magic show tips – Page 54

Small Changes

I do a routine that I call my “choices” routine. This started as an invisible deck sort of routine, and methodwise moved to the Al Koran Five Star Miracle. Essentially the effect is a card is picked and it matches a prediction in an envelope.

Previously I used a red jumbo deck and a red card in the prediction envelope. Recently as I was getting to the reveal of the prediction and said, “…if this card is the same as yours…” and someone from the audience said, “it won’t there’s only one five of diamonds in the deck“.

They were right, I wasn’t selling that the prediction was from another deck. However, I think it’s wasted energy to tell that’s it’s from anther deck. To save time explaining, I found some blue backed jumbo cards and I’m not using a different colored deck for the prediction card.

This slight change isn’t a very big change. Probably only one person in fifty shows would have the same thought that the prediction couldn’t be the same as the selected card. However of 1 in 50 mentions it, probably 1 in 20 thinks it. By changing the back color, that makes the effect a little bit more clear, with virtually no extra work on my end during the show.

The takeaway from this is listen to your audience!

-Louie

Rough Street Pitch!

When I was in Mexico there were a lot of “ambient” street shows. Those are shows like a guitar player that you walk by, maybe watch for a song, and then move along. There were very few “circle” street shows that were longer presentations that built a crowd.

There’s a lot that goes into a circle show, like getting people to stop, uniting those people into an audience and getting them to commit to watching the whole thing.

One of the few circle shows that I saw in Mexico City was a dance/acrobalance group.

The challenge with the spot that they picked was that right in front of their performing area was a road. I understand that they needed a larger footprint for their show, so they were pretty limited to locations and they fit in this one.

The active street meant they could build maybe one row between them and the street. Then the second row of people would be across the street. I’m going to bet you’re not surprised that no one really watched from across the street.

Ultimately with the challenges of this location, they only managed to pull a handful of people into their crowd.

They were doing some cool stunts, but this is a good example of where soo much more goes into street performing than simply having a good show!

-Louie

What the Audience Sees…

There’s the meme that shows a plate juggler performing for the audience and the audience isn’t aware of how many plates were broken to get that the point they are seeing.

When I was in Mexico City one of the large venues has a cutaway model of their stage and it reminded me of the plate juggler meme. There’s soo much that that audience is unaware of, they only see a small sliver of it.

If you look at it, such a small percentage venue is what the audience sees. It’s kinda crazy, especially for someone like them that’s basically a “curtain act” that doesn’t need the full depth of the stage! The space I would use is equivalent to about 2 or 3 rows of the audience’s seats! The audience never really thinks about how little of the bigger picture they see!

-Louie

The Psychology of Magic

My recent airplane reading was that I started the book The Psychology of Magic. I originally heard of this book from my buddy Chris Beason, and I picked up this copy back in June at Misdirection Magic Shop in San Francisco.

I’m not too far into the book, but so far it’s really interesting. In this book they’re using lab style testing for magic. The beginning of the book they’re using lab study type groups to learn more about card forces. It’s really interesting what results they came up with.

The other eye opening thing was a prediction that’s 1-4 or 1-100 has basically the same impact!

So far I recommend this book!

-Louie

Stock Lines in your Show

About a week ago when I was performing in Southern Arizona I went on the Queen Mine Tour in Bisbee, AZ. This is a decommissioned mine that is not a tourist attraction.

My tour guide was a Neale who worked in the mine in the 1970’s. One of the things that struck me was the amount of “stock lines” that he used that are very common with magicians. This should be a wake up call to magicians who use these lines to stop using them. If a retired miner is using lines you use in your show, you should probably cut them and write new lines.

One of the lines he used was at the end was, “If you liked the tour my name is Neale, if you didn’t my name is ______”. I’ve never liked this line when magicians use it. There are two reasons that I dislike it. The first is while it is in a joke, you are implying that the audience may not like your show, and that’s the last impression you give them, not a thank you for spending time with me or something more meaningful. The other reason is that you are leaving your audience on someone else’s name, you should leave on your name!

That’s all, go out there and be better than a retired miner!

-Louie

Salt Pour Collection!

I passively collect salt pour gimmicks. I think they look interesting and display well for a magic gimmick in my collection. I’ve had the salt pour in my show a couple of times. It’s been in themed shows, but never in my main show. It’s a trick I keep coming back to, but it’s missing something to make it work in my main show.

Ok, back to the gimmicks. A while ago I bought some salt pour gimmicks to add to my collection. I recently bought a bundle of salt pour gimmicks from Scott Alexander’s estate.

The first two I was able to identify. The one on the right is the older style salt pour gimmick that Jim Riser made. The black one on the left is the Bob Kohler salt pour. This is a new one to me, took a bit of work to figure out who made it.

Jim riser salt pour and bob kohler salt pour gimmicks

Then I got these two salt pour gimmicks:

I haven’t been able to identify who made them, if you have any idea, let me know!

And finally I got a bunch of parts to make salt pour gimmicks:

These parts appear to be trying to replicate the two unidentified gimmicks above. The main difference is these have a shorter neck. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the parts, maybe I’ll have them assembled…or just one and display it with the parts???

-Louie

Call and Response…

There’s a common street performer “trick” to unite the audience and it’s call and response. If you’re not familiar with what that is, it’s typically used when the performer says something like, “Would you like to see another trick…say YES!” then the audience responds by saying YES.

This an effective technique uniting the audience, they’re doing something together and it helps them start to become an audience and not just a bunch of individuals. This is especially important for an outdoor show where you may have a transient audience. Another thing it does is forces the audience to invest energy into the show. The more they are invested in the show, the more they will stay and watch the show…and like it!

I like the technique, but I personally don’t like how most people do it, they’re doing it simply because it’s effective. There’s no real purpose besides filling a hole in the show because you don’t have a segue to the next routine.

When I use it in my show, I give it a bit of meaning. In my Drawing in Ball of Yarn routine, I do it to have the audience vote on whether I should buy the person’s drawing. It accomplishes the same thing and just telling the audience to say “yes”, in fact it actually moves the show forward!

With a little bit of thought, you can find ways to use this technique to move the show forward, instead of a hack bit.

-Louie

Tom Foolery – Preview Party Invitation

I’m a big fan of Tom Mullica a while ago I came across an invitation to the opening of the Tom Foolery bar in Atlanta. Then recently I found a handful of Tom Foolery playing cards, so I went out and had them framed together.

This is a cool bit of magic memorabilia that I’m happy to have displayed in my office!
-Louie

Rope Magic Routine

One of the tricks that I’ve been working on this month is Four Nightmares, which is a rope trick.

louie foxx performs four nightmares dx rope trick

Here’s the rope routine that I’m doing:

-Show long and short rope
I have a long piece of rope and a….Albino worm. I’ll do four tricks, and I’ve given each a cool name.
-Ropes become the same size
I call this the equalizer! I had a lady tell me she didn’t like that because it made her feel stupid.
-tie the two equal ropes together
If you don’t know how a trick works, that means I’m doing my job. I don’t understand how an airplane flies, but when we land I clap for the pilot!
-move knot to one side of the rope, untie it to reveal the short rope
I call trick number two, the de-wormer!
-put away the small rope.
Trick number three…
-tie the double knot
a double knot…
-slide the knot off the rope to reveal the circle of rope
I call that OOhhh whaaat?!
-put the loop onto the rope
Trick number four, I call it…the end
-reveal the loop become part of the single rope

This particular trick is doing a trick for the sake of doing a magic trick. There’s not really anything about me, my life or a point of view in the trick. I think that sometimes you need that stuff in the show, just a fun trick.

This routine is still in its very early stages for me, so we’ll see what happens with it in the future.

-Louie

Don’t Feel Stupid

During a show recently someone mentioned that they didn’t like a trick because they “felt stupid” because they didn’t know how the trick worked. Here’s what my reply was:

“If you don’t know how a trick works, that means that I’m doing my job. I don’t understand how an airplane works, but I still clap for the pilot when we land!

I’ve started to work this into my show at the beginning with the rope trick I’ve been opening the show with. I think it’s an interesting thing to address in the show, that if someone doesn’t understand why a trick works, they aren’t dumb, it’s what’s supposed to happen and that’s totally OK.

-Louie