thumb tip – MagicShow.Tips

Improving an 80 Year Old Magic Trick

In the June 1946 issue of The Bat magic magazine, there’s a trick called Puff by Frank Chapman. The effect is that you have a small piece of paper that you roll into a tube. You blow through the tube, and a ribbon comes out. That’s it. I think the effect can be changed a little bit to make it better.

First of all, why produce a ribbon? Ribbon isn’t valuable or interesting. The only reason I can think of is to do a trick with the ribbon.

Second, why not add a layer to this? Right now you snuck ribbon into a tube of rolled up paper.

Here’s my idea to address those two things.

Effect: You show a small piece of paper that has the colors of the rainbow printed on it. Someone picks a color; you then roll the paper into a tube, and that color confetti flies out.

Needed: A piece of paper with a rainbow printed on it. This would be the six color rainbow. The colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple in that order. You’ll also need a thumb tip with a small hole at the tip and some yellow confetti.

Set up: Put the confetti into the thumb tip. The thumb tip starts on your thumb, and you’re holding the piece of paper.

Working: Show the paper and force the color yellow using the “hot rod force”. Roll the paper into a tube around the thumb tip. Lift the tube with thumb tip to your lips and blow through the end with the small hole. As the confetti flies out, put the thumb tip on your other thumb as you unroll the paper.

That’s it. Super easy, not much to it, but the trick is better. The force of a color makes it a bit more of a head scratcher. The confetti falling is visually interesting, and no one expects you to scoop it up and do something with it. Confetti falling is a period, not a comma.

-Louie

EDC for TV spot

Yesterday morning I headed down to the local TV station to promote National Magic Week. I was on their morning “lifestyle” show and it was a lot of fun. One of the challenges of doing TV is that you don’t know how much time you have, they tell you about how much time, but you never really know for sure.

Here’s what I had in my pockets right before the start of the segment:

These props would keep me covered for most situations that I could encounter. You may also notice the deck of cards isn’t a bicycle deck, it’s the Penguin Marked Deck. When I do TV spots, I try to always use a marked deck. That can potentially bail me out of some situations, like when the weatherman grabs a card and tell me to name it.

The other thing that I threw in my backpack was my vanishing birdcage.

Sometimes they ask you to do a quick trick as part of a teaser segment. These are usually a 5 – 10 second bit where you don’t talk, the host is introducing your segment. You need a very visual bit to be able to do in the background.

What I ended up doing for the show was my close up card set. I didn’t do the whole thing, but the reason I chose that was that it’s a modular trick. I can take things away from in to shorten it and it has multiple points that feel like the end. That makes that routine very useful for TV spots!

-Louie

It’s the Little Things in Videos

While I was working on my promo video, a video of a magician came across my feed. The trick is fine, but there’s a few things about the video that should have been addressed. Here’s the video:

I’m assuming you noticed the fake audio reaction in the video. They never sound quite right and they way most people use them, they’re never proportional to what they’re doing. It’s always too much.

The other thing you may not have noticed was the guy on the left standing on stage like some sort of body guard. At about the 18 – 20 second mark his face pops into frame. The “audience” is going nuts and he looks bored as hell.

Why is that guy even in the video?

Cropping him out would be a super easy job. As long as you’re in there adding audio tracks, might as well crop him out. It’s the small things that you need to notice in the videos you make. I always try to crop out people who look uninterested or people in the background. It’s not always possible, but you gotta try!

-Louie

Multiple Parasol Production – Close Up

I’m still playing with using cocktail parasols. Here’s a quick video I made in my hotel room:

@louiefoxx World's Dumbest Magic Trick! #magictrick #cocktailumbrellas #cocktail #parasol #shimada #closeupmagic #louiefoxx #magician #hotelroom ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

I made up three of the self opening cocktail parasols and they easily fit into a thumb tip. I might be able to get one more and still get the thumb tip onto the thumb. However I’m thinking that the thumb tip may not need to fit onto them thumb and it could really just be a holder for the parasols.

I do think it’s fun to produce the little parasols and maybe it’ll be a running gag or something in the show. I’ll keep playing with them, maybe something cooler will come up.

-Louie

Production Cocktail Parasol

After goofing around with the cocktail parasols that I bought, I figured out a way to make them self opening.

To make them self opening, it just takes a little loop of elastic…and a lot of help from my reading glasses!

I’m not sure what to do with a parasol that opens by itself, but it makes the ending of most tricks better than if I had to manually open it.

-Louie

The Long Walk…

Last week the fair I was at had a very long walk from the audience to the stage. This made bringing someone up from the audience a bit of a speed bump in the show. The general format in my magic show is every other trick has someone from the audience onstage. Figuring out how to deal with the time that it takes to bring someone onstage was a challenge.

The first thing to fill the time was simply writing jokes to address the issue and fill the dead space. I wrote lines like, “The walk to the stage is longer than the line at the DMV“.

One of the emergency props that I have in my case is a thumb tip with a silk. I can do a solid 5 minute routine with that that’s full of laughs. That routine uses two people from the audience.

Obviously, bringing two people onstage wasn’t he solution to the long walk to the stage, but the silk was. I started simply vanish the silk while the person walked to the stage. It filled the dead space, but needed more. Then during my morning writing I came up with the idea of doing silk in balloon. That gave some sort of a payout to the vanishing silk. However, the breakthrough was the next day during my morning writing I had the idea of silk in selected balloon.

I had a line of balloons tied to string from my case to the microphone stand. The silk vanishes while they are coming onto the stage. Then a balloon is selected and when popped the silk appears inside that balloon.

What I ended up with is a routine for when there is a long walk to the stage (or any show), but not a solution to fill that time for existing routines that I do.

I’m not disappointed that I didn’t come up with a solution for the long walk, as a routine that fills the stage and packs very small is still a win!

-Louie

How to Make the Evaporation Puppet Thumb Tip

Yesterday I posted a video about how to use evaporation with one hand using a thumb tip with a cork on it. Here’s a tutorial on how to make the thumb tip. You’ll need a thumb tip, cork, screwdriver, screw and scissors.

I start by trimming off a little bit of the end of the thumb tip. I think that makes it easier to get your thumb into it.

Than I use the screwdriver to punch a hole in the fingernail side of the thumb tip. Just push and twist until you have a hole.

Put a screw onto the screwdriver and drive it through the thumb tip a little bit.

Then screw the screw into the cork.

And you’re done!

That’s all there is to it, pretty simple.

-Louie

My 60% Rule

It doesn’t take much to create an “original” magic trick…well it depends on your definition of original. My goal for at trick to be original is 60% unique. How I came up with this number is there are really three parts to a magic trick. You have the method, prop and routine. If I can get two of the three, then it fits my criteria as original, however the goal is all three.

Here’s a trick that fits my 60% rule:

@louiefoxx
Fun Canadian Money Fact! #funfact #canadianmoney #fiftydollars #canada #mapleleaf #louiefoxx #maplesyrup #waffles #magictrick #magician
♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

At it’s core, it’s a thumb tip production from a bill and this part isn’t original. However the presentation and props are unique to me. I honestly don’t think there’s anyone producing syrup out of Canadian money…but there could someone that I’m not aware of.

Having metrics makes things easy. Without the rules and the goal, it’s really hard to create.

-Louie

Sanada Gimmicks!

Over the last few years I’ve started to really prefer the Sanada Gimmick over a thumb tip for stage use. I primarily use it for a bill switch and it allows me to not fold up the bill as small as with the a thumb tip. This makes it play a little bit bigger, but also I think looks more fair.

When I use something like a thumb tip or Sanada Gimmick, I try to stock up on them so that I always have them. I just had 10 arrive in the mail.

These are just for general use whenever I need them. Having access to a lot of them allows me to make some custom gimmicks with them like my tennis ball to confetti gimmick.

If there’s something you use, stock up on it, you never know when they’ll be temporarily or permanently unavailable.

-Louie

Emergency Show Props

When I did an overnight flight on Quantas Airline, they gave us little fabric cases with a couple of toiletry items. I thought the case might be useful as a holder for some prop, so I kept it. They measure about 6.5 x 4.5 inches, but about half an inch on the short side isn’t really usable due to where the snap closure is located.

The goal was to put together an emergency show that could be performed close up or for a stand up venue like a black box theater (up to 100 seats). Everything used in the show has to be contained within the fabric case, so you can’t borrow anything from the venue or audience like a cup or dollar bill. The reason for that is you can’t 100% guarantee someone will have a dollar bill for your to borrow, or that the venue will have a clear pint glass.

Another condition is you must be able to perform with a corded mic in a stand. If I needed to use a hands free mic holder, that will need to fit into the fabric case.

Any props you normally carry on your person are bonus, and don’t count towards this. For example, if you normally have a set of B’wave cards in your wallet, you would need to put another one in the fabric case if you wanted to do it in this show.

Here’s what I came up with:

The props are:

Jumbo Linking Pins
Mismade Bill
Regular Bill
Throw Coil
Production Coil
Thumb Tip
4 Sheets of Tissue Paper
Business Cards (that are blank on one side)
Sharpie
White 9 inch silk

And here’s the show list:

Everything on the list are tricks/routines that I currently do or have done in the past. There’s no learning curve for these, I can grab the prop and immediately do the trick. I chose to add the production coil and throw coil as things to add production value to the show, so it doesn’t feel like things were cobbled together. The also add texture to the show, it’s not all flat props.

When putting together the list I also had to factor in not duplicating effects. For example, if I did gypsy thread and torn and restored tissue paper, they are essentially the same trick.

The premise is that this is an emergency set up, so it’s a show I’m forced to do, not a show that I want to do. Artistically, this isn’t necessarily my current voice, but it’ll get me through the emergency situation.

This pack currently lives in the trunk of my car.

-Louie