magic business Archives

Leaving a Magic Gig – Essential Things You Should Do

Being a magician is about learning and performing magic, but being a working magician means you need to look after the business side of entertainment too. What you do as you leave a gig can be just as important to your success, as the marketing you did before you landed the job. If you simply pack up your bag and head home, you could be missing out on some very important opportunities to bring in more work. So let’s look at some of the tips and tricks you can do, after the card tricks have been done, to make sure you get the most out of each and every booking you do.

See the Toastmaster.

If the event has a toastmaster or master of ceremonies, make sure you tell him or her that you are leaving. They love to announce it to the room (Toastmasters crave announcing anything they are can, whenever they can), and you will get a round of applause from all the guests. This is a boost for your confidence, but most importantly it shows everyone that the group really enjoyed having a magician attend. The client confirms that they made a wise investment, and all the people clutching your business card, see how well the magic went down with everyone. The final thing you want the whole room to associate you with is a huge round of applause.

Say goodbye to the client.

The room is in full swing and the client is buzzing from table to table talking to their guests. Make sure you go up to them and say that you now need to leave, and thank them for booking you. NEVER just pack up and go, when your time is up.

Hold a magic trick back just for the client.

When you say goodbye, you don’t want to appear too eager to leave. Yes, I know, that McDonalds you noticed on the drive in, is calling you, but resist it. Stop and chat. They will often ask for ‘one more trick’ so hit them with a great closer effect, so you leave them amazed.

Give the client your deck of playing cards.

Let’s face it, almost every magician performs card tricks that require the spectators to sign a card. Keep those playing cards with signatures on, in the deck rather than giving them to the spectators and you have a great gift for the client at the end of the evening. They get a deck of cards with all their friends and families names on them. It’s a nice keepsake, especially at a wedding, and also shows the client, how you got around everyone and worked hard. Pop your business card in the card case too.

Would you like to learn more tips and advice for when you leave a magic gig? The Merchant of Magic has written a free ebook on the subject. It’s free and suitable for complete beginners getting ready for their first magic performance, right through to professionals wanting to get more gigs and improve their feedback.

How To Do Magic Tricks Where People Are Eating

by Merchant of Magic 1 Comment

By Dominic Reyes

Some of the most popular venues for close up magic are restaurants. People go there to relax, enjoy great food, socialize and be entertained. Because of this, restaurants are very busy places, and it’s important to know a few things about the structure of the evening and how to approach performing magic tricks where people are eating.

The Plan.

There are a few factors that you need to identify as soon as possible when you arrive:

Will you be the only magician?

Luckily, being a magician is not like time travel, and the universe will not end if two inhabit the same space. Mostly you will be the only magician, but sometimes if there are several hundred guests, the clients may have booked a few magicians to make sure everyone gets to see the magic. The ideal ratio tends to be one magician for every 150 guests. If it’s a large event, you may be working with a few more magicians, so find out where the setup area is and go meet them. Now is the time to make sure you are not going to be doing the same tricks, and to decide how the tables will be split up.

How many tables?

You need to ensure that every table gets to see some magic during the evening.

When does the meal end?

Find out what will be happening when the coffee’s are served. Will there be speeches? Perhaps dancing or a cabaret show will start. Do they have an after dinner speaker or awards? Knowing this is vital as you can then split up your time at each table to make sure you don’t get struck at the end with tables still to do.

Is there something happening between courses?

Sometimes awards may be planed between courses, or a speech will be given. Find this out in advance, so you don’t get any nasty surprises, right in the middle of performing at a table.

What type of meal will be served?

Will it be a set series of courses or a buffet? If it’s a set meal, find out how many courses will be served.

If at all possible don’t perform while your guests are eating.

You are going head to head with food, which is satisfying one of your guests primary drives, so don’t try to compete with that!

Dominic Reyes writes: I was performing at the Dorchester and was booked for a private room in the Chinese restaurant. All good, but it poses a challenge for magicians. The room is tiny. Just big enough for one large round table, with no side rooms and only one exit. The entrance is a solid windowless wooden door leading to a very busy corridor used by the waiters to serve all the areas. Basically, I had nowhere to wait other than in the room with the guests thought the meal, which consisted of 9 courses. As soon as a course ended, it was whisked away and another arrived. This can be a problem for magicians, as there are no defined start and end points for the magic to be presented. I ended up entertaining while the guests ate. They did not seem to mind at all, but it’s very hard to keep the group’s attention while they rolled aromatic crispy duck into pancakes.

The buffet.
If it’s a buffet, you will face several problems doing magic tricks where people are eating:

People continually getting up to leave the table.
Some guests will have finished while others still have full plates
Guests from other tables can visit the table right in the middle of a trick.
Courses tend to go on for much longer

In those types of meals, it’s often better to let the first course, go by, and wait for the guests to become more relaxed. After they have all visited the buffet at least once, they will be more relaxed and happy to focus on other things.

Knowing the format right from the start, lets you decide how much time you can allocate to each table. Find this out right from the start, so you don’t have to rush the last few tables. Not fun at all.

DO THIS: When you arrive, go and look around the room before your guests arrive. Count the tables and look at the layout. Chances are there will be staff putting out the finishing touches to the tables. One of these people will be the event planner. That person can very quickly answer your questions so you are all set for the event.

Do you have any further tips for doing magic tricks where people are eating? Leave a comment below

Should Magicians Give Purpose to Magic

by Merchant of Magic 3 Comments

If you really could perform magic, what would you do? Would there be a purpose to magic you perform?

As magicians we spend the majority of our time losing and finding playing cards, making small predictions, or having things vanish and appear around us. The tricks lack any purpose other than to entertain and amaze. What is the point of making a coin bend in a spectators hand or making a ball vanish from under one cup and appear under another, followed by the appearance of some lemons under the cups? Great magic, but utterly pointless. We can increase the power of our performances by giving a purpose to magic.

Creating purpose to magic we perform has been one of the ‘themes’ of the second series of Dynamo Magician Impossible. Let’s look at a few examples:

Dynamo is talking to the DJ in a nightclub. However, the club is packed and he can’t get out past the crowds. What would he do if he really could perform magic? He would simply fly over the crowd to the exit. That’s exactly what he did.
Dynamo visits HMV to meet his fans. It all gets too much and he needs to escape. What would a magic user do? Simply disappear. That’s exactly what he did.
Dynamo watched a street performer and wants to reward him. He notices the performer has images of money printed on his clothes, so he turns one of the pictures real so he can give the performer a tip.

Dynamo used magic to solve his problems. That’s the purpose of magic shown on the show. How can you design your magic tricks to be useful in this way?

Purpose to Magic

I expect you may feel going from table to table entertaining people would be quite a low priority for most true magic users. So why WOULD you be an entertainer?

Perhaps, to make people believe again?

Most people believed in magic when they were kids, but then life got in the way and they came to believe what the world told them, that magic was just pretend. Could making people question this belief, be the real role of a magician?

“What would I have to do right now to make you believe in magic?”

If you ask that question whenever you next perform close up magic you will start to notice you get the same sets of answers over and over again.

Make a bottle of wine appear
Turn this £10 note into a £50 note
Fly
Make xxx disappear
Bend a wine glass
Read my mind like Derren Brown

If you collected all the questions over a period of time you will get a group of the most frequently asked questions, many of which you could have tricks ready to perform.

There would also be some answers which you couldn’t do. For example: “Make a tiger appear” or “Make my wife disappear” but it would be easy to create a set of funny answers for each of those suggestions.

You could construct an act which allows you to perform most of those requests. You would then simply pick a suggestion from the group that ‘hits’ and actually DO it for them. Powerful stuff!

When asking the group, you ideally want to get suggestions from several different people at the table. This way you will be likely to hit upon a request that you can actually do. If you don’t get a ‘hit’ you can turn it into a joke or an aside, as you move into your normal routine set. Don’t tell them you intend to perform their suggestions until after they give them, so you have a perfect ‘out’ by changing the subject if a hit doesn’t happen.

If you decide to try this out please let me know how you get on. You can do this in the comments section below: