magician – Page 13 – MagicShow.Tips

The Sooner the Better…

I’m a big fan of getting new ideas for magic tricks in front of people as soon as possible. The sooner you can get something new in front of an audience, that sooner you know if it’s good or not. Even with a rough idea, you’ll get a sense of whether or not there’s anything worth pursuing or not.

Personally, I don’t want to waste my time on an idea that doesn’t connect with an audience. Doing a trick once in front of someone will also let you know technically if you are doing the right thing technically. You’ll know if a certain move or sleight fits the rhythm of the trick.

Obviously you must be able to do whatever moves the trick requires at a passable level. This is where having a background in sleight of hand comes in handy, it will make doing new things much easier, than if you don’t normally use sleight of hand.

Do It Backwards!

When I was about 15 years old, I saw John Carney lecture in Minneapolis. One of the things he talked about was doing the pass. He said the best way to create a new pass was to do an existing one backwards. For example a Herman Pass is essentially a Classic Pass Backwards.

Occasionally when I’m jamming with magicians I’ll start to play with a move or an idea backwards and it will yield interesting results. Recently I was talking to a mentalist and the subject of spoon bending came up. I asked him if anyone had done it backwards. What I mean by that is bending the spoon towards the bowl, instead of away from it.

He mentioned that a lot of the optical illusion parts of bends may not work. He then demonstrated the spoon bends that he does, and he was right about them not working with the bend going the opposite direction. However, this playing around with flipping the bend backwards led me to come up with what I think is a new spoon bend!

TLDR: Try doing it backwards!

Coming Full Circle…

The first paid gig I ever did when I was a teenager was an event where I did close up magic lane to lane at a bowling alley. It was a rough gig, and even and a kid after doing it, I knew it sucked. It was a bad show because the event planner was trying to put an activity into an an activity. No one wanted to watch the tricks, I did, they were busy bowling and I as interrupting them.

Over the years I’ve gotten requests to do gigs at bowling alleys and I’ve turned them down. However over 20 years later I finally accepted a roving magic gig at a bowling alley.

Why did I take this gig? I wanted to try it again, and see if I could conquer it. I’m happy to report that last night the show went wonderfully!

What did I do differently 20 years later?

A lot of things have changed. First of all there’s the “David Blaine Factor”, which is that his TV shows have made people aware of what close up magic is. When I was a kid, people didn’t know what close up magic was, and they thought it’d be lame tricks that your uncle Jimmy Does.

This time around I also had over twenty years of performing experience. My close up set was short tricks, nothing too long and drawn out. It gave me a chance to leave if I noticed they were more interested in bowling. Add that to being a much stronger performer than I was as a teenager.

My advice is if you’ve had a rough performing situation in the past that you swore you’d never do again…maybe try it again. I’m glad I did!

Fantastic Information!

If you know me, you know I’m a huge fan of comedy magician Nick Lewin. He was one of the magicians that I saw as a teenager and his style shaped how I perform. He’s someone that had pretty much done it all as a magician. Recently he was on the The Variety Artist Podcast … Continue reading “Fantastic Information!”

If you know me, you know I’m a huge fan of comedy magician Nick Lewin. He was one of the magicians that I saw as a teenager and his style shaped how I perform. He’s someone that had pretty much done it all as a magician.

Recently he was on the The Variety Artist Podcast and it’s a great interview!

He gives a ton of great advice on all aspects of your show. One of the things that I really liked is he mentioned that comedians and comedy magicians have a different definition of what performing “comedy” means.

Most comedy magicians thing performing comedy in a comedy club means being dirty. That’s couldn’t be further from the truth. Performing comedy in a comedy club should mean you have original material. Jokes that move a plot forward. Yes, you can have limited success doing store bought tricks, but at some point to really progress you need to write material!

TLDR: Listen to Nick Lewin’s interveiw

Collecting Magic…

Do you collect magic? Many magicians are hoarders and have boxes of stuff that they buy and almost immediately gets put away. Personally I actively try to not have too much magic kicking around. This is partially because of space, and partially because when I die, it simply becomes garbage. I do collect things, however … Continue reading “Collecting Magic…”

Do you collect magic? Many magicians are hoarders and have boxes of stuff that they buy and almost immediately gets put away. Personally I actively try to not have too much magic kicking around. This is partially because of space, and partially because when I die, it simply becomes garbage.

I do collect things, however it’s a little different than “hoarding” as it’s fairly specific. I collect three shell game sets. Here’s the current collection:

You’ll notice in the bottom center there is a space with no shells. That’s the shell game set that use when I’m out performing. I use Leo Smester’s shell game, and I highly recommend it. The only thing I changed was I don’t use his peas, I use the Perfect Pea made by School For Scoundrels.

Personally I prefer the “bowl” type sets. I had been doing the shells for a little while and found some little bowls in Chinatown when I was a teenager and started doing the shell game with them. Those bowls broke a long time ago, however ever since then I’ve preferred the bowl style.

Be Presentable…

Last week I was chatting with my agent about acts that she wouldn’t represent. One of the things that help make her decision is how the person looks. Unfortunately it is a factor. It’s more that just what you look like as a human, but what does your “look” say.

If you have a wrinkled shirt and a haven’t shaved in a week, she’s not going to put you on her roster. It’s not to say you need to constantly be combing your hair and wear a tuxedo, but your look must look like something / someone a client wants to book.

Magicians love to give David Blaine and Criss Angel a hard time over how they dress. Both of those guys have a much more defined look than 90% of all magicians. You may not care for their style, but they have a style and it’s been thought out.

TLDR: Your look is more than just wearing a tie!

Sometimes You Need To Take the Long Road…

Magicians love to take short cuts and be lazy. Here’s an example, I’m doing a trick where loose rubber bands turn into a rubber band ball. The easy way would simply be to do a shuttle pass during a hand to hand transfer. However I had some conditions that I wanted for the trick: 1: The … Continue reading “Sometimes You Need To Take the Long Road…”

Magicians love to take short cuts and be lazy. Here’s an example, I’m doing a trick where loose rubber bands turn into a rubber band ball. The easy way would simply be to do a shuttle pass during a hand to hand transfer. However I had some conditions that I wanted for the trick:

1: The change had to feel like it was a visual change
2: I needed to end with my hands empty
3: The trick needed to be able to happen at anytime in my show
4: The ball had to be able to bounce

The first and second conditions made something simple like a shuttle pass not the solution for me.

Ending clean made things a bit more complicated. An early idea was to use a gimmicked rubber band ball that was similar to a Silk to Ball Gimmick. However making one that could bounce and not look strange is something I have yet to figure out.

Here’s what I ended up coming up with:

What I ended up doing from a “method” standpoint was a lot more complicated than a shuttle pass, but I think it fulfilled my artistic vision better than a shuttle pass would have.

P.S. The method for this will be in an upcoming issue of Vanish Magazine

When a Magic Trick Stops Becoming a Magic Trick…

It always cracks me up when magicians complain about a magic trick becoming too mainstream. Certain magic tricks become “pitch” items for magic shops. They become pitch items for several reasons, the mains ones being that they are visual and easy to do.

Most of the tricks pitched magic shops are things like Svengali Decks or Scotch and Soda, both easy tricks and fairly visual when done correctly. Then there are tricks that are just visual, but have a high profit margin, like the UFO Floating Card. This is not easy to do, but the profit margin is soo high, even if you get a few returns it’s no big deal.

Then there are tricks like D’lites, which are visual, and easy to do. They took off, and there were pitch carts in malls selling them. They’re a great trick…but not longer a great magic trick. They’ve become just another toy, here’s a version being sold for a few bucks:

Every kid has seen these, and guess what, so have parents. If you have a D’lite in your show and aren’t using it in some very unusual way, you are just showing your audience a toy. Essentially you are up there playing with a GI JOE.

This is not magic.

TLDR: Be better than every 8 year old in your audience and drop your D’lite routine.

Video Rehearsal…

Currently I’m working on something for a show and an article for a magazine for magicians. This is something that I’ll probably only do a couple of times. One of the tools that I’m using to get it show ready is video. I record the trick, takes notes while I watch the video and rehearse some more. Then I repeat the whole thing.

One of the things that I’ve noticed in watching my video is that when I do a certain move that takes a little bit of brain power, I stop smiling and look like I’m doing something. This is just my face. If I cropped the video and you just saw my face and I asked you when I did the move, you’d be able to!

This is the value of video, you can see things that you can’t see in a mirror. When the move happens I need to visually see something, so I can’t see my face in the mirror. I wouldn’t have known my face was giving me away!

TLDR: Video is a helpful tool for rehearsal!

Keep Learning…

Right now I’m learning a fair amount of things that are pretty much new to me. By new, I mean they are things that I don’t really have a solid base skill in. Learning is fun, however there are taking some work.

The first thing I’m learning to do is a “zombie” style floating effect. I’ve played with this principle when I was in highschool, so while it’s not 100% new to me, I really don’t have much experience in it. I’m learning a lot, and Tommy Wonder writing on it and Al Schneider’s books are a lot of help. This is a trick I’ve always wanted to do, and I recently came up with my angle on the trick which makes it semi unique to me.

The next thing I’m working on is a fancy cut (cardistry). I was around when the whole cardistry thing started to boom, but only learned one cut. I’ve wanted to learn some cool cuts for a while, but never really knew where to start. Now that I’ve watched a tutorial, I think it’s fairly easy to be taught. For the most part they have a few base moves that your cut is built off of. If you know the base for your cut already, it’s easy to learn. I need to practice my base!

The final thing I’m working on is learning to rip a deck of cards in half. This being purely a strength thing, is something that will probably take me a year or more to be able to do. I was hanging out with a buddy that’s a “strongman” and he gave me some pointers. Right now I’m able to rip 17 cards and every sunday I add a card to what I’m trying to rip! I anticipate there will be some weeks where I’ll add a card and will stall out for a week or two, so the goal is to be able to rip a deck in 2020.

What are you learning?

Learning new things, whether the go into the show or not will keep you from becoming a dinosaur!