MagicShow.Tips – Page 32 – A daily blog about magic by Louie Foxx

Protecting Your Original Magic!

Once a month I pop into popular online market places like eBay to see if there are any counterfeit or knock off products of mine. It’s been a while since one has been on eBay, but one recently popped up.

This particular eBay listing violated two parts of my registered intellectual property. The first was in the description it used my ad copy, which I registered with the US Copyright office.

Sites like eBay or AliExpress will pull stuff faster and 100% of the time (at least in my experience) when you have a registration number. I filed a copyright claim with eBay, which is super simple and takes less than 5 minutes.

Within about 48 hours I got an email from eBay confirming the item was removed!

Super simple, I’m surprised more magicians don’t file their ad copy and art with the US Copyright Office. It costs about $70 to file it and get your registration number.

Oh, the second way that this listing was violating my intellectual property was that “Louie Foxx” is trademarked, so the listing was violating my trademark. I could have included this violation with the copyright claim but didn’t. I like to save that one in case the item pops back up with different text, but still uses my name in the title or anywhere in the listing. I can get them a second strike for violating IP.

-Louie
PS Another good resource is Sara Crasson’s book Own Your Magic A Magicians Guide to Protecting Your Intellectual Property, which covers patents, trademarks, and copyrights. I highly recommend this book!

Splitting Creamer

While I was a hotel, I accidentally discovered you can split a coffee creamer lid!

How would I use this?

Essentially you could reseal something inside the creamer pod and keep the integrity of the original seal.

Do what you want with this new found knowledge!
-Louie

Go to the Light!

When I was at the a booking conference last week, I took a coupe of pictures of a music duo that was playing. The guy in the center was playing way too far forward, and was in the dark.

In the picture it looks better than it did in person, in person he was totally in the dark! You can see the difference in the next picture when he took a few steps backwards.

Being in the “hot” area makes a huge difference. Many years ago comedian Jim Wiggins (RIP) gave me a talk about making sure that I was in the light and how much of a difference it makes. I do my best to try to stay in the light, and it always helps if there’s an act before you that you can watch were they’re lit and where they’re in the dark!

Stay in the light!
-Louie

Floating a Person

One of the classic magic tricks is making a person float. Aside from doing it as a stage illusion, there’s no practical way to do it for smaller shows that’s as good. Like anything you have to make tradeoffs when you change the method. In this case the method includes the stage.

One of the popular ones looks like this:

I’ve written about this before, but the picture above recently passed through my Instagram feed. I think one of the things that I don’t like about it wrapping up the person in the cloth. It just doesn’t look right. Look at the area circled in red below:

Is there a solution to keeping the cloth uniform below the floating person?

Maybe if the cloth with just draped over the person, and left dangling?

Nathan Burton has a decent solution and leaves the board in view:

I like this a little bit better, it’s like he’s making the board float with someone on it. That could lead to a presentation idea with the line, “your seat bottom wil act as a floatation device“. That could be a fun comedy angle for a levitation.

I don’t know the solution to a practical levitation that’s done with the audience closer. And like I mentioned earlier, there are always trade offs when you make a stage illusion smaller and add an untrained assistant from the audience.

-Louie

Making it “Easy To Do”

Sometimes there are magic tricks where the instructions are the least effective way to do the trick. Then you realize they are dumbed down to make them easy to do. One trick is The MisMade Card by Daryl.

Here’s how the trick looks when done how the instructions say:

@louiefoxx How to turn a playing card into amazing art! #art #diyart #craft #creatingart #howto #asmr #louiefoxx #impossibleobject #1990s #magictrick #cardtrick #daryl ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

I did make one change, there’s a discrepancy in the instructions. You can’t do the trick as written. When you tear a card into 4 pieces, you cannot make it form the same pattern as the final mismade cards. The two backs visible will have the borders on the inside. I added a switch of the quarters that show backs.

However the whole, put the card in a sleeve, then wrap it in paper is soo much process and weakens the trick. A better method would be to tear the card in quarters, do the JC Wagner torn and restored card switch and unfold it show the card is restored. It’s a much more direct trick AND you can actually do it.

I do understand why making the trick easy makes it a lot more marketable as a lot of people don’t want to learn a sleight of hand move to do a trick. One of the things I do whenever I get a new trick and start to learn it, is try to figure out a more direct way to do it!

-Louie

Another Booking Conference!

Last night I got home from another booking conference and saw some amazing acts!

One of the helpful things about going to these conferences and seeing all the other acts showcase is that you kinda know where you are in the pack. You can gauge whether you’re a top tier act, or whatever.

It’s also inspiring to see people do their best 15 minutes of material! I totally recommend checking one of these out if you get a chance, even if it’s just to watch acts!

-Louie

Trading with my Opener

Last week I performed at a comedy club in Wisconsin. I reached out to my opener and offered to trade him something from where I live for something local to the him. He said yes, and here’s what we swapped:

I brought him a couple of bags of Tim’s Cascade chips which are a pacific northwest thing and they make strange flavors and he brought me a couple types of cheese curds from Wisconsin!

If you’re travelling and have a local opener, reach out to them and offer and exchange, it’s a fun ice breaker, but it also get’s you the good version of the local thing!

-Louie

Another Vanishing Birdcage!

I recently aquired a new vanishing birdcage!

There’s a couple of interesting things about this vanishing bird cage. The big thing is that the corners are upside down, the wires are on the inside of the cage and not on the outside.

The corners also feel longer than they need to be, and it turns out that’s a characteristics of YIMKA vanishing birdcages. All of the pictures of them that I’ve now seen have longer corners than most cages.

After a chat with Doug Edwards who is the Vanishing Birdcage guy, it appears that YIMKA made cages with the corners upside down and the standard way. YIMKA also stamped his cages, but not all of them. The cage I have is unstamped, but based on what I’ve learned, I’d say my new cage is probably a YIMKA!

One of the fun things for me is the detective work and figuring out what I’ve just bought!

-Louie

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Christine Gunn

On this episode we welcome in cellist Christine Gunn. She tells us about how she plays cello and how it differs from regular cellists.

How she founded one of the bands Matt used to be really into, we learn about the early days of busking at the Pike Place Market and how that led to some amazing collaborations with some Moisture Festival favorites. A fun interview with a fantastic musician.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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How to Make a Locking Reel

Since I make a Take Up Reel, I’ve become a pseudo expert about reels in general. One of the challenges with reel is that because they can be expensive, it’s hard to know if one is right for you. Today I’m going to show you how to make a simple locking reel. This reel isn’t something that I would use for a show, it has a big flaw, but it’s something you could use as a “proof of concept” to know if you should invest in a better quality locking reel.

Step one: Buy a reel that you can unscrew. This will typically be a “key reel” and not a “badge reel”.

Step two: unscrew it and take it apart.

Step three: Drill a hole in the cover of it and holes on the spindle that match up with the reel.

Step Four: Reassemble the reel.

Step Five: Bend a paperclip to make the “lock”

Step Six: Tape the paper clip in place

Step Seven: Put sponge under the paper clip

Step Eight: Test it!

The design flaw with this reel is the paper clip. Ideally you want a spring steel, however since this is a proof of concept reel, and not something you should use in a show the sponge under the paper clip will work.

There you go, it’s a locking reel that you can make for under about $15!

-Louie