One of the first tricks that I started working on since the COVID pandemic started a year ago was my Polaroid to Envelope trick. This trick started as Goshman’s Cards thru Newspaper, but then evolved a lot. It’s pretty much been unchanged for months, here’s what it looked like:
Yesterday I was going to work on it some more as I was going to be doing the Nashville Magic Company’s Tricks of the Trade magic open mic in the evening. That’s when it hit me, I don’t need four pictures, I just need three. One of them doesn’t do anything, it cleans up some clutter and tightens up the routine a little bit.
After the open mic they do a little bit of a workshop for the performers to ask other performers for thoughts on what they performed. I got a couple of great suggestions and ideas. Someone asked why the pictures appeared face down, instead of face up. This is a great idea, that because I was building from a another trick, I didn’t think about that.
I started playing with having the pictures face up and I think I got a workable sequence out of it. Having just three pictures is soo much more manageable than four! I’ll probably record a video of the new sequence later today and post it when I get a chance.
If you’re not using these virtual open mics to work on material they are a huge resource that didn’t really exist a year ago. Not only to practice material, but to get specific feedback from other performers.