Listed here are some belongings you may wish to know.
I’m Kevin Blake, a magician primarily based out of San Francisco.
Magic is a kind of curious and uncommon jobs like “archivist” or “luxurious resort reviewer” that encourage numerous questions. What’s my job? What do I do? What’s it like to rent a magician? How a lot does it price? Do you do child’s events? (no.) I received’t let you know how the methods work, however I offers you some details about what it’s like to rent and work with a magician.
Possibly you need some magic for an enormous company vacation get together or occasion, a celebratory comfortable hour, for convention leisure, a non-public celebration, a marriage, or so as to add some magic to an intimate dinner amongst pals. A strong concept. I’m right here to assist.
Magic is actual.
I’ve carried out for tens of hundreds of individuals on stage, appeared on America’s Obtained Expertise, Penn & Teller: Idiot Us, been featured on Thrillist and written about in The San Francisco Chronicle and if there’s one factor I’ve discovered, it’s this: folks love magic. Don’t get me incorrect—persons are often suspicious of magicians, however the expertise of magic is universally loved. Nice magic provides folks that unforgettable, jaw-dropping “No approach!” feeling of disbelief you get from an ideal twist in an amazing film. Besides your life is the film. And the twist is me.
Our minds are sieves. It takes one thing large to knock a reminiscence into somebody. Individuals will overlook what appetizers they’d, what they drank, what they’d for dinner. They’ll overlook the music they listened to and so they’ll positively overlook the customized printed napkins. However while you invite an unimaginable, world-class magician to your occasion, you’re introducing an unstable ingredient that binds folks collectively by a joint expertise of the weird. The extraordinary. The outcome: The get together turns into one thing a bit extra.
“Bear in mind once we opened a fold within the multiverse and teleported our enterprise playing cards from one facet of the room to the opposite?!”
In actual fact, magic is the one factor that will get higher with time. I’m amazed time and time once more after I meet individuals who noticed me carry out years in the past after which regale me with tales of the unimaginable magic that I “did.” Methods turn out to be an increasing number of unimaginable with every telling, and the magic turns into legend.
How a lot does it price?
A strong query. Hiring a magician normally begins with emailing the magician (you can email me here) or filling out an occasion element type (mine looks like this). Often folks’s first query is: how a lot does it price?
An necessary query. Like every part, price is dependent upon high quality.
You’ll be able to rent Jimmy the Nice down the road for $50. Or you may rent David Blaine for $50K (I don’t really know his payment).
For an amazing, working professional in a significant metropolitan space (like San Francisco, the place I work), you need to anticipate the worth to be round $2,000-$3,000. This payment can enhance relying on size of engagement and kind of efficiency (present or “strolling” shut up, or each).
For those who’re not within the San Francisco Bay Space, the price is perhaps a bit totally different. However when you’re in a metropolis like San Francisco or one other main metropolitan space, that is what you need to anticipate for a world-class entertainer. The payment is perhaps much less for an intimate home get together or brief cocktail hour, or rather more for greater occasions, conferences. Full stage exhibits the place there can be 500–1000+ individual audiences can price $5k–$10k or extra.
Consider the price like ticket gross sales. For my stay present in San Francisco, Magic Man, tickets are ~$50/individual. If there are 120 folks shopping for tickets, that’s $6,000. The principle concern is that folks undervalue leisure.
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For those who don’t rent me, listed here are some suggestions for selecting a magician:
- Have a look at their web site, photographs, and video. In leisure, appears to be like matter. Would this magician slot in at your occasion, or stand out like a sore thumb-tip? Does the magician gown nicely? Are you able to get a way for his humor? A lot magic is suffering from inappropriate, outdated and infrequently sexist comedy, dangerous vogue, and tacky methods. You positively don’t need that in your fingers.
- Learn their critiques on-line. Verify locations like Yelp and the magician’s web site to learn what the general public has to say about them. That is invaluable, however needs to be taken with a grain of salt as with all critiques. A glowing evaluate for a kids’s entertainer received’t make them nice in your company occasion or personal celebration. Have they been written about on a good web site? Appeared on TV? Clearly, these are good indicators.
- Verify their earlier shopper listing. Try the magician’s listing of earlier shoppers. If the magician is nice sufficient for the likes of Fortune 50 corporations, he’s in all probability fairly good.
- Value. Ask for a quote. On the finish of the day, you’ve acquired an leisure finances. If the speed is simply too excessive for you, ask for a advice for somebody up and coming. Magicians have magic pals.
Right here’s the soiled little secret of magic: the precise magic in magic usually isn’t the exhausting half.
There are 1,000,000 youngsters on YouTube who can do loopy card methods. However they in all probability can’t slide confidently and elegantly into any dialog, any group, any age, any background, and make folks smile and snigger. They usually positively can’t tactfully information them into an satisfying expertise of the unimaginable.
A part of what makes a wonderful magician is his social acumen. And that’s not one thing you should buy at a magic store.
I’ve carried out at a whole bunch of personal occasions (at each sort of get together you may think about — plus many you may’t). I’ve carried out in residing rooms, ballrooms, live performance halls, workplaces, and even on a submarine. Is it value it to rent a magician? Completely.
One of many essential causes magic is nice — and highly effective — is that it begins conversations. It presents puzzles which are (principally) insolvable, and these impossibilities deliver folks collectively, each through the leisure — “What! Woah! Did you see that?!” and after, usually for years, even a long time.
After I meet new folks in regular life, and that what do you do? query comes up, persons are usually shocked. However the reality is I really feel terribly fortunate to be working as a magician in the present day. At the moment’s world of limitless content material and knowledge has, as an alternative of dulling magic, made it an increasing number of highly effective—and standard! With the solutions to any query only a faucet away, and the expertise of the unexplainable so uncommon, folks have begun to crave marvel greater than ever earlier than.
And we magicians are right here to reply that decision.
