Get Your Stuff Together First!

The other night I was chatting with a magician that I had met at a zoom magic show. He was asking me about working comedy clubs.

There were a couple of things, first he didn’t know his Laughs Per Minute (LPM). That’s a huge thing to know if you want to work in comedy. It’s a good metric to how funny your show is. To calculate this, count all of the laughs in your show and divide that by the length of your show. So if you get 90 laughs in a 45 minute show your LPM’s are 2. A stand up comedian will get about 6 or more, however most magicians won’t get that high. Magic has information that needs to be conveyed for a trick to work. As Bob Sheets once told me there’s comedy time and magic time and they don’t overlap.

Then I asked this magician for his website and video and he said his “site sucked” and his video wasn’t good. I told him that you NEED the correct promo if you want to level up or move into another market. I guess the other option to move into the market is to be soo good that you get work, but that’s a much longer and harder road to take. You’d literally be doing garbage gigs to hope someone sees you that books better gigs and then keep stepping up. There’s nothing wrong with this way, but it’s a lot more legwork than just sending out video and having bookers visit your website.

In a nutshell, my advice for levelling up your show in your current market or to break into a new market is to look at what people who are already in that market have for promo and get your stuff to that level and then start selling! If you reach out to a booker and they ask for a 2-3 min sizzle reel and two 5-8 minute unedited full routines, can you immediately send that? No booker wants to wait a month for you to send them stuff. Sure there’s the odd exotic request for an unusual piece of promo that may take you a couple of days to make, but the booker will understand if it’s truly a strange request.

I know this isn’t a fun answer to how to get work, but it’s what most people need to hear. If you don’t like your promo, how do you expect anyone else to?

-Louie

Recording Your Show for Promo?

A little while ago I was helping a friend with her promo video and all of the videos she sent me were wide shots. They had the whole stage, including unusable parts where speakers were. That wide shot makes cropping in the video to get clear footage of what you’re doing or more importantly your face almost impossible, even when recorded in 4k!

Here’s an example of the framing of the video:

magician promotional video

The video could have been zoomed into the blue line and that would have gotten all of her props adn set pieces. However it really could have been framed to the red line and that would have gotten 95% of the action in her show and if I needed to crop it, it would still be nice and crisp!

When you’re recording your show on a tripod in the back, record it at 4K as that allows some cropping and you can still end up with a high definition video. Also starting with a tighter shot helps a lot with the cropping!

-Louie

Using the Camera Cover

Yesterday I posted about my simple camera shutter that I use to keep my camera from having TVs or projectors time out due to no signal when it’s not in use. In the video below you can see the projector in use at a comedy club gig:

@louiefoxx 68 minute magic show in 103 seconds! #comedymagic #magicshow #oklahomacity #OK #comedyclub #magician #bricktown @bricktowncomedyclub ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

All of the sound/tech people on the little tour of comedy clubs I just did were amazed at how simple of a solution the little 3d printed cover was!

I feel like I should mentioned that both times I’ve flown with the iphone with the camera cover in my backpack, TSA took it out for additional screening. I guess it looks strange on the Xray.

-Louie

Playing BIGGER!

Last week I wrapped up a 12 day gig at the Ohio State Fair. One of the challenges for me was how big the stage was. It was very wide and deep, then the backwall was about 6 feet beyond the end of the stage. That makes a lot of magic hard to focus on. Especially for an act like me that uses handheld props.

Here’s what the stage looks like:

Over the two weeks I learned to play my show BIG using large gestures and working to get bigger reactions out of people onstage. Here’s the highlights of week one:

@louiefoxx Comedy Magic at the Ohio State Fair: Week 1 highlights #ohio #columbus #comedy #magic #statefair #louiefoxx #sizzlereel #familyfun ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

This stage was a fun challenge!

-Louie

New Sizzle Reel

A few days ago I had an agent ask me if I could make them a new version of my promotional sizzle reel. They wanted a version without any text. For context here’s the previous version with text:

The previous have two kinds of text, it has title cards and captions. The agent wanted neither of those. Luckily I kept the video editor project saved, so it wasn’t a huge deal to go back and cut out the text. I think in a sizzle reel, the text is a good transition piece and adds some context to things. However if the client wants one without text, I’ll make them one!

Here’s the new version:

Ultimately the goal is to get work and if someone wants something specific to sell my show, I’ll gladly make it for them!

-Louie

20 min magic show in 44 seconds

Last month I performed in a magic show in California with five other magicians. Here’s the highlight reel of my show:

@louiefoxx 20 min comedy magic show in 44 seconds! #hermosabeach #magic #comedymagic #california #louiefoxx #hoopandcup #balancing ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

Also if you’re not following me on Tik Tok, shoot over there and give me a follow at tiktok.com/@louiefoxx!

-Louie

How To Show Them What You Do!

Five Simple Steps to Making a Sizzle Reel

Let’s start out with what a sizzle reel is, they are typically a short, fast paced promotional video. In variety entertainment they are usually some between one and three minutes long.  The goal is to give a buyer a feel for you and what you do. 

Here’s how to make sizzle reel for your show:

Step 1:  Go to the movies and watch the trailers for upcoming movies. These are longer than a variety act’s sizzle reel, but they are a good reference for what you are going for.  Notice that the movie trailers don’t show whole scenes of the movie.  The goal is to give you the vibe of what the movie is about and this is the goal of your sizzle reel, to give the vibe of what your show is.

Step 2: Go through video footage and audio and pick the best clips.  I’m assuming you have a bunch of video because you’re regularly recording your show.  You should be doing this to work on your show to make your show better. Also, you’ll notice that I mentioned audio, your audio should be recorded separately from your camera.  You want clear audio of your voice if you use it in your sizzle reel.

Step 3: Edit out most or all of the set ups to your tricks and just show the magic. An agent explained it to me this way when he said, “I don’t want to see your rope trick, I want to see that you do a rope trick.”

Step 4: Find music that fits the feeling of your show and put your video clips to that music.  I use Envato Elements for mine.  It’s a subscription service that you get the license to use the music for web purposes. This eliminates any YouTube or whatever copyright claims.   

Step 5: Upload it to YouTube or wherever you host your streaming videos.  In addition to YouTube I use JWplayer.  I pay annually for this service, because there are no ads or suggested videos at the end of your video. This gives you more control over what the potential client sees and you don’t have to worry about YouTube suggesting another act after your video.

One thing I should mention, when you’re compiling the clips, you need to think about the flow and what you want your target audience to think about.  For example, I just made a sizzle real for my Incredible Idioms school assembly show, and I want to show the fun vibe of my show, but I also needed to show that there is educational content in the show, it’s not just a magic show.

-Louie

P.S.  Here’s the sizzle reel for the Incredible Idioms show:

Magic and Comedy Show

On Saturday I performed my show for a sold out audience at the Spokane Comedy Club! When I’m performing at on the road at a public show, I always try to reach out to the local magic club. The Spokane Magic Club turned out in force for the show! It was great having them in the audience.

These daytime shows are a lot of fun to do. Years ago when I was in my early 20’s I opened for Brad Upton at a lot of comedy gigs. At the time I was doing a lot of school assemblies during the day. Brad mentioned that being able to get paid to do entertainment during normal people’s workday was like finding gold. At the time, I didn’t realize how correct he was. As I’ve gotten older and when I’m home, I got to bed at 9pm, the later gigs are more work. I still love doing them, however these 4pm shows I’ve been doing at comedy clubs are great, I’m done by dinner time!

Here’s my 55+ minute show from Saturday in 44 seconds:

@louiefoxx

55 minutes of comedy magic in 44 seconds! #magicshow #magician #comedymagic #spokanecomedyclub #spokanemagician

♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

Another thing that’s fun is that these shows put kids into an environment that is normally just for adults. That gives these shows a special energy that you don’t get at a community center gig and leads to amazing shows!

-Louie

Adding Effects to Sizzle Reel

I’m playing with adding some visual effects to sizzle reels, or social media videos. Here’s two versions of a sizzle reel, one without effects and one with some visual effects.

Here’s the one without:

And here’s the one with:

The goal is to not use the visual effects simply because I can, but to hopefully use them to enhance what you’re watching. I don’t want to be like soo many of the videos in the early days of consumer level video editing where every transition was a a huge deal, with star wipes or whatever.

Let me know which you think is better!

-Louie

Incredible Idioms Sizzle Reel

Somethings surprise me, like the success of my Incredible Idioms show. This is a school assembly / library show that I’ve done about 125 times since January of this year and I’ve done all those shows with zero promo! All I had one a one paragraph description that I’ve sent out.

I finally sat down and made a sizzle reel for it.

It’s cool that I was able to do the show that many times based only on my reputation!

I still need to update the website…

-Louie