One of the biggest challenges for any itinerate variety performer is getting all the stuff you use in your show from where it’s stored (usually at your home) and getting it to the place where you’re paid to use it. This can be particularly tricky with outdoor events, as there’s not a great deal of, say, paved roads, level surfaces, and convenient parking. (Tobias rule #4: Once you got your act together, you still have to haul it to the stage.)
Just recently, after much prodding from my patient spouse, I purchased this folding cart from a well-known catalog store. (I’ve linked to Amazon here because it’s less expensive… and if you order it I might just get a little scratch.)
This thing is… remarkable. I’ve messed about with carts and haul-alongs before, but this one just flat out works. I was able to haul things over some profoundly corrugated terrain out at Canterbury Renaissance Faire with the same level of ease as I rolled out to the Celebrate Hillsboro event held downtown in the land of asphalt and concrete.
Although designed to haul kids around (hence the canopy and padded rails), it did a great job of handling my kit, folding chairs, folding tables, and assorted folderol. It also folds up very nicely indeed!
(One other thing I found is that the canopy, when fully ‘deployed’, would support a light piece of pressboard or other ‘tabletop’ type material…. mobile close-up table / wagon set up, anyone?)
Tags: infrastructure, nuts and bolts, shameless plugs, sources
The other day I decided I needed some new footwear to got with my non-RenFaire outfits. Thanks to the kind folks at converse.com I have a custom designe pair of sneaks.
They go with everything because they go with nothing!
… Just a little teaser picture of what will be the Big Stupid Finale for the remainder of my 2010 season. The anvil is not part of the Finale…. Yet!
I made, as you know, a scouting run to the Rose Festival’s Waterfront Village a week ago last Sunday to see what things looked like regarding the stages upon which I would be performing (convoluted sentence structure GO!). One of the things I had been told was that the stages were in fact covered.
I was not aware, until I got there, that the stages were covered at a height of about … ten feet. For most acts this isn’t a particularly low ceiling, but for variety entertainers… sometimes it’s too low for certain bits.
When I ran into Rhys Thomas we both were a little suprised at the headroom, or lack thereof. “Well, I won’t be doing the Ladder Bit then…” was his thought. Mine was “Well, I don’t think the Mallet Trick is gonna work out here…” Fortunately, we both have a whole lot of other things we can do in our shows to counter this low-overhead situation.
Each venue has its own unique set of restrictions and opportunities. This is why it’s a really good idea to scout out the venue (Tobias Rule #2: Look before you perform.) and have a few alternative bits ready in case the venue precludes you using one or more bits (Tobias Rule #3: Always have a backup plan.) …
Mind you, it was really cute watching Rhys balance on top of his Exceedingly Tall Unicycle, braced against the “roof” of the awning, yelling “SAVE YOURSELVES! I’LL HOLD THIS UP!!!”
Over the past few years, I’ve been moving different bits in and out of my show – sometimes for logistical reasons (the TSA has an issue with someone bringing six feet of chain on two wooden handles as a carry on), sometimes because I just get restless and want to change things up.
With the Rose Festival, I find myself making more use of the “old” bits I haven’t used in a while. Those who remember the “six feet of chain – two wooden handles – one moron on stage playing with it” finale will be amused to find out that I’m doing that again – it’s easier to do that bit when you’re wearing a mic headset than is is to wrap a loop of chain around my neck three times. The Rose Festival crowds have been great – once I convince them that yes, you’re allowed (and in fact encouraged) to make noise back at the silly looking man on stage.
I have two more days at Waterfront Village, so we’ll see what bits come back. If the weather is good, the Mallet will make an appearance!
Tags: working conditions
(an Evil Rant)
Magicians make money by doing one of two things:
- Performing their craft
- Selling things to other Magicians
Since I’ve talked a lot about the first and very little about the second method, I thought I’d spend some time on it now.
If you intend to sell things to Magicians, there are a couple ways of doing so. The first is to build a stock of quality utility goods such as rope, silks, thumb tips and the like, and make them available to your potential market at a reasonable price, provide quality service, and build a relationship with your customers.
Then there’s the other way… and here are the observations I have made based on many years of study…
To sell things the other way, remember: Magicians Are Greedy, Lazy, Envious and Gullible!
Magicians are Greedy
One of the easiest ways to make a product, act, book or DVD attractive to a magician is to mention how many skadillions of dollars the producer of said product has made doing the act, performing the tricks, or following the processes documented in the product you’re selling. It’s darn near foolproof. We all want to make an unrealistic amount of money as quickly as possible by performing a “can’t fail” routine or selling a “can’t fail” show to as many venues as possible regardless of whether or not this bit suits us as a performer, as a person, or as a venue we actually want to perform in! And people make thousands of dollars doing these shows! Clearly if they can do it, so can I! For the low price of some three figure sum which usually ends in a seven or a nine!
Magicians are Lazy
“No skill necessary”! Oh those lovely, lovely words. “You’ll be performing this trick ten minutes after you open the box!” Ambrosia! Magicians want to be amazing right now, and with as little effort as humany possible. This is why those acts which sell for a three digit sum ending in a seven or nine sell so well! All the hard work has been done by the vendor! Open the box, follow the instructions (or watch the DVD) and go! How hard can it be? After all the guy who’s selling it has done all the legwork… aside from scouting out your venues, determining if the routine suits you as a performer and as a character, finding the right people to market the act to, determining if you even like the stuff that’s being sold, and so on and so forth…
Magicians are Envious
We wanna be like him! We wanna be Lance Burton, swave and debonair and slick. We wanna be Criss Angel! Cool and hip and edgy. We wanna be on a big stage with a huge budget and making ungodly sums of money! We wanna be Dai Vernon – the epitome of Mastery, entertaining rich patrons in swanky supper clubs… wait… are there still swanky supper clubs out there? Anyone? Um…
In any case, buying this trick, this book, this routine, this prop, or downloading this easy-to-follow video will certainly turn us into them!
Magicians are Gullible
We want to believe. We really, really do. We want to believe that we can replicate the trick exactly the way it’s show in the highly controlled studio environment. We want to believe people will react exactly the way they do in the videos when they know there’s a camera pointing at them. We look at the list of things the trick does not involve and rarely think about what, bu process of elimination, the trick does involve. We don’t go back to the books and videos and magazines we already own to see if this effect is already there somewhere so we can save our pennies. We watch ourselves in the mirror or on YouTube doing the trick after 10 minutes and think we look just like the guy in the video that prompted us to buy the darn thing in the first place!
We will purchase Marketing Course for Magicians after Marketing Course for Magicians, skimming past the pages and pages of rehashed content, looking for that one gem, that one little bit of wisdom which will suddenly take us over the top and let us book ourselves solid with an easy, turn-key system which requires little to no effort on our part! For the low price of $XX9 or $XX7 as advertised on a page with lots of BOLD type and UNDERLINING and HIGHLIGHTING (as described in every single online marketing course ever sold)…
Reality Checking
Yes, magicians do in fact make a lot of money performing the effects they market. This is due to a combination of factors, not the least of which is that these guys create these tricks to suit themselves.
Yes, the big tall spooky guy with the deep booming voice makes thousands of dollars holding intimate seances as documented in the book he sells for $25 (marked down from $300!) but that’s because he is the guy that this routine suits best!
Yes this person makes a comfortable living doing school shows with a reading theme – and that’s because he’s found every possible school, library and other market which would suit this show in his area and booked himself nice and solid!
Yes the trick looks amazing – in a controlled studio environment with clever editing and an “audience” of people who have likely been told this trick is being sold so they should be receptive and positive…
Just about every “Magician Marketing” course out there stems from a common source, not targeted to magicians. One which you can buy, as a book, from a regular bookstore, for a two digit price which ends in a sane number like a 5 or a 0. That’s another way magicians can make money – by not spending their cash foolishly!
So when you’re out there shopping for magic, as Harry Anderson likes to say, keep an open mind, just not so open that your brains fall out.
We’re coming up on the Portland Rose Festival (actually, as of this posting it’s started up) and I’m looking over my act for this gig. What will be interesting is that this is a performance for which I shall not be passing the hat.
A show where you’re trying to get the most money from your audience has subtle differences from a show where you’re being paid a straight fee. The first difference being, of course, Getting The Money. You need to be able to read a crowd and maintain the interest of a very high number of people, not just to amuse them until the end of the show, but also to motivate them to put a few bucks in your hat. This can lead to making edits in your act to move things along if you feel the energy level waning (or if a parade is coming by your stage, or the Joust is starting in 10 minutes, or a number of other things that can distract your crowd at a Faire).
In a straight fee show, the pressure is off… a little bit. You can spend a bit more time on moving the show along and if you do lose a few audience members, it’s not such a big deal. This is, after all, an outdoor venue and your potential audience has a thousand little distractions all around them.
This is never an excuse to Be Boring (Tobias Law #1: Thou Shalt Not Be Boring. Ever. Ever. Ever!). The show still needs to flow, move forward, and keep the laughter and interaction going. But there are some small, subtle changes that can be made. For instance, you can actually give some of your more … esoteric jokes a little more time to sink in. In fact, slowing down is usually the best answer to “The crowd didn’t get it!”.
Another thing I have to look at in the stuff I say when I perform is that, well, this ain’t a Renaissance Faire. So some of the things I say at Faire would be not entirely appropriate – mostly because of context.
For example: When I start the Mongolian Pop Knot bit, I introduce the rope as “the kind you might find in any bedroom.” After the almost-mandatory roll of half-nervous laughter, I explain that in the Renaissance a bed used rope to hold up the mattress. This is a good line for a historical event. Not so much for a modern venue.
I’ll be taking a “Scouting Run” of Waterfront Village this weekend to make sure I know where my stage is and so forth. We’ll see what revisions I’ll be making after that..
Tags: working conditions
I perform what’s known in the trade as a “Patter Act”. Really all this means is that I talk while I do things, as opposed to doing magic silently to music.
Although I am by nature a talktative lout, I do develop “patter” – really a “script outline” for my show. The actual things I say start out as an outline of what I want to convey and gets edited on the fly while I’m performing based on my audience, the environment and how I’m feeling at the time.
There are, however, some fixed bits of dialog in the show. These are jokes and one-liners, or sometimes just reactions which I’ve found get the best reception from my audiences. I spend a suprising amount of time working over these lines when I’m off stage – reviewing tapes and replaying the show in my head to get a feeling for what lines “roll” properly and which don’t.
Here’s an example – during a recent set of shows at Faire in the Grove, I started on my traditional Epic Audience Enthusiasm Generating Exercise and on the bit where I ask the audience to “Yell and scream like the bloodthirsty heathens you are!” … I got a particularly … impressive response. This wave of sound washed over me… and after a slightly stunned pause, what came out of my mouth was this half-chortle, half-astonished noise, a sort of “heh-heh-heh” (if you have a Facebook account, you can check out the video here-ish, I think… )
It got a laugh, so I mentally filed it away under “Things to keep in the act.” Later on, I reviewed the video clip (linked above) so I could remember exactly what sound I made during that bit…
I suppose it takes a lot of effort to be spontaneous…
Tags: nuts and bolts
| One of the strangest things I’ve heard, and frighteningly enough heard with such frequency, is that magicians tend to be, well… socially awkward.
This is even more disturbing because, well… it’s often true. We use magic as a lever, a way to have something “over” someone else, sometimes a shield, sometimes just a way to have positive attention payed to us (provided we don’t become “card trick boy”, a sort of unstoppable magic trick jukebox) in a social setting. I’m recommending The Golden Rule of Schmoozing People skills are essential if you’re going to make a living (full or part-time) as a magician. At the very least, they help people want to see or hire you again… Full disclosure: I’ve met the man. He’s every bit as nifty as he sounds. |
because Aye Jaye (“The King of Carny Trash”) is a genuinely … genuine person. He writes from the perspective of someone who does in fact want to get a little “ease” in his life now and then, and found that by treating other people well, they treat him well in return!Tags: books, cheap advice
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