Twisting your way to happiness

When I started clowning, I asked my mentor clown if she'd get me started with face painting.  She told me, "Well, I have a lot of face painters.  What I really need are balloon twisters." So, I started with balloons!  I went to face painting within a few months of that, but that's for another entry.

To start with balloons, you need a pump and a bag of balloons.  Don't go to the dollar store for this or you won't get past a 3 twist poodle.  Get yourself a good pump and some good balloons.  You will start with what are called 260 balloons either by Qualatex or Betalatex most likely.  Both are good brands with little poppage which will help.  The good starter hand pumps are from Qualatex.  You'll want either a single action (the red one) or a double action (the pink and purple one).  I like the red one because it only pumps in one direction and the air does not come back out when you stop pumping.  The double action pumps in both directions but if you stop, the air starts coming back out of the balloon... to me it isn't as precise.  I like to count my pumps for sculptures rather than looking at the length of the pumped section or length of the tail, so the red fits my style best.

Once you have your pump and your bag of balloons (any bag of 100 assorted colours will start you off with learning to do it), then take yourself over to http://www.balloon-animals.com and try all of the single balloon sculptures on there.  Once you can confidently do all of the single balloon things on there from memory, you can get away with calling yourself a twister and doing it at a party or event.  You won't be the best in the biz with just those, but it will get your feet wet with doing it faster... if you can get through 12 kids before any of them have managed to pop their balloons, you're doing OK ;)  That's why I always do balloons at the end of the party... make them and RUN!!

In all seriousness, I will usually do one or two repairs before I leave, but I'll give you a one liner that will save you from having your one hour party turn into two hours of fixing balloons:

"Balloons are like vitamins, you only get ONE a day."

Happy Twisting!!
Perry Noia the Scaredy Clown :oD

Videos

A few people asked me, when I first started doing a monthly video on youtube, if it helped me get bookings... how would I know?  I had just started!

After having done it for a while now, I can definitely say, yes.  It gives people a chance to "meet" my character before hiring me if they haven't seen me perform before.  It gives a snippet of what my show is like.  It has made a difference, without a doubt.  The month that I had posted little clips from my "stage" shows at Colasanti's Tropical Gardens, I got calls/emails from 4 separate companies booking stage shows.  That's just the most obvious result, it's hard to measure other months.

How to do it?  It depends a little bit on what kind of video camera you have available and what kind of computer software you use.  I had a better video camera when I first started, but it was stolen when someone broke into our house last fall... But you don't need a fantastic camera for something like this, youtube compresses it for streaming so much that the super quality is kind of lost anyway.  You need good audio and pretty good video, but most importantly, you need content.  That's actually the hardest part when you do it regularly.  Finding something interesting and new to record every month can be hard, especially in the winter months when you don't have as many public appearances going on.  But it is important that your videos be relatively consistent or you may fall off of making them at all.  Give yourself a deadline for each of them.  I really try to get mine done before the 15th, no later than the 20th of each month and I apologize profusely if it ever gets published later than that.

Editing is the next part and depends a lot on what kind of computer and/or software you have available to you.  I have a mac, so the obvious and easiest choice is iMovie because it comes with the computer.  It is a great program for an amateur videographer because it is easy to use but makes very effective transitions, titles and will upload the movie directly to youtube or make a quicktime video or whatever format you are looking for.  If you are using Windows, you may need to search a little bit to find easy and affordable video editing software.  It's been a long time since I've done any video stuff on Windows and I don't even know if "movie maker" still exists. LOL

Once you have your video up on youtube, you can try to get people subscribing to your channel, but your best bet is probably to embed it into your website.  I have mine in the same spot on my index page all the time.  It is easier to edit the code that way and it keeps my site consistent.  The embed code is easy to find on youtube and once you find the right spot to insert it into your html code, it's a simple matter of pasting the code in the same place every time.

Feel free to subscribe to my youtube channel! http://www.youtube.com/user/PerryNoiatheClown?feature=mhum

Keep Smiling! :oD
Perry Noia the Scaredy Clown

Festival Set-ups

I do several festivals each year as well as setting up weekly at the Downtown Windsor Farmers' Market.  These outdoor events require more equipment than just doing birthday parties, so I thought I would cover some of those things to help anyone who might be thinking about getting into those kinds of events.

Tent/Canopy - most of these events will require you to bring your own shelter.  Don't risk going without it by just getting shade under a tree or something.  If you will be there for most of a day (or over several days), it is definitely worth putting up a tent.  There are cheap and easy ones for occasional use like the FirstUp ones from Walmart.  I had one of those, but in a high wind and being left overnight, this will not be sufficient.  Once I came the next day to find it rather warped and had to kind of untwist it to get it up properly again, the second time though (while I will grant there were tornadoes in the area that night) it was completely uprooted and in a tangled mess when I showed up the next morning.  My current tent is one that I bought at Costco, made by a company called Caravan.  It was about $200 and well worth the money.  Go for white rather than green or something.  It is cooler and as a face painter, I don't want funny colours being cast onto my clients' faces.

Tables - you need to decide how much room you will need for all your stuff.  Some people bring everything including the kitchen sink, those people might need a couple of tables.  Or if you will have more than one person working in the space, you will probably want one table for each person.  When working on my own, I find that a 4 foot table is enough for me.  Many different sizes and shapes are available at Staples, I got mine for about $50.

Chairs - There are many different ways of setting yourself up at a festival.  I have a tall director's chair for the customers to sit in while I stand and paint them.  This is easiest on my back and for me to be able to move around them as needed while painting.  My chair is from EZ Up, I have my name printed on the inside back of the chair and it cost me about $200.  It came with a large black bag to carry it in and it has been well worth the money spent.  I believe that if you live in the US there are some cheaper options on Amazon, but none of them would ship to Canada when I was looking.  You will also want to bring a chair for yourself.  I use it when making balloons sometimes so that I'm not kneeling on the ground to get closer to the kids and in between customers or when taking a break for lunch.  The chair I use for myself is a little folding one with a back on it from Canadian Tire.  They sell for $10 or $15.

Signage - You will need to post your prices, your name/contact info, and some photos to draw people into your booth.  For my face painting, I have two "small" outdoor banners from vistaprint.  I made image files to match the dimensions they specify for the whole banner, one banner for each price point.  I hang these from the front of my tent using shower curtain hooks or the plastic baby toy links (those are nice because they are colourful, but sometimes the shower curtain hooks are easier to find).  I recently got a third small banner with by balloon sculptures listed and grouped by price.  I don't post pictures of these because there are just too many of them.  I have one more banner, it is a LARGE one... I put it at the back of my tent because I have not found a way of attaching it in the front without it hanging down too low, but it is easily seen and has my name and website proudly displayed on it along with the words "face painting & balloons" because it is very important that everyone knows right away WHAT you are doing there!  I have one more little a-frame folding sign... I found it at Staples and it works out well for facing the direction of traffic walking by (as some will have their blinders on to everything beside them).  On this sign, I usually post the prices and my name again.

What to bring - This depends on what you are doing somewhat, but there are some things that are consistent.  If you are face painting, bring your entire kit (you never know what you will need/want, so don't upset yourself with "I wish I had brought my...").  Make sure you have as many sponges as possible.  Even if you are the kind of painter that uses one per colour instead of one per child, you may find that one ends up on the ground or covered in boogers or whatever and you'll need to replace it, so bring a lot of them.  Bring your own water, you never know how far away the nearest supply will be and you want to be able to change your water as often and quickly as necessary.  For balloons, bring as many as you can carry, your cutter or scissors, markers, etc.  And now for the everybody-needs-these extras: food and drinks for yourself (you could go broke buying it all there), garbage bags, scissors, several different kinds of tape, markers, pens, string or twine, a construction/shop style lamp that you can hang from the top of your tent if you will be there later in the evening and will have access to power (and extension cords?), and a cash box with LOTS of change (I usually go through 5s faster than anything else).

How to bring it - As you can see, you have a lot to bring and you don't want to make 50 trips to your car, even if you can get it pretty close to your spot to unload (you can't always, you don't want to leave everything there overnight and you won't be able to get your car back in there in the evening in between a multiple day event).  You want something with wheels for most of your stuff.  Rolling suitcases, scrapbooking cases, or (as I have) a rolling tool box.  Mine is a FatMax rolling toolbox made by Stanley.  Prices vary depending on where you live and sales going on, but it's usually around the $100 mark.  It's kind of heavy, so some people only use them for festivals where they have a lot to bring... I use mine for parties too though because, as a clown, I have a lot to bring with me everywhere and can fit everything in it.  You'll need a cooler for your food and drinks.  There really isn't any way to get around carrying your table and chairs, but hopefully your canopy case has wheels on it like mine.  I couldn't move my canopy without wheels since it is taller than me even when folded in the case.  My signage and little folding chair fit into my director's chair bag pretty well.  While each trip from the car will be heavy, you can probably get away with only 3 or 4 trips to unload it all.

You'll put in a lot of hours at a festival, but unless you can book 4 or 5 hourly gigs in the same weekend, you'll probably make some pretty good money working pay per face and pay per balloon.  It depends on the number of people that come to the festival of course and somewhat on the weather, but it is a chance that I often take as long as the booth fees aren't ridiculous.

Happy Fest-ing! :oD
Perry Noia the Scaredy Clown