The last couple of months I’ve have a huge output of original (to me) magic effects. The shift is that I’m playing with magic more, and in a directed way. Playing is different than learning a new trick or practicing one that I already do.
When I play with magic, I put a prop on the table and have recess with it. I just start playing, and sometimes an idea will pop into my head and I’ll have to figure out how to make it happen. Other times I’ll just play and come up with nothing new. However that play where I come up with nothing new is still flexing the creative muscle in my brain. I’m also working through my vocabulary of sleights or techniques. The goal is to move past what I know. For example, if I have a packet of cards in front of me, I want to get past doing twisting the aces. However sometimes that means working through all the ways I know how to do it to come up with an different angle on it. Or to figure out what I don’t like about the effect and try to fix that.
It’s been a lot of fun dedicating time to play. I think more magicians should do this!
-Louie
Tag: creating magic
Magic Jam!
One thing I’m lucky to have is a group of creative magicians that I hang out with! When one of us is working on something and gets stuck, usually one of us can solve the problem!
I’m working on a trick with money that needed an ending. It’s a counting trick, similar to a touch the screen style math trick. The challenge was I got to the forced dollar, but didn’t know how to reveal it. It needed more than, “you picked the twenty dollar bill“.
We played with it for a little bit and finally someone just yelled out the solution. Like it was a kettle slowly boiling, but when it finally boiled it was the perfect ending to the trick!
If you’re not creating with a group, you really should!
-Louie
Tinkertopia!!!
One of my favorite stores is in Tacoma, WA, it’s called Tinkertopia. It’s a reclaimed material store that resells this stuff for art.
They have soo much cool stuff, and I always find things that I can use as a part of a magic prop or for some other project.
One of the things that I found were some hinged plastic circles. You can see them on the counter in the above picture. They are 4 segments that are hinged to make circles. I’m thinking I’m going to use them for something similar to the hinged ruler figures that magicians used to do.
The challenge with a store like this is that once they sell out of something, you many never find it again. They had these hinged circles in three colors, so I bought two of each color for a total of six of them. I’m kinda regretting not buying them out of all of them, I have a strange feeling I’ll either need more for whatever idea I come up with, or I’ll fall in with whatever my idea is and want to make a backup and I won’t be able to find more.
Then there’s the possibility that I don’t come up with anything I like with them and end up throwing them away. That’s the gamble.
-Louie
Creating a Bit From Reality…
Last month I was at an AirBnB. I was sharing the house with a bunch of the other performers at the Ohio State Fair. Behind the painting on the walls we found strange “Alien Postcards” from October of 2016
The first one was behind the paint of an apple, then we started searching the AirBnb and found the second one inside of a picture of Groucho!
OK, so that’s what happened in real life, now how do I turn it into a bit for my show?
I started by telling the story.
I’m staying at an AirBnB with some amazing performing, acrobats, jugglers…and a mime. He’s not even performing here. But that guy never shuts up.
One night I was looking behind the paintings and found some “alien postcards”. When I mentioned it to my wife on the phone she said, “why were you looking behind the paintings”, not “what’s an alien postcard.
I was looking for my keys.
Here are the postcards. On the front they say, “Materials deployed for reflective and connective purposes”. On the back this one says, “Thank you for signaling that you are anticipating my transmission”.
The other says, “Thank you for sending the signal that you are invested in receiving this signal…You’re going to die…JK, LOL LOL…but seriously, we’re watching…no parties!”
So now I’m searching the AirBnB for cameras, and you know what I found?
My KEYS!
That’s the story. I’ve embellished it a little bit added some punchlines. The nice thing about being in a house with other performers is that we could workshop the story a little bit.
The next step is going to be figuring out what to do with this. Is it a little stand alone bit, or is it a segue to something else. Like a trick with a key and/or postcards?
One idea is to have borrow a key, cover it up with a handkerchief and have that held by someone in the audience. Then 5 postcards are shown, each has a place where I’ve found my keys. These could be funny places, like in pie, or whatever. One is selected, and the key disappears and ends up inside of the postcard.
I don’t know what will happen with this bit…
-Louie
There’s No Plan B For Your A-Game
Awhile ago I was hosting a zoom meeting that was an informal Q & A about performing at senior communities. At one point we were talking about books and I think it was JR Russel who mentioned the book There’s No Plan B For Your A-Game.
One of the concepts in the book is write down a goal and then to work backwards from it identifying the challenges. It’s an interesting take and for me it makes it easier to map out what I need to do to make things happen. For some reason working forwards and identifying milestones is harder for me.
Another thing in the book is the idea of living like you’ve accomplished a goal. It doesn’t mean living beyond your means. It means living with the habits that you would have. It’s important to note that Bo is from the sports world, so working out like you’re in the NFL before you’re there is kinda the idea.
How does that apply to magic?
Simple, do you want to be more creative? What do creative people do? They create, so live like you’re creating every day. Block out 30 mins of creative time and spend that time doing nothing else but creating. Sure, maybe nothing will happen at first, but you’re establishing a habit. Once you have the habit, it’s much easier to sit down and create.
I’m about halfway into the book and I like it!
-Louie
Keep on Working…
One thing I learned a long time ago is that an idea or routine is never finished. There’s always room to add or cut from it. For example there’s a prop that I use that uses batteries and it works just fine. There is one thing that I don’t like about it, it doesn’t have an off/on switch, you have to pull one of the batteries.
This isn’t a huge deal, but it is kinda annoying. The reason it doesn’t have a switch is there is physically not enough room inside the prop for it. I’m working on a redesign to make room for a switch. I just did the 3d model for the parts, now I just need to print them out and assemble it!
We’ll see how it turns out…
-Louie
Creating With What’s Around You…
Right now I’m on a cruise ship and it’s pretty bumpy out, and I noticed that all of the floors at the stairwells have “sick bags”. These look like paper lunch sacks, but are made of plastic and have a tab at the top to seal them.
I grabbed one and took it back to my state room to see if I could figure out something to do with it. Here’s my brainstorming from this morning:
- Chew up some food, spit it in…then blow up the bag and pop it and it’s confetti
- Someone reaches into the bag and pulls out a single cookie (it’s the only thing in the bag). You take a few bites and spit them back into the bag. Shake the bag and dump out a whole cookie
- You have the bag sealed. You tell the audience you breathed into the bag after breakfast and have someone try to guess what you ate. You have a note that confirms they are right!
- Someone from the audience breathes into the bag, and you tell them what they had for breakfast
- you have a line of people onstage. With your back turned, someone breathes into the bag and seals it. It’s handed to you and smell the bag and tell whose breath it is
- You put food into the bag and it turns to rubber vomit
- You say you opened the bag on the plane and captured the air at your seat. Someone smells the air and guesses your row and seat number.
What I like about this is the specific property of the bag, it being plastic and sealable ended up taking me away from tradition paper bag tricks. I really like the idea of trapping air in the bag. I think that the row and seat number might be the winner as it doesn’t involve anyone’s breath, so it’s not cringy.
I don’t know if I’ll ever do this stuff, but it’s a fun creativity exercise.
-Louie
Always One More Step…
One of the things I’ve always said about creating magic is that it’s about problem solving. One trick where this is especially true is the spoon and fork transposition that I do. This particular trick has been an engineer nightmare the whole time I’ve really been working on it. It’s a series of challenges to get me to the next step.
One of the recent challenges I’ve had with this trick is that at the end there’s a good chance the spoon and fork will clink in my pocket. While it’s not loud and it only happens once during the routine, I want to eliminate it.
The first attempt was putting a felt covered magnet on my pocket and all that did was change the “clink” to a “clunk”. That took me to the next and final solution, I simply put a piece of felt in my pocket to act as a divider. That solved the problem and it was an easy simply solution! Also if I try to avoid having magnets on my body, as it’s amazing how often you’ll get stuck to things. I’m not against using magnets, I just try to not have them attached to me.
Simple Step To Creativity
One of the easiest ways to create things is to put conditions onto what you want to do. For example, I’ve always loved the Three Ball Routine or Balls in Net. What I didn’t like is having to bring two people onto the stage to hold the net. I felt it added blocking issues and … Continue reading “Simple Step To Creativity”
One of the easiest ways to create things is to put conditions onto what you want to do. For example, I’ve always loved the Three Ball Routine or Balls in Net. What I didn’t like is having to bring two people onto the stage to hold the net. I felt it added blocking issues and a lot of wasted time bringing the people onto the stage.
The condition I added to the Three Ball Routine was that it needed to be done with just me onstage. With that condition in place, it created a lot of challenges, like where to put the balls. John Rogers has an interesting solution to this in his The Walrus Three Ball Routine, however that wasn’t what I was going for. Some options were having the net hung between two mic stands like a hammock or simply setting them halfway into your top jacket pocket.
I wanted the whole routine being done in the hand as the cleanest way to do it. It got me thinking of Coins Across routines that are done entirely in the hands, specifically Jay Sankey’s Mexican Jumping Coins. With Jay’s routine in mind, I got to work on putting together my routine with balls.
Here’s what I came up with:
By putting in the condition of having no one from the audience onstage, it made the routine much easier to build. I think if I had initially added a “no net” condition I may have gotten to the solution much faster. Honestly I want the net from the beginning, but figured I may need it to hold the balls.
Look at the tricks that you do, and figure out what you don’t like about them. Add removing that as a condition and you’ll be on your way to creating something new!
Alterations Necessary…
One thing with magic gimmicks is that one size usually doesn’t “fit all”. There are tons and tons of cheap and expensive gimmicks that I’ve owned that I’ve had to put a lot of work into to get them to work for me. The main reason for this is that how the gimmick’s creator used … Continue reading “Alterations Necessary…”
One thing with magic gimmicks is that one size usually doesn’t “fit all”. There are tons and tons of cheap and expensive gimmicks that I’ve owned that I’ve had to put a lot of work into to get them to work for me. The main reason for this is that how the gimmick’s creator used the trick may not be how I intend to use it.
Sometimes my handling will be different because I don’t move how the gimmick was designed to be moved. Other times the gimmick won’t be made to withstand the stress I’m going to put it through. I really don’t fault the creator for this and as a magic creator I totally understand this.
A few minutes ago I finished rebuilding a gimmick I paid a lot money for simply because I’m using it for an off label type use. I’m still using the creator’s gimmick, it’s just now works in a slightly different way. Don’t be afraid to settle, be willing to alter it!