MagicShow.Tips – Page 131 – A daily blog about magic by Louie Foxx

Gimmicked Handcuffs

A few months ago I wrote a blog post about a set of gimmicked handcuffs I had made a long time about. You can read about them here. The allow you to escape from the cuffs, but they also have another feature that allows you do a thumb tie style effect.

These cuffs have two very different gimmicks in them and I finally got around to making them again!

Essentially these cuffs will be used as a gag in the show. The premise of the trick is a rope escape, however at the end I’ll say I didn’t get out…of the handcuffs. The appearance of the handcuffs will hopefully get a laugh, then I’ll go into the thumb tie bits. I’ve never really done anything like this in the show, so we’ll see how it plays out.

-Louie

Holiday Magic Shows…

Recently I did a holiday party for a company that was in a situation that I normally would have declined the show as the conditions weren’t right for a successful show. Sometimes what I talk about with the client and the reality of what the show is when I get there are completely different. I’m not saying that the client was trying to deceive me, but sometimes we speak different technical languages, or they assume things like a table is movable when it isn’t.

Here’s the view from the back of the audience looking towards the performing area.

There are big tables with people only on one side. This puts huge gaps between the groups of people, which makes having them come together as an audience much harder. The other challenge was that most of the guests showed up late, and they were still eating when it was my showtime. We pushed it back 15 mins, but that’s all I could do. If I didn’t have another show after this one, I would have pushed the show back 30 mins or more.

Some performers really lose their crap about corporate holiday shows starting late. The reality of these shows is that 95% of them start late. If you have another engagement, be clear with the client the situation. Personally if I had a choice of starting the show late, or performing while people are eating, I’d pick starting the show late every time. Obviously there are things reasons to not start the show late, like having another engagement, personal plans with your family, or it’s going to start hours late!

Sometimes you just need to make the best of situations. The audience was great, and had a good time!

-Louie

School Assembly Show…

In less than a month I’ll be debuting a new school/library show. I’ll be on a school assembly tour for five weeks. The show is called “Incredible Idioms” and is themed on idioms.

The great thing about breaking in shows by doing three a day for over a month is that the show gets really good, really quick…Or you realize by the end of the 5 weeks you don’t like the show and never do it again.

The key to these is actually putting in the work. I’ll be doing a lot of reviewing video and writing every night and the first week or two the show will be rough, but then it’ll be super tight for the rest of the tour. Oh, by rough, I mean just good, and not great. I’ve done school shows for a long time, and have a good general sense of what kids like (but the do surprise me sometimes).

Right now I have a ton of half built props and half written routines. It feels like the show won’t be ready in less than a month, but once one routine gets completed, they’ll all domino into being built.

-Louie

An Amazing Show!

Most of the time when I hear about a how great a certain magicians is, over and over for years, when I finally see them I’m let down. Sometimes it’s because what I’ve heard has them build up soo much in my head, and other times they’re just above average.

I’ve heard about John Cassidy for years and finally saw his show and he’s AMAZING!

If you’re somewhere that he’s performing, go out and see the show! It’s a great show and you’ll learn a lot by watching it! He has a great way of tying together unrelated gags to make them cohesive, and his magic is good!

-Louie

Card Split Routine in Action

At the end of November I posted an idea for a trick that was a card split where an 8 turns into two 4’s. Then the next day I posted a routine for the card split. I was able to try out the routine at a magic jam and it played well.

The routine is fairly straight forward, you end up with a problem, then magically solve the problem.

-Louie

The Principles of Magic and Mentalism

About a month ago I picked up two Richard Osterlind books. I got The Principles of Magic and The Principles of Mentalism. These books look like they’ve been out for a while, I think the magic one had a copyright date of 2005 and the mentalism one a few years newer.

These books are filled with short thoughts on different aspects of performing. Usually these little essays about about a page and a half to two pages. Richard gets the information across, but it’s a pretty much just the facts. He doesn’t go too deep into much of it, but it’s a starting point to get you thinking about different aspects of how you perform.

I’d say these books are targeted towards someone who is going from performing for family and friends to maybe trying to do a show, or just starting doing formal shows. If that’s you, pick up a copy of the one that’s appropriate to what you do.

-Louie

Stand Up Ball Thru Cup

In playing with the stand up, cup and ball routine, I came up with this move:

I like it, but it’s a little be angle sensitive. I like the ball going up into the mouth up cup more than I when the ball drops into a mouth up cup and comes out the bottom.

I don’t know if it’ll make it into the final routine, but it’s adding to my move vocabulary for this routine!

-Louie

Protecting Your Magic Creations!

It really annoys me when magicians complain about having their tricks ripped off when they haven’t taken the most basic steps to protect them. I’m not an advocate for knocking off magic tricks, but I am an advocate for magicians to put on their big boy pants and realizing that once they sell a trick, they are in business and it’s a different set of ethics.

Most magic tricks would require a patent to fully protect it, however those aren’t guaranteed to be approved, take time and costly. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea to patent a magic trick, but there are other easier and cheap. The good news is there are other ways to protect your magic!

Two Simple and Effective Ways to Protect Your Magic Tricks

The first way that I protect my marketed magic tricks is formally registering the copyright for the ad copy, art and instructions with the US Copyright Office. Yes, I understand that technically you have a copyright the moment you put the words/art into a physical/digital form, however it’s not enforceable until you get the registration number. I’ve have great success in having knock off products removed from eBay and AliExpress by using my copyright registration numbers.

Registering copyrights is cheap at under $100 if you do it yourself and it’s not hard to do.

The second way I’m trying to protect my business is new. I just trademarked the name Louie Foxx, so it’s now officially Louie Foxx ®. Having the trademark stops people from using my name on knock off or counterfeit products.

I filed for the trademark myself and while it wasn’t hard to do, I did have to do a little bit of back and forth with the examiner. It was more procedural stuff and not remotely difficult. I think it was less than $300 for the first 5 years. It did take 14 months for it to finally be approved, so it takes some time, I do think there is a way you can pay more to speed it up.

So there you have a couple of easy and relatively cheap ways to give your marketed magic tricks basic protection.

-Louie
PS I’m not an attorney, so you should probably contact someone more qualified for legal advice before making any decisions.

Magicana in Genii Magazine

Check out this month’s Magicana column in Genii Magazine (Dec 2022)for a trick that I co-created with Chris Beason!

Indentation is a fun and strange little trick that uses a key and your finger. Once you know how to do it, it’s something that you can do in many impromptu situations!

-Louie

Stand Up Cup and Ball Routine

For years I’ve had an idea of doing a chop cup style routine that doesn’t use a table. The big drawback of a chop cup onstage is the table, it cuts blocks the view of anyone who is sitting below the table top.

Probably 20 years ago I saw Charlie Chaplin’s daughter’s husband do the chop cup in their theater show. I saw it twice, once from the balcony and it was great, and the second time from the floor and couldn’t see much.

Seeing that show really changed how I perform, I don’t have any action that happens on the table top in my parlor or stage shows. If they can’t see it, they can’t enjoy it.

Now, back to the chop cup, I’ve always said creating with rule makes creating much easier. Here are the main conditions:

1: Plays big enough for parlor/stage no table

2: No one from the audience onstage IF their only purpose is to use their hands as a table/surface

3: Quick set up, ideally just grab the cup and go
–I think this is the condition I may have to bend on as when there’s a final load, it’s usually not self contained.

The idea is that this will be something that could be used as an MC spot or a solo piece in a bigger show to break up things where you use people from the audience.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

Here’s what I don’t like about what I have:

1: The steal of the second ball from the sleeve.
-I need to make a ball dropper/hold and steal it from the edge of my coat

2: Don’t like that my hand goes to the pocket.
-It makes the final load production more impossible if you never put your hand in your pocket.

3: It really needs a second kicker after the pool ball appears.
-Not sure how to make this happen…if you have any ideas let me know!

This is definitely something that I’m going to keep working on, I really like the idea. I don’t know if it’ll ever meet all of my conditions and desires for it, but you never know until you try!

-Louie