virtual magic show – Page 15

The Darkest Corner…

A few months ago Master Payne turned me onto a book called The Darkest Corner by Ben Hart. I wasn’t familiar with Ben, but Payne told me the book has some unusual magic trick and some unusual methods in it.

I ordered the book right way and have been doing one trick in it at my shows (virtual and in person) this summer. That trick is his Silk in Peach, where the effect is a signed silk reappears inside of a peach. It took some playing to come up with a fun routine, and I think it’s a perfect trick for in-person, no contact, socially distant magic shows.

My solution to having something signed when you can’t get 6 feet from someone and they can’t touch any props is that I ask them to name an animal. I then draw the animal on the silk and write their name. Pretty simple. The production from the peach is visually amazing and that quickly made this trick the “meat” of my summer show.

Look into the book, it’s great!

Bad Magic…

A while ago I picked up a used copy of Howard Hamburg’s D Lecture notes. One of the things the mentions in it was that Dai Vernon didn’t like was kicker endings. Vernon’s thinking was here’s the trick I’m showing you, and now here’s something completely different that doesn’t make sense…ta-dah!

Now let’s fast forward to a magic video that was posted in a facebook magic group recently. Watch this:

Did he get your card?

He didn’t find mine.

Now let me tell you what’s wrong with the video of the trick:

First of all, he didn’t find my card! If you tell me to pick a card and don’t find it, I don’t care what else happens, it’s going feel unresolved.

Next, the switch out of the pocket is sloppy. It may work in a in-person context where you are talking to people, but not in a video with zero presentation.

Finally the reveal of the fan of cards changing is just bad magic. When the hand holding 4 cards drops out of frame multiple times and for an extended period of time right before you reveal the change, it’s just not good magic.

Add these up and it’s a bad presentation of a trick.

This trick needs a presentation that’s not a promise that will be unfulfilled (unless you get lucky). Also, t he performer needs to be aware that their need to keep their props in frame. It doesn’t matter if you don’t need to drop out of frame or not, it detracts from the magic. Or if you do need to move out of frame, try to hide it and don’t to it immediately before the reveal.

Now go out and do good magic.

Elements of a Virtual Guest Spot

Yesterday’s blog post had video of me performing the Three Shell Game as a guest on a live stream. What the camera sees is pretty simple, however what’s actually going on behind the scenes is bit more complex.

There’s more going on that just putting a table in front of a camera. In the next picture I’ve circled some of the things that goes into my online appearances:

Here’s what I’m using:

Purple: iPhone as a camera
Orange: Microphone
Yellow: iPad to show the person I’m interacting with
Green: Laptop which is running my production software
Blue: Table that’s not visible on camera to hold props
Red: Working table that will be on camera

I honestly wish doing a live stream bit from home was as simple as opening my laptop and using its built in mic and camera. Instead I need to essentially set up a studio and take it down afterwards. There is a noticeable difference in quality when done this way.

Working On It…

One of the hardest things about creating magic right now is that due to restrictions I can’t really audience test things. I’ve written about my endings to the three shell game on this blog before and one that I’ve started doing post-COVID is the solid shell game.

One way to break things in are on live streams. My buddy was doing a live stream a few night ago and needed a guest, so I popped in, hung out and worked on some material.

Here’s the shell game from that live stream:

It’s coming along, just being able to do for something and not the wall at home makes a big difference! If you’ve got stuff you’re working on, go out and be a guest on someone’s live stream. It’s a much better space that doing your own live stream show, and there’s a lot less expectation for you to carry the show.

Odd and Offbeat Variety Show

Coming up in a few days is the Odd and Offbeat Variety Show which is a live show that takes place over Zoom. Here’s a peek at what has happened in the past on this show and what to look forward to this week:

The Odd and Offbeat Variety Show The Tres!
The next Odd and Offbeat Podcast is on 7/16Tickets at:https://oddandoffbeat.ticketleap.com/july2020/
Posted by The Odd and Offbeat Podcast on Thursday, July 9, 2020

The show is on 7/16 at 5pm (pacific) and is $7 per household.

You can get tickets at: https://oddandoffbeat.ticketleap.com/july2020/

Zoom Fishing…

One of the biggest challenges right now with all of the Social Distancing is breaking in new material. Personally I tend to try to work out things on stage. I try them, I ad lib, I tweak and adjust. Right now some in-person venues are starting to open up and this is great and will make working on new material much easier.

Here’s an early version of a trick that I wrote about a month ago on this blog. It’s using “fishing” along with a physical prediction for the trick.

The big change that I made was that I’m pulling the card out of the envelope before the card is named. I’m taking a risk that the person can totally screw my ending by lying about the card that they saw. However the questions leading into the reveal makes it hard to lie, they just can’t make up a card at the last moment as they’ve already confirmed things about it. That’s not going to stop an asshole from just saying a different card, but it does make it harder.

Virtual Show Sizzle Reel…

Early on in the days of “shelter in place”, bookers who had magic shows scheduled were blindly switching to online shows. They didn’t really know what it would look like, they just needed another option. Now that we’re almost four months into having restrictions on large gatherings, people are starting to look into booking these, and not just converting existing bookings.

Because of the shift from converted shows already scheduled to scheduling new shows, I decided it was time to make a promo video for my virtual magic show. Here’s what the current version looks like:

I’m going to make another version, this was the first so that I have something to show potential bookers right now. As I compile more and more video, I’ll make another promo video.

Interactive Virtual Shows…

The other day I paid $15 to watch someone’s virtual magic show. It was interesting to see what other people think “interactive” means. I was disappointed that the guy that I watched and what he thought interactive meant.

He did a lot of do as I do tricks where when you follow the instructions you end up finding you own card sort of things. In my opinion you can only do one of this type of trick before it gets old. The dealing of cards is gives away the method as procedure if you do it more than once. The other problem with doing many of this type of trick is that if you don’t have a deck of cards, or only one deck and multiple people, you’ll probably be bored as YOU can’t do the trick in your own hands.

The bigger issue I had with how he interacted was that when he used people in the Zoom meeting room, their function was to simply pick a card and that was it. He never talked to them and to me, it really didn’t seem like he gave a sh*t about them. They simply said stop while he was dealing and that’s it.

Here’s a clip of a new bit from my show after I’ve introduced my producer, she’s waved at the audience and I’m explaining what her role in the show is:

At the end of the clip, you’ll see I’m talking to someone in the audience, without unmuting them. I’m engaging them and talking individual people in the audience. This is more than just when I’m specifically someone to help in a trick. I think this gives more of a live show feel, I can talk directly to or about people. It makes the show less of a poorly produced TV show and puts it into its own “live show” category.

In your virtual shows, look at how you are interacting with people, are they simply a prop or are you living a moment with them?

Let’em See It!

With the conversion to virtual shows, I’ve been tweaking routines that I already do to make them stronger in a streaming show. I recently wrote about how I’ve switched the loads of my Cee-Lo dice trick from using my pockets, to not going to the pocket at all.

One thing that I noticed was that depending on the angle, my dice cup which was black would sometimes disappear on the black table top. This isn’t desirable, so this morning I recovered it in natural tan leather. This makes the cup more visible and the whole routine easier to watch. An unexpected bonus to this is that the large dice actually appear a smidge bigger next to the tan dice up than the black dice up.

If you’re starting to do some virtual shows, look at your props and see what disappears to the background, then take steps to make it more visible. Changing the color of the outside of a cup was something really simple and took less than 5 minutes to do.

My Worst Virtual Nightmare!

A friend of mine was doing a virtual magic show last night and I bought a ticket and watched it. He’s a great performer and magician, so I was excited. However when the zoom show started it was plagued by technical problems the whole time. His audio kept cutting out and his video was choppy or completely freezing. This is my greatest fear in virtual shows.

When you are doing a live show you know when there’s a problem. If your mic goes out, you can yell. If the lights go out, you could move the audience to the lobby. No matter what the technical problem is, generally you are aware of it.

In a virtual show, you are doing your thing to a screen and it looks OK on your screen as it’s the outgoing screen, however what people are seeing could be totally different.

Unfortunately with zoom the performer is the last one to know that there’s an audio or video problem. So what do you do when there’s a problem, do you end the show, do you plow through hoping it’ll get better? Honestly, I don’t think there’s a “best practice” as to what to do while it’s happening.

I think that right now people are aware of the medium and its quirks, but as we move forward, people are going to get more and more savvy and less tolerant of tech problems in zoom shows.