Tag: vanish magazine

Ring My Bell…

I’ve been playing with adding remote controls to things recently. The company that I get the remote controls for my Remote Control Chattering Teeth had send me the wrong ones a while ago, and instead of sending them back, I decided to keep them in case I needed them for another project.

Here’s the most recent thing that I’ve made:

The idea is that the bell is rung by the corded button. However I can also secretly ring the bell via the remote control.

Some ideas for routines to use this to add comedy to are:

  • Having someone ring it when a trick happens. This would probably be better for a juggling style trick.
  • When doing a timed trick, like an escape.
  • When someone does something. For example, you need a kid to stay standing on a spot, and you if they move someone is supposed to ring the bell.

Those are all routines that you could very easily add the bell into. It’s the sort of thing that can turn a 2 minute trick into a 5 minute trick. For an example of this style of trick, look into my Order Up routine from Vanish Magazine #43. It’s the Cube Libre magic trick, but I added a bell and I used a sound effect on my PA to make the ring, but it played really well.

-Louie

Runner Up Twist

A while ago I wrote up the sequential twisting effect that uses what I think is an original count of mine that I’m calling the Runner Up Count. I finally made a quick video of it:

Here’s what I think the pros and cons are of it when compared to the original Twisting the Aces:

Pros:
– The sequential nature makes it easy to follow what has and has not flipped
-There’s no variation in the sequence, all the counts look the same.

Cons:
-starting with a double deal as the first count is difficult

Honestly I don’t know if every phase looking the same is a good or bad thing.
-Louie

Straight Up Fork Bending…

A couple of years ago I created a original (as far as I know) method for making a fork bend. The cool thing about it is I never touch the fork that bends. This came about when I was chatting with a mentalist about metal bending and asked a stupid question, “does anyone do a spoon straightening routine?” He said that a lot of the optical illusion parts of the method probably wouldn’t work as well with the bend going backwards.

That conversation put the thought in my head, and I ended up creating a method and publishing it in Vanish Magazine called The Perceptive Bend.

In the picture above you see the lady confirming the two forks are exactly the same before one of the forks bends in her hand. I think the method should be pretty obvious if you reread the first paragraph of this post, or you can track down Vanish Magazine issue 57 (I think it’s that issue).

I don’t normally do metal bending in my roving show, however I had a bunch of forks leftover from doing it virtual shows, I took them to the fair to use them up. After doing it live this week, I’m thinking of adding it to my roving at fairs. It gets a really good reaction, and I think I’ve finally figured out how it fits in with how I perform.

Brand New…From the Past

About five years ago I started contributing magic tricks and routines to Vanish Magazine. In that time I’ve published over 60 items in that magazine! Only once (that I’m aware of) that I recreated something that already had been done. The exception to this would be the new routines I published for standard magic tricks.

A new trick was just put out called Impress by Kevin Li and Hanson Chien which is very similar to something I published over a year ago (you can read a blog post about it here).
Here’s the trailer for it:

The trick referenced in that blog post from Feb 2019 ended up being published in the September 2019 issue of Vanish Magazine under the title of Second Impression. Here’s the write up of my trick as a .pdf:

SecondImpression.pdfDownload

I’m curious if they were aware of what I published and gave me a credit?

The idea of making a blister change isn’t a huge leap from making the blister appear. I honestly don’t think my idea was soo novel that no one else could possibly think of it. I do think I was the first person to actually make a working gimmick for it.

Am I upset if I’m not credited?

Nope.

If they legitimately were unaware of my trick, then it’s all good. However if there were aware, then a credit should be given. There are soo many outlets for people to publish magic, many behind a paywall (in something that you have to purchase like a book, membership to a website, etc) that it’s impossible to know everything that’s out there.

I will 100% say that moving the impression to the person’s palm versus the fingertip big step forward that I couldn’t do with a key. It allows you to hide the altered impression on their hand better than on the finger tip. So it is a step further than what I was doing.

Halloween Shows…

I’m not a fan of doing shows for Halloween (you can read a post from last year here). I do have a no contact, socially distant magic show today, and I’m not really looking forward to it for the reasons listed in last year’s post. I am looking forward to seeing how my 30 min no contact magic show plays. Up until now I’ve only done 20 mins, so it’s a lot longer of a show.

Here’s a Halloween magic trick I created for another performer called Up The Candy Ladder, and published in Vanish Magazine (edition 75):

The nice thing about right now is that a trick like Up the Candy Ladder that uses no one from the audience and heavily gimmicked props is super practical right now!

New Book Day!

Today I’m starting to read Paul Romhany’s book Stand Up Magic. He’s my editor over at Vanish Magazine, and I’ve been a fan of the stuff that he puts out before I started writing for Vanish. It’s all solid real world stuff.

I’m one trick into it so far after reading the introduction, etc and he does a great job explaining it. It’s a number prediction and not only goes into the work in great detail, but also covers variations and afterthought on the routine.

What I like about the first trick is that it’s clearly put together by someone who is actually out there working. It’s got a solid method. One thing I’ve learned to be able to spot in books and DVD’s are methods by people who aren’t out there working all the time. The may be great for a one off show (which isn’t a bad thing), but aren’t solid if you’re out on the road performing all the time.

I’m excited to read more of this book!

Flattening The Curve…

The whole virtual magic show is changing what you can do in your shows. Tricks that really weren’t practical to set up in a venue now make sense. Tricks with bad angles now have a place to be performed deceptively.

A few years ago they Stewart Semple came out with the Black 2.0 paint. This is a flat black paint. It doesn’t have a lot of use in a live magic show because it doesn’t trap light like a velvet does, but it turns out it works pretty well in videos.

Here’s a trick that uses Black 2.0:

I think I wrote this trick up in Vanish Magazine a couple of years ago. It uses the 2d of the screen you are watching on to hide the 3d of the “black hole”. I like the idea of switching a flat object for something that’s round and using that space to hold a production.

I really like the idea of hiding the production in plain sight.

Vintage Louie…

One of the first routines that I really thought out and wrote a script for was my Card to Mouth Routine. I published it a few years ago in Vanish Magazine and I’ve taught it in my lectures for a long time.

Vanish Magazine just put out a collection of the second year of their magazine and my trick is in one of their promo pics for the book!

This is a fun routine and while Card to Mouth might not be a trick that’s currently socially acceptable to do, it’s still worth looking at how I put a frame around the card to mouth premise.

Masters Of Illusion…

magician louie foxx

Tonight there’s an encore presentation of an episode of Masters of Illusion on that I appeared on. It was a lot of fun and I recorded a few routines for them, we’ll see if any others make it on this season.

I’ve worked in TV before, and this particular show was a ton of fun! The hang out that goes on at the hotel before and after your taping day was a blast.

Nick Lewin wrote about a day on the set in Vanish Magazine and you can also read it on Nick’s blog.