stage magic – Page 8 – MagicShow.Tips

How I Like To Book Gigs

One of my preferred ways of booking gigs is through showcases. A showcase is where you do a sample of your show in front of people that book entertainment. These exist for pretty much every market that uses entertainment regularly.

What I like about this is that I get to let my show do the selling. If my show is good, I get booked. My calendar has nothing to do with how good I write ad copy or can layout a brochure.

There are downsides to booking gigs through showcases. Normally I have to travel to them, so there’s plane, car and hotel costs. Then there’s usually a fee associated with showcasing (not always) and that’s not cheap! Also the caliber of entertainment is usually fairly high, so you need to be able to deliver a good, short version of your show. Another challenge is that you could have a bad show, and it’s no fault of yours. Like the audio or lights could be bad, or someone in the audience has a heart attack right before you start or you could just be off that night.

This isn’t a good way for beginners to get work, there’s no do overs, you have to crush it every time!

-Louie

Small Changes

I do a routine that I call my “choices” routine. This started as an invisible deck sort of routine, and methodwise moved to the Al Koran Five Star Miracle. Essentially the effect is a card is picked and it matches a prediction in an envelope.

Previously I used a red jumbo deck and a red card in the prediction envelope. Recently as I was getting to the reveal of the prediction and said, “…if this card is the same as yours…” and someone from the audience said, “it won’t there’s only one five of diamonds in the deck“.

They were right, I wasn’t selling that the prediction was from another deck. However, I think it’s wasted energy to tell that’s it’s from anther deck. To save time explaining, I found some blue backed jumbo cards and I’m not using a different colored deck for the prediction card.

This slight change isn’t a very big change. Probably only one person in fifty shows would have the same thought that the prediction couldn’t be the same as the selected card. However of 1 in 50 mentions it, probably 1 in 20 thinks it. By changing the back color, that makes the effect a little bit more clear, with virtually no extra work on my end during the show.

The takeaway from this is listen to your audience!

-Louie

What the Audience Sees…

There’s the meme that shows a plate juggler performing for the audience and the audience isn’t aware of how many plates were broken to get that the point they are seeing.

When I was in Mexico City one of the large venues has a cutaway model of their stage and it reminded me of the plate juggler meme. There’s soo much that that audience is unaware of, they only see a small sliver of it.

If you look at it, such a small percentage venue is what the audience sees. It’s kinda crazy, especially for someone like them that’s basically a “curtain act” that doesn’t need the full depth of the stage! The space I would use is equivalent to about 2 or 3 rows of the audience’s seats! The audience never really thinks about how little of the bigger picture they see!

-Louie

Salt Pour Collection!

I passively collect salt pour gimmicks. I think they look interesting and display well for a magic gimmick in my collection. I’ve had the salt pour in my show a couple of times. It’s been in themed shows, but never in my main show. It’s a trick I keep coming back to, but it’s missing something to make it work in my main show.

Ok, back to the gimmicks. A while ago I bought some salt pour gimmicks to add to my collection. I recently bought a bundle of salt pour gimmicks from Scott Alexander’s estate.

The first two I was able to identify. The one on the right is the older style salt pour gimmick that Jim Riser made. The black one on the left is the Bob Kohler salt pour. This is a new one to me, took a bit of work to figure out who made it.

Jim riser salt pour and bob kohler salt pour gimmicks

Then I got these two salt pour gimmicks:

I haven’t been able to identify who made them, if you have any idea, let me know!

And finally I got a bunch of parts to make salt pour gimmicks:

These parts appear to be trying to replicate the two unidentified gimmicks above. The main difference is these have a shorter neck. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the parts, maybe I’ll have them assembled…or just one and display it with the parts???

-Louie

Call and Response…

There’s a common street performer “trick” to unite the audience and it’s call and response. If you’re not familiar with what that is, it’s typically used when the performer says something like, “Would you like to see another trick…say YES!” then the audience responds by saying YES.

This an effective technique uniting the audience, they’re doing something together and it helps them start to become an audience and not just a bunch of individuals. This is especially important for an outdoor show where you may have a transient audience. Another thing it does is forces the audience to invest energy into the show. The more they are invested in the show, the more they will stay and watch the show…and like it!

I like the technique, but I personally don’t like how most people do it, they’re doing it simply because it’s effective. There’s no real purpose besides filling a hole in the show because you don’t have a segue to the next routine.

When I use it in my show, I give it a bit of meaning. In my Drawing in Ball of Yarn routine, I do it to have the audience vote on whether I should buy the person’s drawing. It accomplishes the same thing and just telling the audience to say “yes”, in fact it actually moves the show forward!

With a little bit of thought, you can find ways to use this technique to move the show forward, instead of a hack bit.

-Louie

Rope Magic Routine

One of the tricks that I’ve been working on this month is Four Nightmares, which is a rope trick.

louie foxx performs four nightmares dx rope trick

Here’s the rope routine that I’m doing:

-Show long and short rope
I have a long piece of rope and a….Albino worm. I’ll do four tricks, and I’ve given each a cool name.
-Ropes become the same size
I call this the equalizer! I had a lady tell me she didn’t like that because it made her feel stupid.
-tie the two equal ropes together
If you don’t know how a trick works, that means I’m doing my job. I don’t understand how an airplane flies, but when we land I clap for the pilot!
-move knot to one side of the rope, untie it to reveal the short rope
I call trick number two, the de-wormer!
-put away the small rope.
Trick number three…
-tie the double knot
a double knot…
-slide the knot off the rope to reveal the circle of rope
I call that OOhhh whaaat?!
-put the loop onto the rope
Trick number four, I call it…the end
-reveal the loop become part of the single rope

This particular trick is doing a trick for the sake of doing a magic trick. There’s not really anything about me, my life or a point of view in the trick. I think that sometimes you need that stuff in the show, just a fun trick.

This routine is still in its very early stages for me, so we’ll see what happens with it in the future.

-Louie

Don’t Feel Stupid

During a show recently someone mentioned that they didn’t like a trick because they “felt stupid” because they didn’t know how the trick worked. Here’s what my reply was:

“If you don’t know how a trick works, that means that I’m doing my job. I don’t understand how an airplane works, but I still clap for the pilot when we land!

I’ve started to work this into my show at the beginning with the rope trick I’ve been opening the show with. I think it’s an interesting thing to address in the show, that if someone doesn’t understand why a trick works, they aren’t dumb, it’s what’s supposed to happen and that’s totally OK.

-Louie

Why I Don’t Do Halloween Shows

Halloween is a busy time for magicians, there’s soo much work out there, everyone could be performing and there’d still be gigs leftover. That said, I don’t normally perform on Halloween anymore. Here’s why:

Halloween shows usually suck!

When you put audiences (kids or adult) in a costume they act really strange. The will play up their character which isn’t what I want in my show. I want them to be themselves, not Darth Vadar. Also when in costume, you can’t always see people’s faces clearly, which makes it harder for an audience and you to connect with them. The amount of times I’ve picked someone from the audience to help who wasn’t wearing a mask, then as they got up to walk onstage they put a mask on is remarkably high.

Then you have people’s costumes that interfere with basic functions that you don’t anticipate. Some costumes will have sleeves that will make it harder to do things like hold a prop the the audience can see it, or make it difficult for people to move.

I’m not saying that I will never do a Halloween show again in my life. Sometimes the pay is insane or there’s something I want to buy, so the show will finance it. However I very much dislike them and do my best to avoid them.

-Louie

Show Introduction

When I perform at showcases, my agent has me use a preshow video. There’s a great reason for this, usually the MC sucks and the video sets the vibe for what they are about to see! I also use this for shows that have video as an option. It’s simple to keep it on a flash drive and give it to the tech crew where ever you’re performing.

Recently I was at a hockey game and realized that all sports do this.

It really hypes up the crowd. After watching the Seattle Kraken’s introduction production, it really highlighted how important this is. I was trying to imagine watching the game without it and how strange of transition from nothing to the game would be.

Go out and watch a sporting event and see how their preshow sets the mood for the game. There’s a lot that can be learned from sports that can be applied to your show. For example all of the transition music bits, and bits with people in the stands when there isn’t play happening.

Watch a game in person and imagine it without music. It’d be really strange and the energy level would constantly be going down. In my show I fill they gaps between routines with joke or music, which is essentially what happens at arenas, just on much bigger scale.

Go out and see a game and you’ll learn a lot!

-Louie

Applause Please Available Soon!

Woo hoo! I just got a text from Brian at Magic Crafter that a batch of the boxes for my Applause Please trick are finished!

I still need to add the electronics and a couple other things to them before they’re ready for sale. The bad news is that I’m out of town for a few weeks, so I won’t be able to work on them for a little while. I’m hoping to have them done by Thanksgiving.

If you haven’t seen the trick, here’s the promo video:

These will be available at Hocus-Pocus.com when they’re completed.

-Louie