Video – Page 48 – MagicShow.Tips

Working On A Coin Routine…

A bit ago I noticed some coins on my desk, and figured I’d start playing with putting together a quick coin routine. To start the routine I gave myself a few conditions that it had to adhere to and I’ll get to those in a future blog post. Here’s what I put together:

When I started playing with the coins one thing that I quickly realized is that I could almost do a billiard ball manipulation routine with them. Once you have the initial change from a penny to two silver dollars, the routine is essentially Percy Abbott’s Perpetual Ball routine.

Next up the routine needed an ending. I don’t think that producing 4 or 5 silver dollars would have the same impact as producing 5 billiard balls. Luckily a clear coin caught my eye and I threw that into the mix. I think it gives it an ending.

Norm Nielsen…

Recently word started going around that Norm Nielsen had passed. I wonder how much about him younger magicians know, aside from wrongfully assuming he invented the latex bottle. Here’s him doing the act:

I remember Tina Lenert telling us about how much work it took to make the violin bow at the end of the act, then about a year later seeing the act in person. The little details make a huge difference. If the violin just came out, it’s good. When it comes out and bows, it’s great!

Over the years I got to chat with Norm a couple of times one the phone, but never really knew him. He was always generous with his time and I’m thankful of that. I think at that what makes people miss him when he’s gone is not that he was an amazing act, but a cool person. What are you doing to be a cool person?

Virtual Card To Envelope

A few days ago I posted about a gimmicked envelope that was designed for use during a virtual show. At it’s core it’s an named card to envelope. Here’s the basic routine:

In the video above I do the routine with a gag card in the envelope. Personally I think the gag card makes the trick a little bit dirtier. This helps it avoid the Too Perfect Theory. My thinking was that the 52 on 1 card puts more time between the load and the reveal.

This will be published in Vanish Magazine soon.

Keep Working On It…

One thing that I’ve been working on is learning to cast things in resin. I’ve been doing little projects for people to give me things to do to learn with. One thing someone asked me to do was make the coin for the Silver Extraction magic trick, but with a Silver dollar instead of the half dollar that it’s traditionally made with.

If you’re not familiar with the trick, here’s a dealer demo of it:

The trouble I was having was getting the coin made in resin without too many air bubbles. After a lot of work and learning, I’ve gotten a workable clear resin coin:

I think if I make another one, I will remake the mold with my newfound knowledge and that will give me an even better result. When I’m learning something new, I love working on projects for friends, as it helps me learn to do thing and try them in ways I wouldn’t normally.

Interesting to Uninteresting…

Recently someone in a magic group posted a video of them doing a 12 minute “flash” act, which is essentially a series of tricks. The opening trick they did was show a torch a long time, then it turned into a cane. This is a marketed trick called “torch to cane” and you can watch a demo of it below:

Here’s the thing with the trick, you are taking something very interesting which is fire and turning it into something very uninteresting which is a cane. I think you’d be better off showing a torch and then doing fire eating (which is interesting) than turning it into a cane. The magician’s style of cane has been out of style pretty much my whole lifetime, so no one instantly know what it is.

A better idea would be turning fire into an animal.

The above video isn’t how I’d do it, but a dove is way more interesting than a cane. Fire is cool to look at, so make something appear that’s cool to look at. Maybe touch it to your palm, and your palm catches on fire, you toss the fire to the audience and it turns into a throw coil! That’s way more exciting than a torch to cane. Also if you think an appearing cane is really fooling anyone, think again. At best is a B- of a trick. Sure, it has it’s place in the right act, but it’s not a huge mystery.

When you are doing a transformation from one item to the other, the final item must be as interesting as the first. Torch to cane…nope. Cane to lit torch…YES!!!!

Interactive Virtual Magic

Right now there’s a lot of interest in interactive magic tricks, where someone can follow along from their home, and the magic happens to them. There a principle that I was first introduced to in the trick Fingertip Mentalism from the book Nothing But Mystery by Jim Steinmeyer. Then I found the book Body Mentalism by Juan Pablo explains and explores the principle much more in depth.

Here’s a video I recently made using the principle:

Personally I like the idea of having people post a pic in the comments much more interactive than simply revealing where they are. Also I find a lot of humor in them posting their middle finger, but in my soul, I’m still a 12 year old boy.

Once you know how to do the math, it’s something that you can do anytime. What I like about it is the principle isn’t limited to “do as I do” type tricks. It’s handy to know things like this, it allows you to do some impromptu magic when you have nothing!

Vanishing Bird Cage…

Every now and then there are tricks that you can’t get out of your head. One of them for me is the Vanishing Bird Cage. I’ve revisited it several times over the years, and in the past hit stumbling blocks with it. The birdcage is probably one of the most difficult tricks I’ve worked on. There so much you need to overcome, it’s not as simple as the old magic catalog ad makes it seem.

One of the issues that’s easy to overcome is the issue of doing the birdcage later in your show. This was solved by Billy McComb with the use of a Take Up Reel. It was popularized by Tommy Wonder in Volume 2 of the Books of Wonder. By popularized, I mean people became aware of it. After that book came out, there were still not many people used one, simply because of price and availability. If you could find one or get someone to make you one they’d cost you somewhere in the ballpark of $1,000 or more!

One day I was driving and an idea hit me for a way to produce the second lock of a Take Up Reel on my 3d Printer, I pulled over and drew it on the back of an envelope. After using it and having some other people use it and gotten their feedback, I’ve finally decided to offer them to other magicians.

Here’s the promo:

When something’s in your head, if you keep chipping away at it, eventually you’ll come up with a solution!

Click here for more info on my Take Up Reel or order one!

Best Card Gaff!

One of the coolest card gaffs is the Modern Flap Cards by Hondo. He makes the as a premade gaff, or as a video where you can learn to make your own. The video is the way to go, as you’ll be a lot more versatile with what you can do. There’s a little bit of a learning curve to making them, but it’s really not that hard.

I use one in my preshow video in my cruise ship show, and in a lot of social media videos. I haven’t used them in a live show, simply because I don’t really have a place for them. The problem is a playing card is small, and the change is hard to view from the back row.

It hit me a while ago that you can do the change with the card isolated in a cup. I hadn’t had time to really play with it before the self quarantine, however I played around with it and here’s the card color change change in a cup:

There’s a little bit of knack to do the move in a cup. In a nutshell I’m using the weight of the card to keep the change from happening. It’s all about the angle you lean the card at. I think the next time I make some of the flap cards, I’m going to have a bit less tension, so that I have more wiggle room with the angle of the lean.

The discovery of doing the change in a cup is the direct result of playing with the gimmick and a good example of why you should be playing with gimmicks beyond what’s in the instructions.

Creative Cup Productions…

Tricks that end with something big appearing are always fun to do. They are (usually) amazing and the big object is an instant applause cue and signal that it’s the end of the trick. The challenge right now with all magic happening over cameras, is how do you load the object?

A couple of nights ago I decided I wanted to do a Cups and Balls type trick where someone couldn’t backtrack on video and figure out where the load came from. First I had to examine how to get the big object under the cup.

There are essentially three ways.

First you can take the object off screen for a second and load the item. This works for a video conference where they can’t rewatch the video of the trick later. Personally I think that magic that’s put out on video should be able to withstand at least one rewatching of the video.

The next way is you can load the large item like you would in a normal show. Unfortunately misdirection on a screen doesn’t work like in real life and while it still may play most of these style of loads will be less deceptive. I’m not saying all will, for example a load coming from under the table while you are sitting will be more deceptive that one coming from the back pocket while you are standing.

The final way is having the item in video’s frame and hidden, and sneaking it into the cup. The Larry Jennings / Ron Wilson Chop cup routine is a good example where the ball is stolen from inside a bag.

I decided to go with the having the item already in the frame as this is the method that would withstand the repeated viewings. That got me thinking about the Scotty York Cups and Balls routine where the cups start the routine loaded with the large balls. I then took the frame work of my Cee-Lo (cup and dice) routine and started playing with the cup loaded from the beginning.

Here’s what I came up with:

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

To do this trick, you’ll notice I’m not using the chop cup as it’s traditionally used. Normally people use the cup to help make the ball vanish and reappear. In this routine, I’m using it as a delivery system for dice. I came up with a way for it to give me two separate loads of dice. Once at a about the 43 second mark and then at about the 52 second mark for the large die. Making a “progressive loading” cup took a bit more work than just shoving dice into a cup with my hand, but I think it’s more deceptive on video.

Ideally since I’m only loading one die, I’d like to use a larger die as the final production. Due to the self quarantine, I’m limited to what I’ve got at home.

Right now as most of us shift from live performing to virtual performing, we really should be reexamining methods to see if there’s a better way to do things.