magic show tips – Page 11

Mastering Comedy Magic by Ian Batterbury

On the plane the other day I read Mastering Comedy Magic by Ian Batterbury. This book goes through different techniques and objectives with using comedy in a magic show. The book says it’s intended for beginners at comedy magic. I would say it’s for beginning at adding unique comedy to their magic.

The difference is that there are a lot of comedy magicians out there who have never had an original thought in their life. They are doing Banana Bandana, or whatever using the jokes the trick came with, or worse using the jokes they’ve seen other people do without permission.

This book is a general “theory” of performing comedy magic, without much in the way of tools, like how a joke is structured. If you’ve never created your own original script for a routine, this book will give you some good guidelines to help you out. With it only being about $10 on Amazon, it’s worth looking into.

-Louie
PS Another good book to look into is Ryan Kane’s Out of Stock

Be Easy!

I was working at an event with a lot of bands. The tech sheet for for the band had each band tech needs, contact people and number of people in the band. This is helpful for the sound company, so they no what to expect.

This event’s tech needs had a little easter egg to give the sound company a heads up:

I try to be easy to work with, and not to become the act that they put notes about to warn the tech crew!

-Louie

Magic Show Script Writing…

Every year in my library show I try to have at least one trick that has a life larger than that show. Something that I’ll try to put into my main show. One of the new routines that I have been doing in my library shows uses a Cootie Catcher/Paper Fortune Teller.

This routine has been doing well, and it’s a great little solo routine that’s compact a trick that packs flat, but because it’s a three dimensional trick that moves, it has a bit more visual texture than a flat prop.

There’s not a ton to the routine that I’m working on. It’ll hopefully have 6 laughs in two minutes. I’m always looking for solo tricks that I can do without someone from the audience onstage.

-Louie

Vintage Magic!

Magicians always ask me where I get a lot of the vintage magic props. I seek them out while I’m travelling. When I was performing in Napa, CA I found someone with a box of magic from the 1970’s. Here’s a quick video of it:

@louiefoxx Hunting for Vintage Magic Tricks #magictricks #magic #treasure ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

Honestly, this box was just “meh” for me. There’s one thing that I want for my personal collection.

I am kinda excited to try to 3d print the gimmicks the two die boxes. It shouldn’t be too hard and they’re not complex shapes. The challenge will be making the hinge for the yellow die, but even that shouldn’t be too difficult.

For fun, I had AI make me a painting of the magic props on the desk of my hotel room.

Both Sides of a Magic Trick

I was playing around with some ideas of tricks to record with my Ray Ban Meta Glasses. One of the neat things is that if I do a magic trick to a mirror, you can record both sides of the trick simultaneously.

Here’s my attempt at doing that:

@louiefoxx Backstage at the magic show #cardtrick #magic #mirrior ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

I think it came out well and is a good choice of trick as both sides of the card change, so there’s a good reason to show both sides of the cards!

-Louie

Backstage Etiquette

When I’m at a fair or event where I’m the only variety act, I try to label my stuff as show props so that people know to not handle my stuff. Many of these bands or dance groups don’t work with other acts and have never had to deal with backstage etiquette. Most of it is common sense, however I’m constantly amazed how how many people don’t have common sense.

I was working with a band and they tried to set up a drum kit onstage while I was performing on the stage! That made me glad I had already put a sign on my gear, as they clearly didn’t know.

Then I got back to the dressing room (trailer) and they had put all of their bags on top of my stuff! What’s crazier is why they would have done that when I took up barely any space!

This is why I assume no one knows backstage etiquette. Here’s a graphic I made for fun and to blow off some steam:

I kinda want to get some of these printed up and put them in greenrooms! Feel free to copy that and put it places!

-Louie

Vintage Magic Trick: Nick Trost’s Cardcentration

Today’s vintage magic trick is Nick Trost’s Cardcentration. The effect is a prediction of which card out of 8 that someone will pick, then there’s a kicker ending.

Here’s what it looks like:

@louiefoxx Vintage Magic Trick: Nick Trost’s Cardcentration! #cardtrick #magic #magictrick #vintage #cardmagic #louiefoxx #nicktrost #closeupmagic ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

The effect of this trick is great, the method is garbage. There’s no reason for the envelope, you put a card into it, then immediately take it out. This trick would be equally as strong if you did the hot rod force, Quinta force, or the PATEO force. Sure, there’s nothing to sell if you don’t have a gimmick, but those would be superior methods.

I will say that of the three times I did this trick, only once no one asked to look at the envelope after the trick. That confirms to me that it’s the weak spot in the trick. Sure I could have come up with a reason or way to justify the envelope, but I try to do these tricks as written up in the original instructions to preserve what the creator intended.

-Louie

Move The Monitors!

When I show up to set up my show on a stage, there’s normally monitors at the front of the stage. If I’m doing a solo show (not in a show with multiple performers), I will ask the sound tech to move the monitors. I think it’s important for the audience to see my whole body, but more than that, I do a couple of low things and with monitors, that stuff is invisible to the audience.

Recently on a travel day while I was looking for lunch in a town I stumbled up on a festival. One of the acts on their stage was an Irish Stepdance group.

Look at the picture above, you really can’t see their feet! I understand that’s unfortunate placement of the gray power box in the middle, but there’s no reason that the monitors couldn’t be moved to the sides of the stage and turned so they face the middle. That would not affect the dancer’s ability to hear the music.

In a magic show, we don’t normally need monitors like a band does, so don’t let the sound tech set up your show like a band! It’s OK to ask the sound tech to move monitors, they’re easy to move and it’s not a big deal.

Here’s a post I wrote almost a year ago with some good comparison pictures:
http://www.magicshow.tips/magic-show-tips/move-the-monitors/

Now be assertive and visually clean up your stage!

-Louie

It’s a Wrap on Library Shows for 2025

Well, I’m doing doing library shows for the summer. When I was putting together the show, one of the goals was that it was one trip in and one trip out of the library. I also wanted that to be only one thing in each hand. Here’s what the show looked liked when packed up.

What’s pictured above is everything for the show. The show was was expandable from it’s most basic form which was the prop box on the table to set up that filled a larger space.

The other goal was for the show was that is played big. It didn’t feel like a suitcase magic show where everything is flat. The show had a lot of textures and I really liked doing this show.

I’m proud of this show and I think I may keep it to cycle back into the rotation for kid shows in the future. The more important thing was that I used this show to learn to do things that will have a life outside of this show. I learned to use and get confident with the iQpro app to run video for my show and I using ankle switches for my show.

One of the goals for my summer library show is that I work on something that I can use outside of that specific show. Whether it’s a routine that I can use in another show or in this case, production stuff.

Always look for a second life for things!

-Louie

Comedy Mentalism Routines!

Last week has been a HUGE week for me creatively. I’ve come up with three ideas for stage routines. One of them I actually had what I needed to try out and got to do about eight times onstage!

All three of them are comedy mentalism. Two of the three of them focus on the process of what the audience perceives is happening and the other is fairly generic mentalism.

You can read a little bit about one of them here:
https://www.magicshow.tips/magic-show-tips/showing-process-for-mentalism/

The second one is a lock trick where someone picks a key and that’s the only one out of six keys that opens the lock. Fairly standard, but and some process to it and it’s more of a stand out trick.

The premise of the trick is luck.

I get someone who says they’re lucky onstage. The try out all of the keys and confirm that only one will unlock a lock. What’s cool about the lock I’m using is that I don’t need to touch any of this!

They are now locked by their beltloop to a folding chair with short piece of chain.

Now to test their luck, I’ll flip a coin and for every correct flip they get a key to try to free themself. For each flip, they get it wrong…However on the last flip, when the call it and it’s wrong, I openly flip the coin to what they called to so that the get one key.

They select the key, it opens the lock and it frees them!

I’m going to try this out later this week to see how it plays. When I am trying new things, I want to get them onstage as quick as possible. I want to get a sense for how it actually plays with my personality. If it feels right, I’ll start working on writing up a more complete script for it. If it doesn’t, I need to reevaluate whether I should try a different angle, or stop doing it.

Louie