Last night I went out to see the band The Interrupters and one thing I noticed was that they use a lot of things to tell the audience what they want them to do. This is something that in my show I try, but subtly. After watching this show, it made me realize that asking an audience to do something isn’t bad. It can be repetitive, but not necessarily bad.
Something like telling the audience how to respond when a trick happens is effective, because sometimes they don’t know how to respond. If you want people to clap along to a song, you need to tell them.
I need to reevaluate my show and look at places where I’m not getting the desired audience response and try to find spots where I can tell the audience what to do!
I’m always trying to expand my knowledge about magic and magic techniques. I just had four news books arrive!
These four books are on vary different things within magic! I think it’s important to be well rounded and know as much as you can about as much of magic as possible. It makes you better in an impromptu situation, and it makes you a better creator.
Knowledge is power and sometimes you can find a technique from a style that’s something you wouldn’t normally do, but can find a way to apply it to what you do!
The comedy bar gig I did the other night had a pretty simple set list. It was some stand up comedy, then four tricks and it ran 22 mins. The set list was
Tape Measure Prediction
Choices Routine
Whip Act
Hoop and Cup Balancing
This set list only uses one person from the audience onstage, and that’s for the whip act. This makes for a show that’s much punchier and doesn’t have the dead time of bringing people on and off stage.
The Tape Measure Prediction and the Choices Routine both use people from the audience, but they stay seated. If a persons only job onstage is to pick a card or something very basic like naming a number, I’ve been leaving them in their seats. This saves time if you only need someone to perform a basic task, and breakup up the constant flow of people coming and going from the stage.
Look at your show, are there routines where you don’t need the person physically onstage? Try using them from their seats!
Over the past few months I’ve written about working on my Pitata Magic Time Hacker routine. One thing I noticed in a picture of it was that the gray hands on the white background don’t really pop visually onstage.
I took a black marker and colored in the hands on one of my clocks:
It really makes the hands easier to see and the clock play a few rows further back in the audience. The bigger issue that I think this trick is fighting visibility wise is glare off of the plastic clock face. I don’t think there’s really a reasonable solution, unless there’s an easily applied anti-reflective coating, but even then I don’t know how much that would actually help.
Years ago I heard Jerry Seinfeld in an interview talk about how comics say they should have fun on stage. Jerry’s thought was you shouldn’t have fun, you should be working your butt off onstage. What I think he was getting at was that there’s actual work at being a comedian. There’s a lot more than simply going up there and having fun.
I totally agree with him, you should always be working onstage, that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun or play while you’re up there. Sure there are some acts where looking like having fun isn’t what they’re going for, but the majority of acts aren’t that.
One thing I try to is to look like I’m having fun, and it’s usually easy because I am having fun.
The audience can feel it when you’re having a good time!
One of the things with marketing magic trick is figuring out the most efficient ways to make them in bulk. Making a single prop is pretty straight forward, you go step by step. When making in bulk the challenge is how many steps per unit do you do before you move onto the next unit.
For something as simple as opening up these Chinese food take out boxes for my Take Out Box trick, I found that doing it in two steps was the fastest and easiest for me. This all goes back to sleight of hand, and the idea of economy of motions.
What’s the most efficient way to move a card to the top of the deck? Is it a pass where you’re moving half the deck or the side steal where you’re only moving one card? A lot of times the situation, your skill level and confidence with the move will dictate which is more efficient.
Recently I saw a show and a performer did a trick with a Rubik’s Cube. The trick was good, the routine was good, but there was a bump in the road. The person that was brought onstage knew how to do a Rubik’s Cube and that led to some awkward moments where the performer didn’t really know what to do.
The performer handed a mixed cube to the person from the audience and asked them if they could solve it. The person from the audience said, “YES” and started to speed solve it. The performer stopped them from doing the solve and moved on with the routine.
Personally I think the performer missed a great moment where the person from the audience could have really shined! Let them have their moment, and celebrate it! Once they get the glory you can move on with the routine. Being a generous performer, you get all credit for what the person from the audience does, plus the credit for whatever it is that you do!
Frequently in magic groups on Facebook someone will say they want to sell a trick and want advice. There’s a lot of bad advice (in my opinion) that is then given. One of the things is to go straight to Penguin Magic with the idea, however they usually won’t produce your idea, you’ll need to make it and send it to them. Last time I looked into it, their terms weren’t the most friendly to the creator. You were making product, sending it to them and they would pay you as sold.
A better approach would be to go to Murphy’s Magic and pitch the idea. If they like it and want some of it, they’ll be a couple of options, like you could sell them the idea, they could help you with manufacturing, or you could just sell them the finished product.
Of course by that point you should have done your homework and know how much it costs you per unit to make, and how long it takes you to make them in quantity. Also if you’re self producing, you’ll need to be able to fund making the first batch of your trick as most accounts are on NET 30, so you won’t get paid for a month.
Then you need all of your collateral, so ad copy, art, instructions, etc. Usually you’ll have some of this done before you pitch the idea, but not always. For example my Take Out Box was something that was in my show for a while, so I had tons of video of it that I could pitch it with. Once I had interest, then I went out and started getting all of the other stuff in line.
Personally I’ve made a choice to not mass market thru big magic distributers for most of my products. My reasoning is that going direct thru magic shops I’m able to make more per unit and since I hand make almost everything I sell, it makes more sense to sell a few less units, but make more per unit!
A couple of months ago I recorded an interview with Cris Johnson for The Professional Magician podcast. We were going to talk about more businessy stuff, but we ended up talking about how I work on my show.
When I was starting out, no one ever told me how to work on my show…and I bet if I asked a room full of magicians how they work on their show, the vast majority really won’t have an answer beyond some generic “I practice”.
I came up with a system to working on my show that I call the 6R’s. Each step begins with the letter R. I’ve presented this as a lecture that I’ve presented to groups of performers around the country. A couple of years ago I did one for the virtual KAX Convention and have a recording of it.
If you’d like to learn the 6R’s to working on your show, you can get access to video for $5! Simply use the Add To Cart button below
6R’s To Working On Your Show $5
Once you order, I’ll email you the download info withing 24 hours.
When I was in the Detroit area last week I went to the Henry Ford Museum and there’s the original Oscar Mayer Wiener Mobile there.
This car is super cool, and I’d be excited to see this version on the road now, but they kept improving it and it get better and better ever few years.
I’m sure my show is “good enough” but I try to keep improving. Last week I added a joke to a routine that I’ve been doing for over 15 years! I’ve also cut a lot of bits that have aged out of the routine over the years.
I never think of any routine as finished, there’s always things to add/cut.
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