magic show – Page 37 – MagicShow.Tips

No Bad Ideas…

One of the things I try to do is act on most of my ideas. No matter how bad, impractical, or not my style it is. Just working them out is a good exercise for my brain. Most of these ideas will never make it into my show. Here’s an idea I’ve had in my … Continue reading “No Bad Ideas…”

Here’s an idea I’ve had in my head for a little while:

I’ve come up with several methods for it, all of which are very impractical. This one is probably the most usable version of the trick.

The downfall is that the trick isn’t how unpractical the method is, it’s that it’s a small trick. Visually it’s hard to see, and it’s got a very specific spot in a show that at can be. This trick has to be the opening of a card set, or when you introduce an additional deck of cards into a card set.

I’m glad I worked through the methods and got to work out my creativity muscles.

Magic and Dinner…

Whenever I book a gig at a banquet I always mention that I do not perform while people are eating. The booker 95% of the time is OK with that and the 5% that aren’t OK are gigs I pass on. However of the ones that book, I would say a good half of them I end up performing while people are eating.

There are a few reasons for this, the most common one is that people don’t consider desert part of the meal. I consider desert part of the meal or at least part of “eating” and it has the same problems that the main meal has for the show.

Those problems are that when people are eating, they aren’t engaged in the show. They can’t laugh and clap like they normally would when not eating. Then once they get used to responding by not responding, they will not respond once they are done eating.

Unfortunately when you get to the gig and people are eating and you’re told to go on, there are really two things you can do:

1: Start the show
2. Don’t start the show.

Both have pluses and minuses you need to consider. Starting the show may affect the reception of your show. Not starting the show may affect your relationship with the booker. Also due to time restraints on the venue, it may not be possible to delay the show, so your option would be to actually not do the show.

In most situations I start the show and plow through it. However you need to do what’s right for you!

Echo…Echo…

Doing a stage show in a room that’s not designed for a show can be rough on the performer. Last night I did a show in a very echoy venue. It’s hard to perform in places like that. I really need to slow down my rate of speech for venues where there is an echo.

One of the things that I need to remember is to keep my rate of speech slow and take a lot of pauses at the periods and commas. That will help what I’m saying not step on the echo, and let the whole audience get what I’m saying and have time to process it before I talk again.

One helpful thing I did was walk around the venue while I was mic’d to hear what I sounded like. Sound does change a lot once you have a room full of people, however it gave me a feel for how the audio might sound.

The key is to be aware of the situation and not to complain. The event can’t remove the echo from the room, so you’ve got to be a pro and deal with it.

One of the things that I don’t really do is perform as a character. What I mean by character is dressing up like a cowboy and being a “cowboy magician”. Some people perform as a popular movie character, or celebrity.

The main reason I don’t do this is that I can’t character act, and most magicians can’t either. Many think they can, without any acting training, and these are probably the same people that get upset when an actor learns a magic trick and people think that trick is amazing.

Doing a character is more that just a costume. For example here’s someone that performs “as Sponge Bob:

Unfortunately they don’t do a voice, they don’t do the trick that Sponge Bob would do. It’s a guy wearing a cheap outfit doing a normal show. This in my opinion is a cash grab, someone trying to make a buck and not giving a sh!t. I don’t know his life circumstance, maybe he really needs the money, but this is a very short sighted way to get it.

A better way would be to take some acting classes, learn whatever character you are going to be doing, select material that fits it. Here’s a good example of doing it right:

This performer is doing a Captain Jack Sparrow style character, however the costume is correct to the character. It’s not a halloween costume. Also look at the material selection, he’s using swords and it looks like a sword basket in the background. This is a show that makes sense with the character.

If you do a character, do it right. If you care, audiences will care.

Make it Bigger!

One thing I’m trying to do is make things play larger, so it’s easier to see them from the back of the theater. I think this is something that’s really overlooked by many magicians. Sometimes you can’t make something larger, like when you are doing Miser’s dream, the coins size will max out to a point when they are no longer believable as a coin.

One trick that I love is the Coin in Bottle, however it does play fairly small. The nice thing is that the trick has an audio component to it. The audience can hear it rattling around inside the bottle. I really liked the idea of creating an impossible object that I could give away. My idea was to do a tennis ball in bottle:

The use of the topit worked great in a live setting, but not so well in a video. The other method I used a sponge tennis ball that I had cut in half and hallowed out. I would just smash the bottle onto it, collapsing it under the bottle as the other real tennis ball popped into view. Both methods had advantages and disadvantages.

I no longer do this trick in the show as I’m lazy and putting the tennis balls into the bottles was a pain in the butt and not worth the pay off. For me the thing is to keep thinking bigger and actually trying to make it play bigger!

Production Value and You

One of the things I noticed while watching Shawn Farquhar’s show the other day was his use of production value in the show. It’s something that a lot of magicians, especially ones who come out of the comedy world don’t use enough of. It’s also something that adds a lot to the show.

For example he uses different lighting for different parts of the show, not just a general wash. This adds texture to the show, however it’s something that you can’t do in most non-theater venues. Some higher end corporate events or conventions in ballrooms will have lighting options. I’ve only encountered this a few times in hotel ballrooms.

My opinion is to design a show that works both ways. So it piece will work and play with a general wash, however when you have the option for lights, you can use it.

I keep a thumb drive with everything a theater could want on it in my case. This has all of my cues from lighting, video to audio, as well as the audio files. I always have it, so if I have someone to run the lights, I’m good to go!

Show Flow…

Frequently on internet magic groups people talk about set lists. I’m always amazed at how many people just make up the show order as they go. They justify this as selecting their show to what the audience will like in the moment. In theory this is a good idea, but your show will lack tightness, … Continue reading “Show Flow…”

Having a set list and following it allows you to work on your show as a show, your segues get better, your prop management is better. You will have less wasted motion, than if you are randomly grabbing a prop. This gives the audience a sense that you know what you’re doing.

I really feel like my show started to grow as a show, not as a collection of acts when I started doing it according to a set list. This doesn’t mean you can’t vary the list occasionally, but you strive for a consistent, preplanned show order. This has helped me enormously as my career has grown and from when I’ve started working in venues that want me to submit a set list for the theater crew.

Put your show down on paper and learn it like a show!

Just Another Show…

Recently I’ve started performing in a new market/venue for me. I’m lucky that a lot of my friends work, or have worked this market and I was able to ask them a lot of questions before my first show. Knowledge is key to breaking into any market. It’ll keep you from making rooking mistakes, and … Continue reading “Just Another Show…”

One of the best pieces of advice that I got from my agent was, “act like you’ve been there before”. This is an amazing mindset to have. Don’t walk in all wide eyed like a kid on the first day of kindergarten. Walk in like the senior in high school. Sure there will be challenges, but really none of it’s a big deal.

That leads me to the second best piece of advice that I was given, also from my agent was, “It’s just another gig” and that’s true. You just do your show. You can get all excited about all the bells and whistles that now surround the venue, but at the end of the day, you just do the show you were booked to do.

If you keep changing the show you’ve polished ,then your show will suffer. In my opinion, it’s better to slowly tweak the show you do to fit the venue.

Real vs. Manufactured Moments

One of the reasons live entertainment is unique is that anything can happen and each show has the potential to be unique. The problem comes in when you have performers who refuse to go off track, and strictly stick to the script. When you ignore things that come up and don’t, “live in the moment” … Continue reading “Real vs. Manufactured Moments”

One of the reasons live entertainment is unique is that anything can happen and each show has the potential to be unique. The problem comes in when you have performers who refuse to go off track, and strictly stick to the script. When you ignore things that come up and don’t, “live in the moment” you are missing out on a gold mine of stuff that can happen.

One of the things in my show is I have places where the person onstage can have a real moment onstage with me, not a manufactured one. Then I get to play, we can see where it goes. Sometimes it doesn’t go anywhere and that’s the risk, however the reward outweighs the risk.

The only hard part is to recognize when real moment becomes a manufactured moment. This is something that will happen with time. You’ll learn that if you ask a specific question within a certain contex you’ll typically get a handful of answers. Over time you’ll end up with a response to those. That’s when the real moment becomes a manufactured moment. There’s nothing wrong with a manufactured moment. I have a ton of them in my show.

Next time you perform, ask a question and play with the answer you’re given.

Reading Minds…

In my show I do a bit that’s a “spectator as mind reader” sort of bit. That’s where one person from the audience tells another person what they are thinking. This is an interesting sort of trick in that you are removed from the magic or mind reading. It comes down to how it’s framed, … Continue reading “Reading Minds…”

One of the things to make this trick work onstage is that both people need to be surprised that the other one knows what’s happening. What I mean by that is if you “stooge” one or both people they will not react with genuine surprise and the trick will lack impact. Using an “instant stooge” where you cue someone in real time is an method that’s slightly better than preparing the person before the show, as you will get a more genuine reaction…but still not as good as if they their thought is random.

So how do you do this trick? There are many ways, my first introduction to this was from a book by Ken Dyne. He has a great routine and method, but it’s not for how I work, however it got me interested in the premise.

In my roving show I do a think where I guess a color someone is thinking of multiple times. As I did this more and more, I wanted to make it more challenging for me as a performer, and I started having another person guess with me and I would talk them through the process. Essentially I would guide their guess, and that started to play really well. While I was clearly guiding them, both people would react when one revealed the color to the other. Doing this trick really showed me the impact a person could have.

In my stage show, I’ve decided to show the process of mind reading. This works great for my style of performing. I’m teaching the person how I do the trick…then they actually do it! My favorite part is after the show, when people surround the person from the audience that read another person’s mind and try to get them to tell them how they did it. In my method, the person don’t know how they do it, they just did what I told them to do, which is what everyone saw.

I guess my point is to strive to strong premises and clean methods that work you and your style of performing.