- Hello there, I'm going to show you a quick trick.
Look, we've got a deck of cards.
We give these a bit of a wave like this, watch.
That ink on the card changes.
If you were here you could check it out,
give it a little bit of a rub.
Watch, me do it one more time.
Watch.
The rest of the ink on that card changes.
However, it's a little bit weirder than that
because it's not only that card,
but actually, look,
every card in the deck changes to blue.
- That was awesome. (laughing)
- Today we have one goal,
and that goal is to help my friend Owen
do his first ever street show.
Do I have my keys?
Wow, it is sunny today.
So Owen is my magician friend,
you may remember him from the Brighton video.
He wants to get into street performing,
so I figure, bring him to London,
show him how it all works, and see how he gets on.
I mean...
There he is.
- Yeah!
- [Steven] Here's the little cheeky badger.
- That's good.
- Um, just squat.
Owen, why do you want to be a street performer?
- Uh... - A succinct answer
for the vlog would be great.
- 'Cause getting gigs is really difficult these days.
For me, personally,
and being able to go out and perform
what I enjoy doing, every single day,
to a different crowd every single time,
and having the freedom to change what I'm doing
on the streets sounds really inviting.
- I know you said freedom,
but what I heard was, I'm skint and need money.
- No, that's not it. (laughing)
- Look at the squat.
Alright.
Hey Owen. - What's up man?
- [Steven] I've enabled ad-block.
- Hey, that was good.
- [Steven] That is funny.
- I was gonna say it before you even--
- No you weren't.
No you weren't.
- [Owen] Oh my goodness, there's us a spot, just there.
- You're not going there.
You're not ready for there.
(laughing)
You want to come on the big boy pitch, Owen.
So we're in Leicester Square now,
and there's a couple of places I think
that you could potentially work,
one of which is here.
I think we'll leave off the big main scarier pitch,
- Yeah. - For the time being
because also, you'll have to wait four hours
to do that, - Yeah.
- And we just want to crack out some shows
and make it work.
So this is one of the spots I like to work in sometimes.
Things to think about.
You've got the direct sun.
However, that's gonna be in your eyes,
because you're gonna be facing out that way.
That is way better than it being in the audience's eyes.
- Okay. - Trust me.
- Okay. - So there's that.
Alternatively, we could try just going
to Piccadilly, which is the other place
I was thinking would be good,
and that might be shaded entirely,
but it might be quieter than here.
- Yeah. - The thing is,
right now it's early on in the day,
so things will change pretty fast.
Those are my thoughts.
- I was here and I was all,
it's going to be easy to build a crowd,
there's like 50 people here,
and then you turn the camera on,
and now there's no one.
- Two things before we start are really, really important.
- Yeah.
- Coffee, and a sandwich.
- Absolutely.
- Winning.
(slow rock music)
So we went for a Cheeky Coffee,
and then we went back to the spot,
and there was someone else there performing.
Which never really happens,
it's normally a pretty quiet spot.
Now we're gonna go to plan B,
which is, - Piccadilly circus.
- Yes. - Yes.
Sorry, I cut in. - No, that's fine.
You take the praise, you take the spin.
You know what, hog the whole video.
- Alright, cool. - Have the whole video.
- Okay it's just me now, we're going to--
(groovy music)
- So, here's, here's,
I shouldn't lie on this floor.
Here's the idea.
We're gonna set up,
Owen's gonna do like a practise run,
for me, he's just gonna do the show,
on the street, with the mike on,
but just to me.
We're not gonna worry about the crowd,
not gonna worry about anything else,
he's just gonna do it,
I'm gonna give him a little bit of feedback,
and then we're gonna try a proper run.
He might even get some audience members
when we just do this little test run.
So yeah, we're gonna see how it goes.
(grunts)
(upbeat music)
Genuinely, that was really well done.
- Thanks man.
- That was much better than my first, yeah.
- Cool!
That was a performance, mine was a,
I don't know what mine was.
So now we're gonna try building a crowd,
and doing a show for an audience.
Here's what the strategy is gonna be.
- Sure.
- Play some music,
introduce your props kind of one by one.
Do it in a really weird way,
put them on the floor,
you know how I do stuff with the forks,
to kind of build, - Yeah yeah.
- A little bit of intrigue? - Yeah absolutely.
- Do whatever you like to do that.
I think you should start with some card tricks.
I really do. - Sure.
- If you get a couple of people to stop
you only need two people, or three people,
one person's not good enough,
three people's ideal,
get 'em to stop,
just do card trick, card trick, card trick, card trick,
and then go into your cups and balls.
- Sure.
(upbeat music)
- [Steven] Mute the mic.
- It's really difficult.
- Yeah, you hooked a guy, though,
you got one person. - Yeah.
- If that was a group of three people,
the thing would've started to build.
One person I always find is really weird,
- Yeah. - And doesn't really click.
- Yeah. - That was good though.
How you doing?
- Good, I'm good.
Really tyres you out.
(laughing)
- You give so much and get so little back
(laughing)
Here's my art form, no one cares.
- No one wants to see.
- I trained for years,
no one wants to watch. (laughing)
I love what I do,
you just hate me.
- No one else does. (laughing)
- Right, so giving Owen some notes,
some things that I think he can do
to build a bit of intrigue, to get people to stop.
I told him basically to do a lot of actions,
that look like he's planning something,
and some weird stuff that looked like,
he has a goal and he's trying to achieve that thing.
All of it looks kind of strange,
and we'll get people to stop.
Speaking of which, we've already got one guy over there,
who stopped, which is great.
(groovy music)
- How do you feel, adrenaline?
- [Owen] Yeah, it was lot or adrenaline.
- I know, right?
- If you don't focus, when you try,
- Yeah, - You do not swallow.
- Do you like thinking on the spot?
Really quickly, because it gives you that,
like, edge, right? - Yeah, yeah yeah.
Building an audience is way harder,
than it, you could ever think.
Because I was always like,
I'm just gonna get out there,
I'm just gonna throw some stuff on the floor,
say, there's gonna be a show,
and everyone's gonna be like, ooh, a show.
That didn't happen. (laughing)
That didn't happen at all.
- That's all I do.
New plan, I'm gonna start the show,
we're gonna build the crowd together,
I'm gonna do the opening routine,
I'm gonna introduce Owen,
as a cool, awesome guy.
(upbeat groovy music)
Come and say hello.
You seem like the most, little shy.
You're really quiet, just like a little tiny wave,
I'll just go, hi,
and you guys go, eh,
or do something.
A little bitty response would be great.
Okay Piccadilly Circus, hello!
(muffled responses) (laughing)
It's like we're at a library.
I am loving those vibes right now.
Hi there some of you,
you're in my favourite position,
you're as far away as possible,
but you're still watching.
So you just lean and look.
Loving that.
Come on here first, come up to that there line.
If you do that, your friend will come with you.
Don't put this on YouTube,
my parents think I'm a doctor.
Alright guys, we're gonna do a little bit
of a show here, get live.
Take it like this, we blow.
We throw.
And every single side sorts itself like that,
(background noise drowns out speech)
Owen, what do you say?
give a nice round of applause for Owen,
a little clap.
- If I snap my finger, you see, it travels from my pocket,
across my chest, down my pants,
and travels underneath here.
(applause)
- [Steven] It's not easy doing shows in the baking hot sun.
You're doing really well so far.
- Thank you so much, Mate.
- We're talking a little bit of a break
'cause doing shows non-stop,
kind of tiring.
What I thought would be nice,
Owen being a magician, if Owen could be a magician
right here, right now
and be magicianing.
- Yeah, okay, yeah.
- [Steven] So, do the wizard stuff.
- Alright here, if I take a ring and roll around
what I can do is push that ring.
You can see that it goes all the way through.
And if I can get it to go on,
of course, I can get it to come off again,
just like that.
Check that out.
Have a look--
- [Steven] Let me see.
- [Owen] That's a rubber band made of rubber,
that's a ring.
- [Steven] That's a solid ring.
These are mine, now.
- [Owen] Oh.
- Right now, we're still having a bit of a problem
with the crowd build.
So I think if we try and find somewhere a lot busier,
that will create new challenges,
but also, it might make the crowd building
get a little bit easier.
Let's give it a shot.
- Let's give it a go.
(upbeat groovy music)
- I'm gonna try my best to not look at that screen
and right into that camera.
- We're back home now.
Owen did another little show by Carnaby Street.
How'd you feel that went?
- Uh, ahh. - Ooh, cars, sorry!
- In terms of performance, I don't feel like I did the best
but I felt like it would be a lot easier
to build a street there, a street?
(laughing)
- You're not going into the street building business!
I think that was your best crowd build
that you've done of the day.
Not necessarily your best show,
but your best crowd build.
Some of the things that you just kinda need
to work on right now is some
of the little street performer habits you need to get
like micromanaging the crowd,
getting people to stand where you want them to.
That kind of stuff really effects
the dynamic of the audience.
In Owen's hat speech,
which is the bit where you ask for money,
he basically was like, "Don't worry about the money!
(laughing)
"You know, I already, I do this for the money!"
It was kinda...
- Yeah.
- To which, everyone just went, "Alright, then."
(laughing)
Not that I'm saying you should beg them for coins,
but I do think that maybe stressing that this is your job
a little bit more would be beneficial.
I will say this, and I mean this totally honestly,
your street show act, much better than my first
day out doing a street show.
Genuinely, much better.
Another magician came by during the day called Tom London.
He watched it.
He was like, "This guy's really polished.
"You can tell he's worked on this routine for a long time."
Which is a lie!
You've barely done this trick.
- (laughing) Like two weeks.
- Before we end this video,
just wanna say a couple of things.
Firstly, if you wanna see this video,
this day from Owen's perspective, check out his channel.
Also, I am trying to put together some kind of a thing
on street performing, I'm keeping it vague right now.
But if you are interested in street performing,
there's a little link in the description
that will say something like,
"Hey, this is the link that I meant when I mentioned
"the link, this is the link."
Owen, you have to do the thank you
in the right voice, with a lot of passion.
I'll, I'll just...
- Alright. (deep breath)
Thank you!
- I mean, it's not the best.
- It was lacklustre at best, wasn't it?
- You're new at this.
(upbeat groovy music)
You came outside without your shoes on.
- I thought we were just going over there onto the patio.