magic show – Page 61 – MagicShow.Tips

On The Road…

This morning I’m at the airport heading to California for a week of shows. I packed my mobile gimmick making kit and am hoping to get some work in on a couple of gimmicks that I want to use for a more formal close up set. One of my goals this summer is to get some sort of a close up show in the works.

My mobile gimmick making kit consists of two zip lock bags with variety of items that can be used for making gaffed cards and general magic gimmicks. Here’s some of what’s in there:

Dental Dam
Elastic Thread
Rubber cement
Hobby knife
Cutting mat
Magnets
Double stick tape

That’s not a comprehensive list, but gives you an idea of what I travel with to make gimmicks while I’m on the road. Being able to make or repair gimmick while travelling has saved me a ton of headaches over the years!

More Thoughts On Shin Lim…

After having a day to think about the Shin Lim show I saw in Vancouver, I’ve got a few more thoughts. I’m still disappointed that the majority of the show wasn’t him, Colin Cloud (who did the majority of the show) is great and I think he’ll end up with his own big show out of this. However I was buying a Shin Lim ticket, not a Colin Cloud ticket.

First of all, I think one of the amazing things that he did was do close up and actually perform for the camera! Previously magicians had simply done their act, and it just happened to be on camera. While a small shift, what Shin did was perform to the camera, not the audience or people sitting at the table. This makes it soo much more fun to watch.

Playing to the camera is a subtle shift, but will change how magic is done on projection. Just like how David Blaine changed how magic on TV is performed. Blaine turned the camera to the audience and made it about their reaction, this also made it more fun to watch.

Shin performing to the camera feels like he’s performing for you, not that you are watching a performance for other people. I like this, and something that I need to consider as I thing more about putting together a formal close up set.

If You Build It, They Will Come…

There’s a place in McMinnville Oregon that I’ve always wanted to visit called the Evergreen Air and Space Museum. Every time I’ve driven by it, it’s either closed, or I don’t have time to stop. It’s in a town about an hour from Portland, kinda in the middle of nowhere. This is a huge museum … Continue reading “If You Build It, They Will Come…”

This is a huge museum with water park and people come from all over to visit. Why to do they travel so far to look at airplanes, or go down a water slide? Simple, they have a couple of pretty unique offerings. The museum has the Spruce Goose, which is the largest wood plane ever constructed. In addition to the Spruce Goose, the water park has a 747 that’s been converted to a water slide!

How does this relate to a magic show? Simple, if you create a product that people can’t get else where, they will come to you. This is more than just a unique personality, every air museum has a personality, this one has the SPRUCE GOOSE and that’s the only place in the world you can get that. What unique offering does your show have where you are the only place an audience can get it?

Sometimes New Things Hurt…

It’s been a while since I’ve really bombed at a show. Last night I got to remember what that feels like. I was doing a show in a comedy room, and I was only doing a 10 mins, however it was ten mins of new material. They put me as the show closer, no big deal with my normal stuff, but with new stuff, I was already uneasy.

It was a long show, and by the time I got up the audience was tired. I’m not making excuses for myself, that just made it harder for me to pull them up. I didn’t bomb, but I wasn’t happy with the show. They audience was with me, but they the material I was doing didn’t have any jokes or premises, it was simply the trick. There was nothing for them to really engage with besides the trick.

Effect wise everything went well, but there’s soo much more than that. It’s encouraging that the tricks work and are deceptive, but I need to sit down and write some jokes, figure out some premises and make these routines better.

10 Card Poker Deal…

In my continuing quest to make the Ten Card Poker Deal play on stage, I did four shows for middle school kids yesterday and included it in my show. I was a bit worried, about whether or not they understand the rules of poker. The poker craze peaked 15 or so years ago, so it’s not a huge as it was. They all were aware of poker and I helped them out with the order of hands.

What I love about the Ten Card Poker Deal is that the whole thing seem so fair. I basically told the kids I was going to cheat. It was interesting, they started to put conditions on the deal. Of course due to how the trick works, they can pretty much do anything they want, I just might have to guide it a little bit.

The real reason for the trick is to get to the kicker ending I’ve come up with. I prediction the outcome of the final hand of cards. This ending has been playing really well. I like this ending and it makes the trick feel less like I got lucky three times, and puts an ending to the trick. As is (95% of the time) , the ten card deal really has no finale.

Know More Than Seven Tricks…

There’s been advice that you only need to learn a few tricks and you can do those the rest of your life. Sure that may have been good advice in 1910, but now TV, and streaming video eat up material. Every famous magician in the world has done more than a dozen different tricks.

Having a background in magic and sleight of hand bailed me out of a situation last week. I went to do a trick in my show and the deck of cards I use for that trick wasn’t there. It was there when I did the early show, it was gone, and I never found it later. I was already into the trick with three people onstage. I freaked out, but then knowing tricks saved me!

How I bailed myself out was I had another deck that which I rip in half later in the show and I used that deck to do “cards across”. The method was pretty crude, just palm three cards and add them to the other stack. I then forced a three and used that for the number of cards to be moved.

The trick played well, but had I not been a magic nerd, it wouldn’t have turned out very well. That background in magic and sleight of hand is “insurance” for when things don’t go well.

Working On It…

Last week I spent four days performing at a county fair and working on a new show. At the end of the week, the sound guy commented that the show had gotten a lot tighter. That was great to hear, and it felt like it was getting tighter, however it still has a long way to go.

One thing that really helped was committing to the show. If something didn’t play like I wanted it to, then I shouldn’t follow it up with something from my normal show. I need to do the show in the show order that I have come up with. This will make me more confident in the show.

Show order is a huge thing, it really adds tightness to your show. It makes prop management easy. The less time you spend fumbling for props the better!

Working On It…

This week is my first county fair of the fair season this summer. I did three shows today. The first show was the new show that I’m working on, the second was my normal show and the third show was a combination of the two. All the shows went well despite the normal or abnormal challenges of performing during a fair.

The new show is what’s more important than the old show to me right now. Here’s the huge difference between the two…jokes and premises. The new show hardly has any and I really feel it. The show is also lacking in transitions, it’s got a long way to go. That’s the nice thing about these shows at fairs, I get to do a lot of shows in a short amount of time.

One of the things that was hitting harder than I thought was that the 10 Card Poker Deal. I thought it would be a lot harder to get it to transition to the stage, but the two times I did it yesterday it played well. I may try to do it in all three shows today. It’ll be in the preshow for one show and in the body of the show for the other two.

Deck Ripping Routine…

A while ago on this blog I wrote up my deck ripping routine. Basically it’s the split deck trick, but instead of a factory made deck, you are using a deck that you rip in half with your bare hands. One of the things I like about doing this trick is the “barrier to entry”, you have to put in the time to be able to do the trick.

The other day during my preshow at a library gig I had a kid helping me and I just kept classic forcing the two of hearts to him. I was playing around and would top change the two for another card, then rip it in half and throw it away. Then the kid would pick the two of hearts that I just torn up. I did this a couple times. Finally I turned the deck face up and had him pick a card that wasn’t the two and I had him stand on it (after I switched it). I then ripped the deck in half so he couldn’t pick the two. Once the deck was ripped the kid (on his own) reached down to look at the card he was standing on and was very much amazed that the card had changed into the two of hearts!

This is a decent ending to a multiple force routine. You really can’t do anymore, the deck is destroy and the card has changed one last time. Structurally and logically, I need to work on it, but for this “improv” situation it was fun.

While I will probably never do this routine again, it got me thinking about it. What if I used a flap card with a lock. The person picks a card that’s not the force and you set it facing the audience. You rip the deck, and then the card visually changes into the force card. I’m not sure this is better than the kid reaching for the card he’s standing on, because his reaction really sold the trick.

New 45 Min Show…

My big project this summer is to work on a new 45 minute show. To be completely honest, it’s not 100% new, as some of the material is stuff I’ve done before. The goal at the end of the summer is to have a second show that’s an A show, or at least a strong B show.

Currently I’ve done the show two times, and hitting the road next week, so I’ll get a ton of chances to work on it. There are some things in the show that I like, and some that I don’t. This is one of those things that over time, I think will start to fit together.

Having only done the show a couple of times, I realized I use the fake explanation of the trick three times. I need to cut out at least one of them, and space out the remaining two. Ideally, I’d cut two of the fake explanations and have only one.

It’s time to put the work in….