole trick. We don’t need to see the guy show the card on both sides before it floats, we just need to see it float. Now think of how you can apply that to your promo video.
Ever since I was a teenager I’ve been fascinated Don Alan doing his giant nut production. What’s cool about a giant nut, is that it’s a simple object, there’s not much to it. It’s basically a big chunk of metal that you make appear.
Here’s Don doing the nut production:
Now let’s fast forward to a few days ago, a non magician friend of mine posted a picture of a couple of giant nuts he saw at his parent’s antique shop. I gave them a call, made a deal, then drove 90 mins each way to pick them up!
These things are massive! They also need some love, so today I started cleaning them up. Here’s a side by side comparison of one that that’s in the process of being cleaned and the other that hasn’t:
I’ve got an idea for the routine that I will do. It’s going to be a transposition of different colored metal nuts from under a hat. Then a walnut will appear and inside that walnut will be a signed silk (that was used earlier in the show) and end with the production of the giant nut. We’ll see if that works out, but it’s my idea for now.
On Monday night I was a guest on the IBM’s facebook live where I played some online games with Billy Hsueh and Amy Nichols. Before the game, I did a cocktail demo. You can watch it here:
There’s a couple of magic tricks in the demo. I like using a loaded cloth to produce a bottle that’s not loaded in the cloth, then producing the bottle in the cloth and finally producing a third bottle, that’s not in the cloth. All three bottles use different methods, and it’s a fun little sequence.
After having done a few of these demos I’m starting to have little tricks that I like and keep falling back on. I think it’s good to have my “go to” tricks, but I still need to be creating new stuff for them.
Here’s a video of the Triumph shuffle sequence that I wrote about yesterday. The view is my view, so you can see an angle of the cards that the audience wouldn’t normally get to see.
I kinda like the four shuffles where you flip half over each time, but I still don’t think it’s better than the standard Triumph routine that most people do.
It’s been a while since I just spent a good chunk of the day practicing for fun, not for something that’s intended to be in the show. Way back at the beginning of February I had an idea for a coin trick. I played with it a bit back in August, you can read the post and watch a practice video here.
Here’s what the routine looked like yesterday:
It looks way better than the video from August. Honestly I haven’t put too much time into it between February and August and between August and yesterday. It was fun to really spend the day trying to work out the sequence and make it happen!
It’s interesting the little magic fads that pop up on Instagram or other social media. Usually it’s a trick that’s cheap or easy to make, that’s really visually and easy to do. One that was going around recently was a floating pen by Rodrigo Romano:
It’s looks good, but it’s much inferior version of The NEW Incredible Floating Pen by Patrick Snowden and Kyle Elder. Their version can actually be done easily in the real world, where Romano’s version is basically for video.
Seeing all of these people float pens on their social media makes me wonder why you’d want to do that?
What I mean, is why would you also float a pen and not something else?
There are plenty of other pen like objects you could make something else float. I made up a version of the trick using a chicken wing and a dish of ranch dressing:
The two props make sense together, unlike a pen and a folded up playing card. For me, I think this is better social media content than floating a pen like everyone else. It visually it looks a lot different. The chicken wing and dish look like a different trick than the floating pen. Also for me, where my “brand” is doing less common things, it fits what I do much better!
How can you take the more “standard” tricks you do and make them visually different?
One of the best kept secrets in magic is Nathan Coe Marsh. All of the material he does is well thought out and super solid! A year or two ago he sold a series of videos called “The Living Room Sessions“. These videos were in depth teaching videos of routines he performs around the world. I just noticed he’s got a special on them right now, and you should check them out:
https://nathancoemarsh.com/black-friday/
All of the routines work in a stand up / stage context and don’t need someone from the audience to physically come on stage. This is going to be a very important condition for at least the next year.
Here’s a sample of one of his routines:
That’s a solid opening routine. He walks out, and gets right into the trick. The trick is good but the kicker is AMAZING!
Well, today is Thanksgiving in the United States, and I’m going to remind you that holidays are a great way to be creative. Here’s a trick that I made for Thanksgiving 4 or 5 years ago:
It’s an easy way to take an existing trick, theme the prop and you’ve got a unique feeling routine. Every now and then I take a look at the list of “National Day’s” and use that as my starting point to work on new routines. Usually these routines aren’t for my show, they are a creative exercise.
Doing stuff for TV is a lot of waiting, followed by we need stuff in 10 minutes. Recently I contributed to a bit on the news in Seattle, and it’s something that initially contacted me about a week prior. Then the day that it aired, they contacted me a few hours before they needed video. While doing 10-15 seconds isn’t a lot of work to produce, when you only have a few hours to do it, it is.
Here’s the news segment:
I sent them a 15 second bit where I just talked in front of the camera. That’s the audio that was used. Then I sent them a 15 second trick montage, of which they only used one trick. The trick they used was the only one that was beginning, middle and end on the video.
They made a good choice!
