Category: virtual magic show

Virtual Road Gig…

A couple days ago I got to do my first virtual gig while performing on the road from a hotel. I was in Lincoln City, OR performing at a festival. Here’s the set up I was using:

There’s not much to it, and I think I could eliminate using the ATEM mini to simplify it. I did over pack, I brought more stands than I needed.

Here’s what I’m using:

White: laptop running OBS

Green: Soft box light: https://amzn.to/2PmDnsM

Yellow: Sony FDR-AX33 (could pretty much be any camera

Orange: Yeti Blue snowball:https://amzn.to/3cZvTnL

Red: ATEM mini:https://amzn.to/2NGmuZK

Blue: Stream Deck:https://amzn.to/3c9TSBt

Purple: Old iphone running camera vision app, attached via HDMI with:https://amzn.to/3vTpzXR

There’s probably a better/more efficient way to set this up. some of my gear and gear choices have been selected due to what I already had on hand a year ago

Figure It Out First…

The other day a magician I know texted me asking me if I could put him into one of my virtual shows so he could do 5 or 10 mins. Here’s a little bit of backstory, the magician is a good in person magician, but hadn’t done any virtual performing. It’s the lack of experience on the virtual stage that made me have to say no.

Unfortunately doing virtual shows isn’t as simple as turning on a camera and performing. There’s a lot of things you need to figure out at it’s most basic level where it’s just your laptop cam and some magic. Having a choppy show that kinda bumbled through the zoom was acceptable in March – June of 2020 when everyone was figuring this out and we were converting in person gigs to virtual gigs. We’re now in a world where we’re selling virtual gigs and you need to have a show that’s barely treading water while learning to navigate the virtual stage.

The silver lining to virtual shows it’s that it’s easer than ever to get your flight time on stage. There are virtual open mics you can do and you aren’t limited to what you can drive to, these happen at different times and time zones around the world. You could probably perform 3-5 times (or more) a day! That’s tons of chances to learn how to perform virtually. That’s in addition to just getting some friend to informally hop on zoom and you do a few tricks for them.

Basically what I’m saying is you haven’t performed virtually, you need to bang out a few free shows to figure out how it all works and how your show fits onto the screen.


Don’t Crowd Source Your Show…

I’m beginning to become an old man yelling at the kids to get off my lawn, but instead I’m yelling at magicians to stop crowdsourcing content on a Facebook groups. The people who do it are usually pretty lazy, and rarely reveal their work first or at all.

This was recently posted:

First of all, anyone who has a remotely original line isn’t going to give it up. But also the original poster didn’t give any context, he’s just trying to build a Milton Berle joke book in the thread. Unfortunately when you ask a garbage question you get garbage answers:

The person who posted the two jokes (?) isn’t the person who wrote them. That person essentially stole two jokes they’ve heard a magician say, then offered the stolen jokes to other magicians. First of all, neither is very funny and the first thing is kind of an @sshole thing to say to someone. It’s a very late 1980’s to early 1990’s stereotypical type thing a magician would say. It’s not modern, but more so it really doesn’t move most magician’s characters forward and that’s the bigger problem, most magicians don’t know who they are on stage, and how using sh*tty lines lines like this doesn’t move the ball forward for them.

It’s also this thinking that’s the reason why people think all magicians all tell the same jokes and do the same tricks. It’s because soo many do the same regurgitated crap. Go out and actually work on your show. Don’t know how? I wrote a post about it recently and you can read it here

Adding People…

When I do virtual shows the format I’ve been using is fairly similar to the structure of my in person shows. I usually alternate a trick where I’m solo on stage, followed by a trick where I use someone from the audience onstage, then repeat that. It’s a nice break from a constant stream of people coming up from the audience.

Last night at a virtual show I started using more people on screen than I normally would. In the solo tricks, I just talking to the people and joking with them.

It played out really well and it made the show a lot more fun for me. For a virtual show it really helped bring up the energy and forced me to be more present in the show during my solo tricks.

X Ray Coin Vanish

Last night I was walking my dog and was thinking about an amazing idea of my friend Bri Crabtree. She uses a green screen spot, which is a genius idea! My idea was to use it as an xray for a vanish. Here’s a rough idea of what I’m think of:

I’m thinking if I get a ping pong paddle that’s green on one side I can make it work. Show the non-green side that says “x ray” then flip it over, show the skeleton of my hand with the coin and d do the vanish.

It’s not the deepest mystery in the world, but it is fun!

Moving Dots…

A while ago I realized that three of magic tricks I’ve developed in the last year is basically the same plot, just with different props. Three things disappear one at a time and reappear grouped together.

I’m trying to add some texture to the show. One of the things I picked up is The Matrix Pad Reloaded. While the name implies that three things would disappear and reappear in one spot like a traditional coin matrix, it’s not exactly that. It’s a moving ink effect, so not really a teleportion, or vanish and reappearance, it’s closer to an animation.

Here’s the demo of the trick:

For a virtual family show I think I could add some fun and make it more interactive. I started by adding different colored pens, so each dot is a different color. While less practical for an in person show, this change is a simple alteration of the gimmick. Now I can have three people each pick a color and I have three people involved in the trick. Then I decided we can play a bit and they will pick a mode of transportation and that’s how the dots will move.

Here’s the test run of it I did at the local magic club:

While it’s not perfect, I think that there’s something there.

Taking Away One…

One of the first tricks that I started working on since the COVID pandemic started a year ago was my Polaroid to Envelope trick. This trick started as Goshman’s Cards thru Newspaper, but then evolved a lot. It’s pretty much been unchanged for months, here’s what it looked like:

Yesterday I was going to work on it some more as I was going to be doing the Nashville Magic Company’s Tricks of the Trade magic open mic in the evening. That’s when it hit me, I don’t need four pictures, I just need three. One of them doesn’t do anything, it cleans up some clutter and tightens up the routine a little bit.

After the open mic they do a little bit of a workshop for the performers to ask other performers for thoughts on what they performed. I got a couple of great suggestions and ideas. Someone asked why the pictures appeared face down, instead of face up. This is a great idea, that because I was building from a another trick, I didn’t think about that.

I started playing with having the pictures face up and I think I got a workable sequence out of it. Having just three pictures is soo much more manageable than four! I’ll probably record a video of the new sequence later today and post it when I get a chance.

If you’re not using these virtual open mics to work on material they are a huge resource that didn’t really exist a year ago. Not only to practice material, but to get specific feedback from other performers.

Comedy Magic

About a week ago I did a little chat with Nick Lewin and Fielding West about performing comedy magic. It was a live Zoom chat and it was a lot of fun and the feedback was very positive. A few people have asked if it would be available afterwards. It looks like Nick has it as a download on his website www.lewinenterprises.com

If you missed it, here’s a little video teaser

One of the key takeaways from this talk is that most magicians that call themselves comedy magicians don’t understand comedy. You need to go out and learn to write jokes, and create comedy. There’s a real interesting moment in the talk where we create a joke to fill a spot in the show that’s just expository patter. Not only do we create the joke to fill an slow spot, we tweak it and add a tag to it!!

I was honored to be part of this panel and it was a lot of fun!

Working Around Video Lag…

Well I think I jinxed myself yesterday. I was chatting on the phone with a magician friend of mine and mentioned that I’m just getting to the point where virtual shows aren’t stressing me out all day. I think I would have reached that point a lot sooner if I had a dedicated space to perform virtual shows in. I’m having to build and take down the virtual theater each show. I’m just now getting comfortable with the show and doing all of that.

Yesterday right before showtime I was running some new cues with my daughter who runs the production end of my show and we noticed my video was lagging. My video would freeze, then speed up to get caught up to real time. I then spend an hour stressed out trying to diagnose what what going on.

I never did figure it out. If you have any ideas of what may have been causing it, let me know!

However being aware of the problem really helped. We found out that my audio was constant, it was just an issue with video, so every one could hear me the whole time. I ended up having to time the magic moments around the freezes. How I did this was go fairly slow and almost wait for the lag before the magic happened. Once the video froze, then sped up I have at least 15 seconds of good video, so I would make the trick happen then. It worked and the booker was happy with the show. I also made them aware of the problem during the check in before the show.

This is a good example of why being comfortable with the material in your show really pays off. My brain was working overtime working around the tech issue, that if I had to think much about my show, it would have been a really tough show to do. I’m not saying doing “easy” or “self working” magic tricks is the way to go, I’m saying being comfortable with your material. I do a couple of technical things in the show, and I’ve practiced and done them a ton, I don’t need to devote brain power to them if I don’t need to.

Removing Visual Clutter..

I’m trying to free up floor space and visual clutter in my performing space for my virtual shows. One of the ways I’m doing this is switching from using camera tripods to using mic stands. I found some mic stand camera mounts and using them to attach the camera.

The mic stand in the picture is a tripod style, but also using the pedestal style. Visually there’s a lot less clutter that I have to see while performing. Also these pack down much smaller than a traditional cameral tripod.

I’ve done one gig using these and I like it. I really like having to see less clutter while I perform. Got another gig tonight and hopefully I’ll still like using them.