magic show tips – Page 60

Quick Draw!

About a month ago I worked with Roy McCoy, The Quick Draw Cowboy in Wyoming. Roy is an cartoonist, and his show is him drawing stuff (there’s a couple of other things in it as well). Roy only does the fair where he lives, however he has one of the best stage set ups that I’ve seen.

I think if he was doing more than one fair, he’d probably have less stage dressing to lug around, set up and strike. The show was probably as good as it could get for someone who doesn’t do a lot of shows. It’s missing a lot of the bits to fill dead time, however for what it is, it’s fantastic!

I really enjoyed this show, it was something different and fun!

-Louie

The Long Walk…

Last week the fair I was at had a very long walk from the audience to the stage. This made bringing someone up from the audience a bit of a speed bump in the show. The general format in my magic show is every other trick has someone from the audience onstage. Figuring out how to deal with the time that it takes to bring someone onstage was a challenge.

The first thing to fill the time was simply writing jokes to address the issue and fill the dead space. I wrote lines like, “The walk to the stage is longer than the line at the DMV“.

One of the emergency props that I have in my case is a thumb tip with a silk. I can do a solid 5 minute routine with that that’s full of laughs. That routine uses two people from the audience.

Obviously, bringing two people onstage wasn’t he solution to the long walk to the stage, but the silk was. I started simply vanish the silk while the person walked to the stage. It filled the dead space, but needed more. Then during my morning writing I came up with the idea of doing silk in balloon. That gave some sort of a payout to the vanishing silk. However, the breakthrough was the next day during my morning writing I had the idea of silk in selected balloon.

I had a line of balloons tied to string from my case to the microphone stand. The silk vanishes while they are coming onto the stage. Then a balloon is selected and when popped the silk appears inside that balloon.

What I ended up with is a routine for when there is a long walk to the stage (or any show), but not a solution to fill that time for existing routines that I do.

I’m not disappointed that I didn’t come up with a solution for the long walk, as a routine that fills the stage and packs very small is still a win!

-Louie

IBM convention!

The 2024 International Brotherhood of Magicians convention is going to be in Tacoma, WA next summer. That’s about 30 mins from where I live, so I figured I should go.

Being local takes out a lot of the travel burden as I don’t have to pay for travel. I would really like to go to more magic conventions, but it’s difficult in the summer as I’d have to turn down a 5-10 day gig to attend.

This should be a fun convention, and you can register at:
https://www.magician.org/convention/online-registration-2024

-Louie

Make it Memorable!

When I do TV spots, I try do more than just a magic trick, I try to make it a moment that’s memorable. Sure you can do sponge balls and it’s fine, however I try to do things that are fun.

Here’s an example from a media spot a few weeks ago:

@louiefoxx News Reporter Hustled with Classic Con Game! #reporter #game #gambling #congame #cantwin #pushups #shellgame #hustle #newsreporter #louiefoxx #sleightofhand #payyourdebts #magic ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

It’s not always possible to do more memorable or fun spots due to time, or other circumstances. However, when I get a chance to do a little bit of planning, I try to do something fun!

-Louie

Color Match – Figuring it out

After adding a second transmitter to the Anverdi Color Match pens, I’m not having any issues in the show with not getting a signal. This is something that I think that most magicians wouldn’t do because of the cost. It’s literally double what it should cost.

Somehow both sets of transmitters are signaling one receiver, I’m not sure how that’s happens, but it is. I independently tried the transmitter and they are all signaling the same receiver.

This is a good development, however I’d prefer that I have two complete systems running, and not one and half. With two independent systems, I have a backup if the receiver fails.

Hopefully this is the solution for me…

-Louie

News Highlight Reel!

Last week I was performing at Montana Fair in Billings, MT. One day the news was there taking video for their fair highlights. This is always tricky for me as if I don’t talk to them, they will always use a super wide shot that’s out of context and makes no sense. In a highlight reel, stuff doesn’t need a lot of context if the content is chosen correctly.

What I do is try to talk to them or whoever the media coordinator is and do staged video where I act like I’m performing for a crowd and we put the camera onstage to get video that’s better framed and I use tricks that you don’t need much context to understand what’s happening.

Here’s the video from last week:

Whenever possible I try to show or tell them what I’m going to do so that they know what to expect and can put their camera in a good spot. I will also tell them the bad spots to record from if there are any.

-Louie

Dealing With Interruptions

Last weekend I had to deal with a crazy interruption during my show. It’s something I’ve never really had to deal with during a show. Independent of the fair that I was performing at was an airshow….and my show was the same time as the Blue Angels!

There’s really not much that I can do, the planes are loud and let’s face it, way more exciting than my show. I made a few jokes about, and stopped the show while they were performing, that’s really all that I could do.

“That’s the most expensive opening act I’ve ever had!“

It was only two days of an eight day gig, so there were plenty more shows to do without conflicting with the air show!

-Louie

Anverdi Color Match…UGH!

Well, I had the Anverdi Color Match fail at every show yesterday, and one show all five of the pens didn’t work! The show where they didn’t work, I got a constant 5 buzz on the receiver. I’m lucky that I have an out for this trick that I can use as the method and can instantly switch to my out as the main method in an instant.

That really saved my butt!!!

That also inspired me to actually put the second set of transmitters into one set of pens.

In my hotel room right now they are working at about the same time. As is, they don’t trigger at the exact same time, like a promystic set does, they’re a little bit off. I think I need to designate a primary receiver and if I’m not happy with what that is sending me or need to verify it, then I pay attention to the second one.

We’ll see how this works…

-Louie

The Pole!

One of the things that’s a challenge when performing at fairs is when there’s a visual obstruction right in front of the stage. A couple of weeks ago the fair I was performing at had a tent that the stage and audience seating was under, but it had a support pole directly in front of the stage.

Before I go any further, I will say that I will take an audience with shade and a visual obstruction over an audience in the sun with a clear view every day!

The challenge with the pole in front of the stage is that no matter what, someone’s view is going to be blocked. In my morning shows, which are slower, I pack everyone to one side of the audience and that solves the problem. Later in the day when it’s busier, that’s not really an option.

After years of trying to come up with ways to deal with this, I think I’ve finally figured out what to do with it. My solution is to accept that it’s there and simply do my show as if it’s not there. That’s really the only thing you can do. Once I mentally decide that the pole is part of my life for 45 minutes, it’s much easier for me to not pay attention to it and just do my show.

If you have a solution that works for you, let me know, I’d love to hear what you do!

-Louie

Using Time Wisely!

When I’m out performing at fairs in the summer, I can have a lot of down time in between shows. I try to be productive during those times. Last week I bought a ton of clocks and spent some time between shows gimmicking them!

I ended up being a photo opp for all the other performers as it looked like I had a little sweat shop going!

Using that bonus time I have during the day frees me up later in the day to do other things!

-Louie