15 seconds on TV…

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!

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Tim Furst

Moisture Festival founder, Tim Furst, joins the Moisture Festival Podcast. Tim talks about how being a conscientious objector to the war in Vietnam led him to learn to juggle and, subsequently, perform in the famous juggling troupe the Flying Karamazov Brothers.

Tim Furst Juggler

We hear some great stories about Tim’s tours with the Flying Karamazov Brothers across the world, appearing in the movie Jewel of The Nile, and how the Russian government thought they were agents of chaos. Tim also talks about what separates the Moisture Festival from other festivals and why it has been so successful.

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Notecard Magic…

It took some work, but the MC videos are finished. These are tricks I was doing for a virtual MC gig. I had to do 7 introductions and wanted to have some magical things to happen while I did them. The thing was I didn’t want to do any full routines. This is an interesting shift from live to prerecorded virtual hosting. There aren’t any stage delays to cover, you really just need to move the show along.

Of the seven tricks I planned on doing, four of them turned out alright. There other ones are just straight intros. Here’s a highlight reel of the four tricks:

I think my favorite is the floating card. I’m not sure how subtle it is, but just letting go if it and it not moving is fun. You’ll notice by gesturing with my hands as I talk, I’m waving them over the top to show “there are no strings” without saying it.

I’m hoping people like that style, I’m having a lot of fun doing things like this. It’s making flex a creative muscle that I don’t normally use. The event happens on Thursday of next week, so we’ll see how it was received then.

Virtual Hosting…

Last night I picked up a last minute gig hosting a showcase. This is for a conference where people go to book acts, I showcased last year and can’t this year. However when I was asked to host their virtual showcase, I agreed as getting face time is always good!

Hosting these is more complex than simply doing material and then announcing acts. The host isn’t supposed to showcase their act. That said, when I accepted the gig, I immediately got started writing down ideas that were fun magical moments. I have seven acts to introduce, which is a lot of material to figure!

How I did this was write down a lot of ideas. Basically I’m just looking for a way to produce the acts name. These have to be quick, and not too involved. After the initial brainstorming, I started to make one of the ideas. One of the acts had a really long introduction. The idea was to have all the text written out, then have all the words change to his name. My first thought was to use black art on the table, but didn’t like that as it’s harder to frame my face. Then I thought about making a flap card. When I first learned to make more modern flap cards, I made an index card that was a flap card. It looks like Blake Vogt is currently selling one called Acro-Index, check his out if you like the idea, and don’t know how to make one.

Once I had the index card trick, I looked at all of my other ideas and started to look at all of the ones that could be adjusted to an index card. I got about 4 of the ideas to work with an index card, and then brainstormed three more.

That gave some options, not every act needs an trick with the introduction. I’m going to record all of them two ways. One as just the introduction and one with the trick. I’ll pick the one that flows better. I’m recording these today, even if they don’t work out, at least it was a fun creative exercise!

Virtual Rehearsals…

Most of us are in a world now where we’re booking virtual shows, instead of converting in person shows to virtual shows. What that means is that instead of trying to save a gig from cancelling, we’re creating a completely new contract.

This has created another new trend, the virtual rehearsal. This is where whoever is hosting your show wants you to video and sound check about a week before your show. I think these now exist for a couple of reasons, the first is whoever is running the show (in house IT, or outside company) for the booker wants to make it look like they’re giving more value. The next is that they’ve been burned by a performer previously. It could have been that the performer had bad internet connection, horrible camera, or a bad mic.

Here’s the big thing, what does this rehearsal fix? Most of us are building our virtual theater’s for shows, and don’t have a dedicated space that stays set up 100% of the time. If someone asks me to move a light, it probably won’t be in the exact same spot on the show day. Also it may get moved for another show.

I’m just unclear what the point of a rehearsal is. They aren’t running any production for me, so why is there a walk through?

Also, doing a full rehearsal (which is what people are starting to ask me for) doubles the time commitment to the show. I’m literally doing two shows. When I mention that, I have yet to have someone be willing to pay for the second show.

Live is Easier…

One thing that I really dislike doing are prerecorded virtual shows. I do my best to avoid them, or talk the person into having my segment live. A prerecord is soo much more work than doing it live. It’s more than just turning the camera on and going for 15 mins. There’s editing, rendering and uploading that needs to happen. I don’t think a lot of people thing about that.

If you’re doing prerecorded shows and not editing, you aren’t taking advantage of the format. You can crop in for tighter shots, or add things that aren’t as easy to do in a live format.

I’m working on a 15 minute prerecorded spot for a variety show and will probably spend 3-4 hours on it. If I did it live, I’d spend about a hour total. Also the live element makes a magic show much more fun to watch for the audience and for me to perform.

Work in Progress…

One of the current projects that I’m working on is a video from my kitchen. It’s a magical video, and I needed to do a trick with a lime. I had written up a bunch of ideas like:

  • Lime that moves out of the way when I try to cut it
  • Lime that cuts itself
  • Bouncing lime
  • Finding something needed later inside the lime

While driving to the store to buy some limes, I hit upon this idea:

That’s just a quick snipped taken out of context, but it’s a lemon that turns into a lime. I originally read this in a book years ago that turned a red apple into a green apple as you ate it. I think the method works better with a lemon / lime due to the texture. Also, in theory it’s changing to a different fruit, not just changing color which may make it a better trick from an effect standpoint.

Ultimately the video above didn’t make it into the final project, an expanded version of the trick did that used two lemons and two limes. I’ll probably post it in the future, once it’s used by the group I’m creating it for.

Flea Circus Book!

There was a fun surprise waiting for me in my email this morning. A while ago Xavi Puk contacted me asking to use a couple of pictures of my flea circus for an upcoming book about flea circuses. Well, it looks like the Spanish Edition it out and available on Amazon.com !

flea circus book

Unfortunately I don’t read Spanish, so I’ll have to wait for the English version to happen. I did run the pages that I’m mention in through Google Translate and I’m used as an example in marketing your flea circus. Specifically how I embrace social media and how I pose / stage pictures.

If you’re into flea circuses and can read spanish, you should check it out. It appears to be a pretty thorough book!

Character Building…

A couple of nights ago my local magic club hosted a lecture by Fred Blanco (Wildcat Jackson) who talked about character development. I’d seen this lecture before at another magic club and when I had the chance to bring him in to the Emerald City Wizards magic club, I took him up on it.

wildcat jackson

What I like about Fred’s talk is that he breaks character down pretty well. It’s a something you don’t need a theater degree to understand. He does a great job of teaching beginner level character, that’s accessible to everyone.

magic club

It was a fun night, and Fred also has a ton of cool props!!!

Chicago Magic Lounge

Last week I ended up with a ticket to the Chicago Magic Lounge’s Virtual Happy Hour. I’ve never been in person to the venue, and on video it looks like a cool place. I think tickets are $15 and we had four magicians, a mixologist and a host. All of the performers were performing live at the venue except for one that was in another country.

I didn’t get a picture of the host Benjamin Barnes, however he did a great job introducing the acts. Personally, I would have liked to see him do a set in there somewhere.

All of the acts used audience participation, with the helper on screen. They were in engaging, and the audience was fairly active in the chat.

One interesting thing that happened during the show was at one point when someone was picked to help out onscreen the guy said something like, “I thought this was all fake…“. What he meant was that he thought everyone helping was a stooge.

That comment raises an interesting question:
Do most audience members think these shows use stooges?
I don’t know if there’s a way to keep people from thinking that. People have the same thought at in person shows, so it’s not unique to a zoom show. This is more of a concern for a ticketed show than it is for a corporate zoom show.

Back to the Chicago Magic Lounge, for $15 it’s a solid show and worth checking out online. I think the overall run time was about 2 hours.