One thing that always surprises me the fear that magicians have about spending money on things that will help sell their show. I get most of my work through booking conferences. I needed to make a new banner for one of the agents that I work for, so while I was doing that, I also made a generic one for me.
These were made in a rush, and they’re good enough. If I had more time I would make a couple of changes, but the more important thing is that I have the one the agent requested by the date they needed it!
In less than two weeks I’m showcasing at a booking event and my retractable banner is missing. I needed to order another one ASAP, but of course, I’m on the road and can’t find the original files.
Working off a picture of the old banner, I had it recreated with a couple of more recent pictures and some new credits.
Having to remake the banner was sort of a blessing in disguise as it needed to be redone anyway. That and the retractable base was getting pretty banged up, it didn’t work very smoothly.
If I was at home I had pictures on a hard drive that I would have rather used, but sometimes you just need something that’s “good enough”. This will get me through the event and with banners at about a hundred bucks, if I only use it once before I redesign it, it’s totally worth it!
If you’ve read this blog, you’ll know that I’ve learned a lot about protecting the magic that I sell and that I’ve been very successful in keeping knock offs of my magic products off of sites like ebay and aliexpress.
I think this is something that all magicians should read, it not only covers the different types of intellectual property (IP), but how it applies specifically to magicians. Hopefully it will inform idiot magicians who don’t know about IP from commenting in social media groups with factually inaccurate information about IP.
My favorite is when a magician says a trick is protected as a “trade secret”. Sure it can be, but if I’m not a party to the trade secret agreement and can figure it out, I’m (legally) free to use it. Trade secrets only apply to those who have signed the agreement.
If you’re a creator, I hope if gives you a base for where to start to protect an idea for a trick and the different processes for doing it. For example, I personally don’t want to patent a trick due to time and expense. I choose to copyright the art and instructions. That allows me to remove knock offs from popular sites because they are using my text and art. Most of the people knocking off don’t want to spend the time it takes to write ad copy and create art, so it narrows down the amount of knock offs out there.
If someone uses my idea and creates their own art, text and ad copy they are legally free to do make my product. Sure, I’d rather they don’t, but I’ve accepted that’s how it is based on what I was willing to do to protect my products.
I’m always amazed at how many magicians have taken the basic step of registering the text and art of their instructions and ad copy. It’s less than $100 and easy to do online.
Well, I think I’ve finally accepted that virtual shows aren’t really a part of my business any longer. Sure, I can see one or two occasionally popping up, but they are really in my rear view mirror. Before heading out on the road last week, I disassembled my virtual show table and it returned to its former life as my street show table.
I still have all the parts and can easily rebuild it for virtual shows. One of the things that I really liked about the table was how high it was. The base was a speaker stand, and the table was about armpit height. The reason it was soo high was so that I could easily frame my face and the tabletop in the camera frame.
I’m a little sad to see the virtual show go, it was fun to do.
A few ago I was in Astoria, OR performing and that small town has a magic shop! It’s called The Magic Shop & More run by Seth Howard.
It’s a great shop, it’s mostly geared as a “pitch” shop, which makes sense as there’s not really a magic population. That said, he still has things of interest to a more experienced magician and Seth is very knowledgeable. He and also order things in for you to pick up if you know you’ll be in town.
It turns out I was familiar with Seth’s trick Howard’s Hustle and was recently thinking about it, so it was good to chat with him about it. Howard’s Hustle is a two card monte routine that has an ending and begins and ends with showing both sides of the cards. It’s really clever and I have an idea for using the general idea for what Seth’s doing in the trick for a very different routine.
If you’re passing through Astoria, OR you should swing by and say hi. His shop is in the tourist area, so you’ll probably walk by anyway.
Show business is funny. In less 24 hours you can go from performing outdoors in the full sun (I’m not complaining, I love outdoor gigs):
To performing indoors at a really cool theater!
While both shows are similar, there are things that I do indoors that I don’t do outdoors and things I do outdoors that I don’t do indoors. There are reasons for that, the audiences are different. Inside I can take a little bit of time with things, so I can do some slower tricks. Outdoors everything is a bit quicker and I’m a little more aggressive when I perform.
I enjoy indoors and outdoor performing, and both have their own sets of advantages and disadvantages. As a performer you need to learn what material of yours works in each situation. -Louie
In the past I’ve written about trying to make little sizzle reels for events that I’m performing at. I really started doing this with virtual shows as it’s really easy to as it’s already being done for a camera. Most of the ones I’ve been doing recently are videos of me doing close up magic. This is my first one of the stage show that I do for fairs.
Now that I have a template of what to show, it’s shouldn’t be too hard for me to do them for future fairs. I know the things to show, and can spend more energy on the look out for more spontaneous things that get caught on video.
Right now we’re in the middle of the summer outdoor performing season. One of nice things about performing at fairs which are multi-day events is that you only need to load in once and load out once. After the first day my gear lives at the fair. Normally they are supposed to have a space for me to store my gear on the grounds, however that doesn’t always happen.
Last week my stage was a trailer and to avoid doing a complete pack out everyday, I locked my show to a chain that was under the stage!
Is this the most secure way to store a show? Probably not, however anytime you store your gear anywhere you are taking a risk. The amount of “locked” storage areas where I keep my trunk which seem to never actually be locked is very high! At some point you have to have faith that no one is going to the fair to steal your show. It does happen, I know of people that have had things stolen, however it’s pretty rare if you take basic precautions like locking things up.
Many times after shows magicians will comment on how much is must cost me to perform my show. I have several spots where I use props that I can’t reuse each show. Honestly, I don’t have too many props that are single use. Here are my consumable props for my day at the fair:
Each show I use a paper coil, kabuki streamer, bar of hotel soap and a banana. In addition to the picture I also give away some of my wristbands which I sell after the show. Every show costs me about five dollars to do. To me this isn’t a big deal and since I’m getting paid, it’s just the cost of doing business.
If spending $5 or $100 to do your show is what your vision as an artist is, then it’s money well spent! -Louie
Last week while doing my sound check, I had the sound guy ask me to turn up the volume on my handheld mic.
This is a scenario where knowing your gear comes in handy. This was a Shure SM58, which is a very standard microphone and 99% of handheld mics don’t have volume knobs.
I asked the sound guy for clarity, that he was referring to the corded handheld I was holding. He said yes, and repeated that I should turn up the volume on it. I told him I was unaware corded handheld mics had a volume knob and didn’t know how to adjust it, and he’d have to show me. At that point, somehow he magically made the sound go up using only his soundboard.
The whole week ended up being a struggle with this sound company. From them wanting to sound check a band 10 minutes before my show after I had already starting to my “talk up” for crowd building, to them telling me my gear was bad when it ultimately was their snake that had bad inputs.
The moral of the story is to not let anyone push you around, and know your gear, so that you know how it works, why it works and that will usually give you a clue as to why it’s not working when it doesn’t.
