The opening magic trick in my magic show has been a quick trick where juice turns into confetti, then the cup turns into a streamer. It’s a great flash trick, but right now I’m playing with a different opener. I’m starting to use my stand up chop cup routine as the opening trick for my outdoor magic show.
The pros of this chop cup style routine as an opener are that it has a lot of magic that happens without a lot of preamble. It gets into the magic quickly. Then the trick has a great payoff with the production of a tennis ball.
The downside is that while the ball in the routine is a yellow ball, it’s small. Ideally, I’d like something visually larger as the first trick in the show, but for now this is working…
Last week, my magic show did 12 shows at a fair in California. When I was packing to go there, I took a picture of all the consumable stuff in my magic show. This is stuff that isn’t reusable and I have to replace each show or every few shows:
It feels like a lot of stuff, and it kinda is when you’re seeing 12 shows worth of stuff, plus a couple of back ups. For a single show, it’s not a lot. The nice thing about having stuff that gets used up in the show is that my case going home is a little bit lighter!
The last couple of months have seen gas prices rise by over 50%, which concerns a lot of performers coming into the busy summer season. I was on the road all of April, driving just shy of 7,000 miles that month, so I’m very aware of the rising prices.
The number of performers who are losing their minds trying to figure out how to deal with this is staggering. The fact is, when you break it down, it’s not too bad. Let’s say gas has gone up by $1.50 a gallon, and you get 20 miles to the gallon. That means if your typical range is 100 miles (200 round trip), the higher cost of gas is only $15 on that gig.
While I’d rather have that $15 in my pocket than give it to a gas station. If you buy lunch on the way to the gig, that’s probably costing you more than $15. At the end of the day, if $15 is going to make performing unprofitable for you, you need to raise your rates.
One thing I’m going to warn you about is adding a gas surcharge. The problem with openly adding that as a line item on an invoice or a condition in a contract is when it goes away. If gas drops below a certain amount, are you giving them a credit? That math makes it a pain in the butt for the buyer. They want to know how much you cost when they book you, not how much you might cost. If they’re willing to pay you your rate plus a gas surcharge, then they’re willing to pay you that as a flat rate, and that should be your new rate.
About five years ago, I used a torn and restored newspaper as the closer to a show. I used Nick Lewin’s Slow Motion Paper Tear, and it got great responses. Someone in a Facebook group asked about a newspaper tear that gives you clean edges on the tear. In my experience with the trick getting a clean tear is a combination of the grain/quality of the newspaper and just doing it a lot. The more you do it, the easier it is to get a clean tear.
That’s not really what this post is about, it’s about using a newspaper. Look below to see multiple people mention newspapers not being common:
Yes, I agree a newspaper isn’t common, but they still exist. Just about every grocery store in the USA still sells them. Here’s a list of things magician use that they consider “everyday objects” but I think aren’t:
Dollar bills
Coins
Handkerchiefs
Playing cards
Pencil
Breast pocket size wallets
Records
CD
All of those things still exist in the world, but the average person probably interacts with them about the same as a newspaper. I can’t think of the last time I held a pencil or handkerchief that wasn’t magic related. I hardly use cash anymore, and outside of a magic context, I’d say its been years since I would have touched playing cards.
It’s all about context, people still know what a newspaper is, they just might not have physically touched one recently. I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t use one based on how often people see them, but it’s not a strange object. A silver dollar is more strange than a newspaper.
That said, the first line of the newspaper tear when I did it was a joke explaining what a newspaper is.
Let’s start by me saying I think most omni magic tricks are the result of lazy creativity. I’ve written at least one blog post about that in the past. What most omni magic tricks lack is something more than just the object becoming clear.
Ok, that all being said, I came across a set of small plastic folding chairs and one of the color options was clear.
There were four colors of chairs: Black, pink, blue and clear. I bought one of each. These stand about 5 inches tall. My first idea was some sort of chair test with them. My current idea is this:
Three tiny chairs are shown:
One of the three chairs is freely selected and put into a handkerchief that’s folded into a bag. You snap your fingers and pull out a ribbon/silk that is the color of the chair you put into the handkerchief. Then you remove the chair, and it’s now clear, and the handkerchief is shown empty.
There’s not much to it, but a bit more meat than just “hold this…now it’s clear” like in so many omni magic tricks. This routine is more like Dr. Boris Zola’s Silver Extraction routine. I do like the selection of a color as it adds a layer to it.
The Jumbo Tom Foolery Transformation is a series of changes of four playing cards. One at a time, the cards flip over, then the backs change color, then the faces change.
The challenge with this is that you use the same move 13 times in the routine. I think this routine was originally done with poker sized cards, but then someone decided to sell it in jumbo size to have an additional product to sell. The move doesn’t really lend itself to the jumbo cards, especially with the provided thick 8082 Bicycle Cards!
I came up with a different handling, the move still has to be done 13 times, but I think it makes more sense with jumbo cards. Here it is with my move:
Recently I saw a social media post about someone trying to come up with magic with eyeballs.
In the post, the list a few trick ideas which include: -zombie eyeball -sponge eyeballs The thing is that all of those have been done…I don’t mean that those tricks have been themed with eyeballs before (they have), they’re things that exist as a trick. When creating, why not go beyond your “magic vocabulary” and create something new, or at least try?
Here are a few ideas:
Plastic Eyeball and plastic letter “I” switch places.
Plastic eyeball turns into a plastic letter “I”
You take your eyeball out of your face, it changes into a letter “i” and you put that back into your eye socket and instead of your eye, it’s the letter “i”. Method would use a contact with an i printed on it?
You make a circle of objects on the table and one is selected. You have a plastic eyeball and spin it around, when it stops spinning it’s looking at the selected item
Your hands are shown empty. You then take a bottle of eye drops a put a drop into your palm. You close your hand and when you open it an eyeball has appeared.
You have a plastic eye that you balance on a salt shaker. You take out some eye drops and have the spectator hold the bottle upside down. Whenever they want, they squeeze the bottle. The moment they do and the eye drop hits the table, the plastic eyeball also falls off the salt shaker.
Ok, those are just a few ideas that I came up with sitting in front of my computer writing this. I did have an idea Googly Eye Trick that I wrote about in the past as well. The point is that we need to push past standard things. YES, there are reasons to do standards, but the more we try to get away from them, the more we break the stereotype of “all magicians are the same”.
A couple nights ago I was hanging out at the First Tuesday Magic Jam at the All American Magic Shop in Portland, OR. One of the magicians had a a tape measure on their keychain and it got me thinking of things that could be done with a tape measure.
I do a tape measure magic trick in my stage show, and didn’t want to reinvent that. I did have an idea for a stage trick: Walking Thru a Tape Measure
The effect would be: there are two posts onstage about 3 feet apart, one has a notch to hold the tape measure, and the other has a hole in it. The tape measure is secured in the notch on one side and it’s extended to the other pole and thru the hole. You stand behind it and a cloth that’s maybe 2 feet tall covers your middle where the tape measure is. You make a sawing motion with the tape of the tape measure and then the cloth is dropped and you’re on the other side of the tape measure.
The method isn’t anything crazy. The tape is cut about 4 or 5 feet into the tape, and then tabs are cut out.
The tabs go through the tab of the other end, so they are joined together. This joint is then rolled back into the tape measure.
During the effect, then you are doing the sawing action, you’re extending the tape measure, undoing the joint, moving the tape behind you and then rejoining it. All that’s left is to let that part retract into the tape measure to hide it.
I have no idea if that will actually work, if you try it, let me know if it does!
It really makes me happy when I see pictures or videos of performers using magic props that I’ve created! I just came across this picture of Magic Monty Reed using my Snake Wand Surprise!
I’ve had magicians ask me if it’s OK to use a prop that I sell, and I say “yes”. I think that’s an interesting question. If I sell it or have published it, and you bought a legitimate version of it (not a copy/knockoff), then feel free to use it!
There have been plenty of times when I had to share the stage with someone using one of my props or routines, and I’ve got no problem with that. I’m honored that people think my magic tricks are good enough to put into their shows!
If you have any pics or video of you using anything I make, I’d love to see it!
In about a week, my season of performing magic shows at state and county fairs begins. The show transitions from indoor audiences to outdoor, transient audiences. These shows can be challenging and are very different from most indoor shows.
When performing at fairs, some of the challenges are: -An audience that doesn’t necessarily arrive at start time, and won’t necessarily stay till the end. They’re leaving early or arriving late because they have/had other things to do, or be at. -The weather that can beat up your props. Rain is bad for most props, but so is the sun! If you use your phone to play your music and it’s sitting in the sun, it will overheat! -The wind, this is its own challenge, it comes out of nowhere and can ruin tricks, especially if you’ve got something hidden behind a silk! -You’re competing with the noise of the rest of the fair, so it’s hard to have quiet moments in the show.
Despite all of these challenges, I love performing at fairs! It’s one of the few places where you can do a lot of shows every day and really polish material! Performing at fairs is where I developed my 6 R’s to Working on Your Show system for improving my show.
Every summer, I get multiple routines that go from an idea to a polished A level trick by performing at fairs!
