Tag: magic show

Still Working On It…

Months ago I started working on my version of Goshman’s Cards Thru Newspaper trick. My version ended up taking out everything I didn’t like about the trick, which are the cards and the newspaper. I ended up replacing them with Polaroid pictures and an envelope. It’s still a work in progress.

A couple weeks ago I was invited to be a guest at a magic club meeting that took place over zoom. One thing they did was allow people to perform and get critique from Patrick Martin, who also did a presentation during the meeting.

Only a handful of people took the club up. I volunteered to do something if they had space and wouldn’t get in the way of club member’s having the chance to be critiqued. They had plenty of space, so I did my trick with Polaroid pictures.

There was some great feedback, mostly with how bad my pictures were and how they showed up on the screen. They are 100% correct, here’s a screenshot:

magic trick

The reflection from my ring light made the picture hard to see. There are a couple of solutions for this:

  • Spray them with matte spray to dull the gloss
  • Have the camera behind the ring light and bring the pics past the ring light
  • Have more contrast between the animal and background in the actual picture
  • Remake the picture so that it’s not glossy (i.e. fake Polaroid)

I think the final solution will be a combination of all of the above.

Building a Better Cannon

The other day I was chatting with another performer who is building a flea circus and I mentioned I’ve 3d printed a couple. Right now there’s a small cannon 3d file on the internet that some people are using for their flea circus’s, however in my opinion it’s pretty big:

One of the reasons for its size is that it holds a party popper inside of it. Also it wasn’t designed for a flea circus. Because of this, it’s not going to scale down smaller if you still want it to shoot out the party popper.

Personally I don’t need it to shoot the party popper, so designed a cannon to shoot out flash paper.

This will be printed in two parts, that’s so that I don’t have to deal with supports in the print. This will speed up the printing process, and I’ll just glue the two together.

To give you an idea of size, the light blue base is about 1.5 inches in diameter. It’s printing right now, so we’ll see how it turns out!

A Gag Saves the Show!!

Right now some of the only live, in person performing that’s available to do are masked, no contact, socially distant, small group magic shows. These are magic shows for kids. The big challenge with these shows is wearing a mask when performing for younger children (ages 3-5).

One thing that I’ve added to the show is a prop that I built for a show a couple of summers ago, but the routine never played well. The prop that I build are Remote Control Chattering Teeth!

I started out using them as a warm up, which is right out of David Ginn’s book Comedy Warm Ups for Children’s Shows. However, I quickly moved the routine deeper into the show, and it’s not a warm up, but part of a full routine that I was working on.

The teeth are now used in the Silk to Peach routine, and that routine has built out into a 7 minute routine full of laughs! I’m glad I dug the teeth out again and started using them!

The Darkest Corner…

A few months ago Master Payne turned me onto a book called The Darkest Corner by Ben Hart. I wasn’t familiar with Ben, but Payne told me the book has some unusual magic trick and some unusual methods in it.

I ordered the book right way and have been doing one trick in it at my shows (virtual and in person) this summer. That trick is his Silk in Peach, where the effect is a signed silk reappears inside of a peach. It took some playing to come up with a fun routine, and I think it’s a perfect trick for in-person, no contact, socially distant magic shows.

My solution to having something signed when you can’t get 6 feet from someone and they can’t touch any props is that I ask them to name an animal. I then draw the animal on the silk and write their name. Pretty simple. The production from the peach is visually amazing and that quickly made this trick the “meat” of my summer show.

Look into the book, it’s great!

Make It Work…

In my different shows I have many different table tops, but only one main base. It’s a Collector’s Workshop table base and I just screw the correct table top to the base for the show I’m doing. In my small group, no contact, socially distant magic show, I’m using the base on my small case.

A friend of mine saw what I was doing a he had an old base from a Jumbo Sidekick that no longer exists that he gave me. Unfortunately at some point Collector’s Workshop changed the diameter of the pole that screws into the flange that’s attached to the table.

To fix the problem, I made the flange out of clay with threads that match the larger pole. I then made a mold of this flange and cast it in resin.

Here’s the two flanges:

What I made took about an hour to make, and cost only a few bucks in material. It’s probably not as durable as the metal flange is, however the case isn’t heavy, so it works.

It’s nice to not have to keep moving around the table base. The show that uses this case doesn’t have a table, so now the case is totally self contained!

Being Present…

Frequently something cool will happen to me and my wife will say, “how do things like that always happen to you?” The answer is simple, I’m present in life. I look at things, I talk to people and an generally aware of what’s happening around me.

Here’s an example of being present, I was at a history museum in New Mexico and saw this medical display. Can you spot the juggler’s prop that was put in there?

Here’s a closer loot at it:

It’s a diabolo! It even says it on the edge of it. How did it end up there? I’m guessing it belonged to a doctor and whoever was putting the display together just assumed it was medical.

Noticing this wasn’t a huge life changing thing, but it’s being aware of the things around you. When you are creating magic, or performing being aware of the situations around you can lead to some great discoveries!

That Was Cute…

For the last twenty years or so, I’ve tried to have a show that people don’t call “cute”. I want what I do to have some edge or be amazing, and not simply cute. However recently a show producer called something I did cute and I was excited for that comment! I was doing my new routine to my Polaroids to Envelope trick that I’ve written about on this blog.

What makes the trick “cute” is the story, it’s a personal story about my family. It’s a real, honest and true story. It’s also something outside of my comfort zone. I do joke based magic tricks, and while I do reveal personal things about my life, this is the first thing I’ve written that was more about the story than the jokes.

The show producer commented that she had a kid and the story was really relatable. Maybe it’s me getting older, but that comment really warmed my heart. Performing is about connecting with people. Usually I do that through fart jokes, but I did it through parenting this time. This routine took me out of my comfort zone and it paid off.

Is my show going to have a huge shift because of this one success? Nope. This trick does add some texture to my show and I will continue to explore writing like this in the future.

Too Much Procedure For The Payoff

After being in magic most of my life, I still love it. That’s not to say that I unconditionally love any trick, there are plenty of bad ones. For example I had this one come through my Facebook feed:

4 ace from shuffle deck

Find the 4 Ace ace from shuffle deckSleight of hand trick

Posted by Panha Magician on Friday, June 12, 2020

For a four ace production it’s pretty bad, and the payoff after all that procedure heavy shuffling doesn’t justify the time it took to get there. After all of that shuffling, at least give me a flash production of the four aces, don’t just take them off the top of the deck.

For a social media video, a better trick would be a couple of riffle shuffles and then a flash production, and you’d be at less than 30 seconds of video and it’d be a much stronger trick. For one minute to simply turn the top cards over, you’d need some novelty or cardistry type shuffling to make it interesting.

Fask Masks…

Well, here’s the thing about doing live, in person shows that have to be outdoors in Seattle, you have to deal with the rain. The types of places I’m doing these “socially distant” magic shows at are typically indoors. I’m doing them outside because of COVID regulations. Guess what happened to yesterday’s shows, they got rained out.

In yesterday’s blog post I mentioned I’d be talking about doing your show wearing a face mask. I was going to play a bit more with mic placement, but here’s what I learned. Having a mic inside your mask works much better than outside. You don’t have to project your voice as hard to get it to pick up on the mic. The downside of having it inside your mask is that sometimes the audience can hear you breathing.

Now to performing, it’s hard to use your face to convey feelings. You really need to use your body and posture to do that. After our first “socially distant” shows a couple of days ago my daughter said, “it’s like being in a broadway show, you need to use your body to express yourself” and she’s 100% right!

My First Socially Distant Show…

It’s been over three months since the last show that I did for a live audience. Yesterday I did a “socially distant” magic show for a summer day camp for younger kids. It was a lot of fun, but it was also a lot of work. There are a lot of challenges with these shows, but I still prefer it to a virtual magic show.

I did three magic shows at one location yesterday, and each show had nine kids and one adult. Then they put space in between each chair. I’m not 100% sure if I understand why the kids need to space out as they’re together playing all day, but I’m just happy to perform, so not going to complain too much. As we all know, if you want to build any crowd energy, it’s much easier when they are sitting next to each other. With this set up it was much harder to “warm them up” than it would have if the chair were next to each other.

Another big challenge was that I can’t have anyone from the audience come up and help me on stage, or handle any props. This removes a lot of places to play with the audience. I’m lucky that my daughter performs in these shows with me, so she can help with things that I would normally use a kid from the audience for.

In a few hours I have three more “socially distant” magic shows, and I’m going to experiment with something and that’s mic placement. That brings me to probably the biggest challenge in these shows, and that is I have to wear a face mask, so the audience can’t see my face. I’ll write more about this tomorrow.

Overall I think “socially distant” magic shows are a workable solution to doing live shows.