Tag: magic show

Take Them Off…

One thing I don’t get is performers who wear sunglasses when they perform outdoors. It blocks your connection to the audience. I don’t care if you have a sensitivity to light, it hurts your show. I get that standing in the sun is uncomfortable, but so is sweating in 107 degree heat.

At the ND State Fair, on the stage next to my stage is a music stage. Daniel Kosel is performing, and all week he’s been wearing sunglasses for his shows. I want to note that his show is a lot less of a show than the other acts I’ll be talking about later in this post.

Daniel Kosel performing at the ND State Fair

Daniel is just a guy with a guitar, who stands there and sings. He sings slower songs and mostly older songs. His performance isn’t very dynamic, there’s nothing he does that makes you want to watch him, he’s more of an ambient act, than a mainstage act. While there’s nothing wrong with that, I also don’t think this is the venue for that. He’d be better in a smaller, indoor type venue.

Yesterday on the same stage they had the 188th Army Band of North Dakota. This is one of the Army/National Guard Band, and if you ever get the chance to see any of the army bands, do it! They performers are all super talented and very dynamic. They do upbeat music, and their show is super tight! Any performer can learn a lot about watching these band.

188th Army Band of North Dakota

If you look at the pic of the 188th band above, you’ll notice the guy in the center is wearing sunglasses. While I’m not a fan, I also give him a pass, as he’s not the front person, it’s the lady to the left that’s the signer. The guy in the middle was doing a guitar solo when the pic was taken.

The final show of the day was Sting Rays Jukebox Rock. This show is a high energy show that’s full of production and is a lot of fun. Sting Ray plays oldies, but songs everyone knows. He’s got a great look and a tight show. He does a good job connecting with the audience. He’s very likeable onstage.

Sting Ray’s Jukebox Rock

You’ll notice that no one in Sting Ray’s show is wearing sunglasses. I know this pic was taken after sun down, but at his earlier shows while the sun was up, everyone’s eyes were visible.

I’ve always told performers you can learn more about performing by watching other shows than you can by doing your show. You learn what you like or don’t like, and once you know what you don’t like, you can try to avoid those things in your show.

Straight Up Fork Bending…

A couple of years ago I created a original (as far as I know) method for making a fork bend. The cool thing about it is I never touch the fork that bends. This came about when I was chatting with a mentalist about metal bending and asked a stupid question, “does anyone do a spoon straightening routine?” He said that a lot of the optical illusion parts of the method probably wouldn’t work as well with the bend going backwards.

That conversation put the thought in my head, and I ended up creating a method and publishing it in Vanish Magazine called The Perceptive Bend.

In the picture above you see the lady confirming the two forks are exactly the same before one of the forks bends in her hand. I think the method should be pretty obvious if you reread the first paragraph of this post, or you can track down Vanish Magazine issue 57 (I think it’s that issue).

I don’t normally do metal bending in my roving show, however I had a bunch of forks leftover from doing it virtual shows, I took them to the fair to use them up. After doing it live this week, I’m thinking of adding it to my roving at fairs. It gets a really good reaction, and I think I’ve finally figured out how it fits in with how I perform.

Short Sets…

After a day, I’m starting to settle into the swing of things with the World of Wonder side show. It’s very different from how I’m used to performing as the whole show, or in a 15 minute chunk. The two acts that are about three minutes are outside my normal comfort zone. My show uses a lot of personality, and for it to work, I need you audience to like me, which can take time.

When I’m in variety shows and they want two shorter bits, I normally try to get them to do one longer chunk as if the audience doesn’t like me initially it gives me some time to try to win them over. With two short pieces that are separated in a show, if they don’t like me after the first one, it’s really hard to get them to like me at the second spot.

For my two acts during this run, I picked one thing that has a lot action and applause points, but also sells me a little bit. The second spot is uses a lot of attitude and hype, which works as a second spot, but not as a first. For the second one to work, you need to like me a little bit.

I think the two acts this week are finding their place…

Summer Camp Shows…

Recently I did a short run of smaller summer camp shows. These are for kids ages 4 to about 11 and due to the current COVID rules, they happened outdoors. In the past I always did them inside as it eliminates distractions, however I’d rather do the do with the slightly harder conditions than not do the gig right now.

During my first one about halfway through the 40 minute show it started raining! I’d know what to do and was waiting for cues for the people who worked there as to whether I should wrap it up. I got no signal from them, so the plowed through in very light rain for the remaining twenty minutes! They kids seemed to not care.

During these shows I dress casually. The main reason is that when I look like what the younger kids normally see, it’s easier to not have them be scared of me. Another reason is that being out and doing multiple shows in one day will tear up a more formal costume, especially when you don’t have a place to change out of your costume between shows. The final reason is that my character isn’t a magician, but a dad who can do some cool stuff, so it fits.

It’s nice to be back out there making kids laugh!

Out to 3D Print Lunch…

One of the tricks I’ve been doing a lot lately is my “Free Pitcher of Beer” trick that’s based on the out to lunch magic trick principle. I’m packing for a show and realized I didn’t have any thick rubberbands to hold the cards together. I quickly made a 3d model of a business card holder and printed it out!

His holder has a little recess in it to hold the half card. The half card is actually taped in place, so it can’t come out. In the traditional method, friction holds it in place.

We’ll see how well this actually plays out for real people tomorrow!

The A.C.T. Card Trick…

Here’s the second video of me revising a packet trick that I got with a collection of magic that I acquired. Today’s trick is the A.C.T. (another card trick) by Bill Pryor.

Here’s a demo of the trick as written, then how I revised the trick:

The big problem with this packet trick is that the whole effect is a “kicker” without the initial ending. What I mean by that is that you start by asking someone to think of a card, but you never reveal it. You need the initial effect for a kicker to really work. I think at the end spectators will still be thinking, “what about the card I was thinking of?”

Also I don’t think the gags are strong enough to carry the trick past you never revealing the card they are thinking of.

Leaving My Show…

One thing that’s great about my show is that I can fly with it. However right now my show is in the trunk of my car at the airport in Sacramento, I flew home during a gap between gigs in California. This summer I’m driving to all of my shows, this is due to rental cars being expensive right now and all of the reports I’ve been seeing about people with rental car reservations being denied a car because the rental car company over booked and there are no cars to rent.

Leaving my show in my car always causes me a little bit of stress. When I left the car I locked up my show case:

In my street show I do a chain escape, so my case is locked to my suitcase and they are both locked to my car by about 75 feet of chain! What that means is that if someone wants to steal my case, they can, it’s just going to be a pain in the butt! It’s not a quick smash and grab.

This gives me a little bit of peace of mind leaving it in another state.

Final Virtual Show…

My final scheduled virtual magic show was yesterday at 9:30am…and it was for a group of middle school aged kids. I’m going to say that middle school age isn’t the ideal demographic for 9:30am. They had fun, and so did I!

This show had some problems which are why virtual shows stressed me out. The big one was my internet dropped about 2 mins from the start of the show. I was back in the zoom before the show started. it’s one of those things that had it happened 5 mins later, it would have been a bigger issue. Zoom also wasn’t recognizing my mic, so I had to use my laptop’s mic. That also wasn’t a huge deal, but it just adds to the stress of these gigs.

I ran this show solo, normally I have my daughter run the production on the show. It was fun, but I’m glad to be back to performing in person.

I had a great time learning to perform in a virtual venue, and I really loved creating magic for virtual shows. I’m not saying I will never do another virtual show, there are just no more on my calendar.

Final Virtual Show…

Today is the the day that I perform my final virtual magic show! I’m pretty excited that I’m back to doing in person shows, however going forward I will still do virtual shows if requested. In the last year and a half, I think I’ve figured it out at a workable level. My virtual show was decent, not crazy amazing, but passable.

The HUGE thing that I’m not going to miss going forward is setting up my studio. I don’t have a dedicated space to do virtual shows, so I had to build and tear down the studio every time I did the show. That made the effort to do the virtual show close to what it would be to drive to an in person show.

The other big headache is technology. I think that’s the thing that was the most stressful about these shows. The internet has mysterious dropped out during shows, or gotten laggy while I was performing. That part that’s completely out of my hands, but affects the perception of how good the show is caused me a lot of stress!

I’m hoping today’s show virtual show is uneventful!

Capping the Kicker…

I’m really trying to clean up the sloppiness that has crept into my show over the last 18 months of not really performing it much. That’s my main goal this week at the fair. However I am adding some newer stuff to the show and also trying to figure that out.

One thing I’m working on in my version of Luca Volpe’s Key of Fate. It’s playing alright, but it was missing some punch at the end. I was trying to figure out what to do, as the trick has a kicker ending, so I can’t really add another kicker on top of the first one.

What I ended up trying was adding some “stinger” music. Music that’s upbeat that I play right after the kicker is revealed, and it worked great! It got a much more applause at the end. Now I’m not sure this is how I want to do it, but it is a definite improvement!