magician – MagicShow.Tips

The Nest of Envelopes Trick

For the Nest of Envelopes, I need to figure out what is going to end up inside the envelopes. I’m thinking that a choice will be made as each envelope is opened. And those choices will narrow it down to a single thing. Then that single thing or representation (i.e., picture of it) will be in the innermost envelope.

While I hate for this to end up being a card trick, it looks like it will be. A deck of cards lends itself to being a group of items that can be grouped in a lot of different ways that are easily remembered. You can give people choices like: color, suit, letter or number, odd or even, male or female, exact value (i.e., four). A performer friend and I sat down and tried to brainstorm different things that could be grouped in different ways, hopefully four or five groups. We didn’t come up with anything that was good or easy for a person to understand.

If the trick is going to end up being a playing card prediction, then the obvious choice is an invisible deck. I travel with Rough Stick, so I quickly made an invisible deck:

I don’t know if this will be the final method, but it’s nice because it’s self-contained. The deck can go into the smallest envelope, and I don’t need to add or alter anything. Just open the envelopes, and when we get to the invisible deck, spread it to reveal the selection.

-Louie

Magic Show Running Gag

The School Assembly Tour that I did in April had a running gag in it. It was a bit with Jeff McBride’s BEKOS (smiley face version), and you can see me do it in my School Assembly Set. I really liked how it played, and I’m thinking of adding a running gag to my show.

In the past, I’ve done a thing with the Nest of Boxes, I wrote an article about it over a decade ago called Call Back: My Take on the Nest of Boxes. Basically, I was using the nest of boxes as a running gag throughout the show. I really would like to use them again; however, the reality of how my show travels prohibits me from using a traditional nest of boxes.

The Nest of Envelopes!

The idea is a Nest of Envelopes. The idea is that something is inside a nesting set of 4 or 5 envelopes. The thing inside doesn’t have to be an object that has vanished; it could be a prediction or even some sort of punchline. This opens up a lot more possibilities.

The nice thing about envelopes over a set of boxes is that they pack flat and are much lighter! Also, something that, in an emergency, could be sourced in any city with an office supply store.

-Louie

Magic Show Opener

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…

-Louie

Magic Show Consumables

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:

Here’s what’s in that picture:

Pad of paper
Dollar bills
decks of cards
Gift bags
wet naps
confetti
garbage bags
paper plates
throw coils
produce bags
evidence bags

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!

-Louie
PS: I have written tons of posts about traveling with a magic show on this blog!

Travelling Magic Shows and Gas Prices

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.

That’s just how I see all of this.

-Louie

The Omni Chair AKA Take a Seat!

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.

-Louie

Can’t a TV Just Be a TV?

On the school assembly tour, I used a screen provided by the school. This could be a smart board, TV or projector, anything I could plug an HDMI into. I did have a backup if they didn’t have a screen.

At my last show of the tour, a few minutes before show time, the TV they gave me decided it was a good time to update.

I had been plugged into this TV, and it was turned on for probably 20 minutes when the update started. What I didn’t like was where it said the TV might restart after the update. That could have been during my show!

Luckily, the update completed right before start time, and the TV didn’t need to restart. That’s just something to be aware of when you use other people’s tech. When it fails, and it’s not your fault, but the audience doesn’t know that!

-Louie

School Assembly Audience Layouts

On this school assembly tour most of my audiences are seated in bleachers, with me standing in a basketball court.

On the West Coast, most school assemblies have the kids seated on the floor with my back to a wall. The kids on the bleachers are a better setup. It gives them tiered seating, like in a theater. This makes it easier for everyone to see everything.

The big challenge for me is getting them to pack kids into one section. Here’s an example, let’s say these are the bleachers in the gym and it’s a small school with about a 150 kids.

They will come in and some classes the top row, some the bottom and the rest in random spots in the middle. That’s spread out over all the bleachers. That doesn’t give you a crowd, it gives you 7 groups. It’s hard to get any energy going. When I try to pack them into on section of the bleachers, they always fight me on it. Telling me they won’t fit (they always do), or that they keep the grades separate because the older kids get bored. I bet the do, because they’re not part of the crowd! It’s easy for them to disengage from what’s happening if they’re off in their own corner. It takes a lot of work to convince these schools to move the kids into a crowd, but it’s worth it.

-Louie
Click here for more information about how you can learn this School Assembly Show check out the School Assembly Set!

The Not Fun Part of Being on the Road

Traveling around the country doing a magic show is a ton of fun! However, it’s not all fun. Two days ago, I got a flat tire. My rental car didn’t have a spare; many new cars come with an inflator and a can of tire sealant. Which is way inferior to a spare tire! This is only good for a small leak; if you get a big blowout, you’re stuck.

Two days ago, I hit something in the road, and my tire got a small hole in it. No big deal, I was able to take care of it with the tire sealant and make it to my next gig on time. After that show, I went to a tire shop in a small town. I told them what happened and that I used tire sealant to get back on the road.

They examined the tire and told me that they had sprayed it and couldn’t find anything wrong with it. I was shocked at this! I saw where the hole in the tire was making bubbles from the tire sealant on the side of the road. It was really a strange interaction. I know you’re not supposed to drive with just the sealant plugging the hole in a tire for very long. When I got to the next city, I went to a Big O Tires, which is a national chain, not a small shop as I had been to previously. They found the hole and plugged it.

While chatting with the guys at the Big O Tires, they were amazed that the people at the other tire shop didn’t clean out the sealant before looking for the hole. I agreed! Now I’m back on the road and feel way safer about my car!

The moral of this story is that I need my car to get me to the gigs. If I had listened to the first small town tire shop, which I knew was wrong, I probably would have had another flat tire! Keep your car in working order.

-Louie

Changing a Routine

The ending of my opening magic routine in the school assembly show wasn’t hitting as hard as I thought it should. Originally it was:
Educational content
Educational content
Show ice cream and put into cup
Spoon manipulation
Ice Cream in a cup turns into streamers

I think it wasn’t hitting as hard because there was too much time between putting the ice cream in the cup and it changing to streamers. I realized I could logically do the spoon manipulation, then put the ice cream into the cup. I gave it a try at a show yesterday, and it made the ice cream changing to streamers play much better. The new order is:

Educational content
Spoon Manipulation
Educational content
Ice cream goes into a cup, then changes to streamers

It’s way better, and I also like having two shorter educational chunks than one longer one. This morning, I rearranged the video that goes with my show to reflect this in hopefully a more seamless way than yesterday.

-Louie
Click here for more information about how you can learn this School Assembly Show check out the School Assembly Set!