A week ago today I had my gig. Against all odds, it actually went pretty well. I definitely prepared more for this than I have in the past, but I also know that I put preparation off for way too long and could have done more. There were between thirty to forty people there spread out across eight different tables. Most of the tables had about six or eight people at them, but there were a couple that only had two or three.
What I had planned were two different routines that ran about seven minutes each. Just about everything was card-focused, which is something I would like to change in the future. I do think I had a good variety though, so it wasn't just a bunch of "pick a card" over and over.
The first routine centered around the four aces with a loose theme of "Luck of the Irish," I produced the aces one at a time, did a modified spectator cuts the aces, twisted the aces, did two sandwich effects with the red and black aces, and finished up with invisible palm aces. I had a lot of fun doing this one, and overall I think it was received well. The sandwich effects could have been routined differently for my tastes. I didn't get the pop I was expecting out of it. I'll talk about that more another time.
The second routine started with an Invisible Deck with a 52-on-1 card, then a slightly modified Color Monte and finished with a version of Mr. Stickman by Richard Sanders. This routine was slightly shorter than the others as far as number of tricks, but it played about the same length of time. I wasn't super happy with this routine and wish I had taken the time to do something better. I didn't have a natural way to work St. Patrick's Day into this set like I did with the other one (which wasn't asked of me, I just thought it would be a nice touch) so I shoehorned it in by making Color Monte a demo of when I got hustled by a leprechaun and turned the stickman into a stick leprechaun.
During the second routine I did mess up twice, once revealing the ace of clubs instead of the ace of spades and once during Color Monte when I let my mouth get ahead of my brain and forgot where I was in the script. Fortunately (or not) these happened at different tables. Both of these could be solved with more practice, especially the Color Monte issue. I also usually use a line when asking them to think of a card that eliminates obvious cards, but I didn't this time. I should make sure I do that in future performances of the Invisible Deck.
I managed to hit all the tables in 57 minutes, just shy of the hour they asked for. The perfectionist in me would have liked to his that hour exactly, but there were no complaints. I was afraid of coming up way too short, so I was happy. I would like to figure out a way to carry water with me or something because I had dry mouth pretty bad by the end of it after talking almost nonstop for an hour. Maybe I could keep a bottle with my stuff and make my way over for a swig after every couple tables. I also need to do better about bringing the magic up to chest level. I spent the whole time bending over working at the tabletop level, and my back killed me when I was done.
All in all, I had a great time and I think it was successful. I learned a lot and now I have some things to think about and work on for the future. Don't know when my next gig will be. I know for sure I'll be doing a festival at the end of June, but maybe something will crop up in the meantime. I'll keep everyone posted.
- Andster
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Thursday, March 3, 2016
I Wish
I wish we lived in a world where magicians (or, I suppose, people in general) weren't dicks and we could openly talk about methods when selling a trick. I hate that we have to list off a big thing full of what the trick isn't (which in my mind just invites speculation and guessing more than anything) instead of just being able to say "Here's how it works," and have people still buy it.
I'm sure we all at one point or another have fallen victim to hype of some sort or another in our magic careers. Usually either the list of "No's" makes it sound like the holy grail of magic and in reality you get a convoluted handling to fit the criteria they set, or it turns out that the conditions you normally perform under aren't compatible with the handling. Then there's the issue of demo videos that don't tell the whole story, but that's a whole other post by itself.
What I would love, and I know this is a complete pipe dream fantasy world, is if a new trick told you how it worked and you could make an informed decision about whether or not you wanted to buy it. If you liked it, you'd pay the money and perform it, almost like a licensing fee. If you didn't like it, you would be a reasonable person and not perform it because you haven't purchased the license.
It would be nice to see the gimmick and find out before you drop cash on it that it's flimsy and hard to handle. It would be good to know that you require a stooge to watch what your spectator does before you spend your hard earned money and realize you have no friends. Imagine how the reviews would change. Instead of reading "The 'secret something' can be a bit fiddly, but there are ways around that. You'll know what I mean when you see it." we could have reviews like, "The gimmicked card has a tendency to slide off the top of the deck, but you can use your third finger to hold it. I haven't found it to be that big of an issue in real life."
No longer would we see ads like:
No rough and smooth!
No thread!
No wire!
No magnets!
No puffs of air!
No duplicate!
No switching!
No stooges!
Instead we would see:
This requires a piece of double sided tape and a solid billet peek.
But we will never get to that point because magic is all about the secrets, and magicians are dicks and won't pay if you give them the secret for free. Hell, I'd be happy if more (or any, really) magic shops offered refunds if you don't like a product. Sure, you'd probably still get dicks that just put money down on one trick and keep refunding and buying new ones but I feel like that would take effort and there would be fewer that do that than if you just openly advertised the secret.
I know this will never happen, but I can dream. If I ever get the chance to sell something I've created, I'd like to experiment with some truth in advertising and see how well it goes. Probably about as well as I expect it to, which is why people don't already do this.
You're all a bunch of dicks.
- Andster
I'm sure we all at one point or another have fallen victim to hype of some sort or another in our magic careers. Usually either the list of "No's" makes it sound like the holy grail of magic and in reality you get a convoluted handling to fit the criteria they set, or it turns out that the conditions you normally perform under aren't compatible with the handling. Then there's the issue of demo videos that don't tell the whole story, but that's a whole other post by itself.
What I would love, and I know this is a complete pipe dream fantasy world, is if a new trick told you how it worked and you could make an informed decision about whether or not you wanted to buy it. If you liked it, you'd pay the money and perform it, almost like a licensing fee. If you didn't like it, you would be a reasonable person and not perform it because you haven't purchased the license.
It would be nice to see the gimmick and find out before you drop cash on it that it's flimsy and hard to handle. It would be good to know that you require a stooge to watch what your spectator does before you spend your hard earned money and realize you have no friends. Imagine how the reviews would change. Instead of reading "The 'secret something' can be a bit fiddly, but there are ways around that. You'll know what I mean when you see it." we could have reviews like, "The gimmicked card has a tendency to slide off the top of the deck, but you can use your third finger to hold it. I haven't found it to be that big of an issue in real life."
No longer would we see ads like:
No rough and smooth!
No thread!
No wire!
No magnets!
No puffs of air!
No duplicate!
No switching!
No stooges!
Instead we would see:
This requires a piece of double sided tape and a solid billet peek.
But we will never get to that point because magic is all about the secrets, and magicians are dicks and won't pay if you give them the secret for free. Hell, I'd be happy if more (or any, really) magic shops offered refunds if you don't like a product. Sure, you'd probably still get dicks that just put money down on one trick and keep refunding and buying new ones but I feel like that would take effort and there would be fewer that do that than if you just openly advertised the secret.
I know this will never happen, but I can dream. If I ever get the chance to sell something I've created, I'd like to experiment with some truth in advertising and see how well it goes. Probably about as well as I expect it to, which is why people don't already do this.
You're all a bunch of dicks.
- Andster
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