talkmagic.co.uk

Card School DVD

Cost= £19.99

Difficulty - Varies, initially very easy as it's just ways to hold cards later on it gets harder with the Elmsley Count

Review
I picked this up as I wanted to brush up on some of my more basic sleights as I'd realised I'd become more reliant on gimicks and gadgets. For the absolute and I mean absolute beginner this is a good DVD, it starts with the mechanic grip and progresses with glides, forces, shuffles, flourishes and eventually things like the Elmsley count. I skipped a fair amount of it (the beauty of DVD format) and just got to the sleights I'd been struggling with.

However the presentation of the dvd itself is a tad tedious. Imagine if you will you are watching your TV.

Image on Screen - The Mechanic Grip (this stays on for roughly 10 to 15 seconds) fades.

Garabed - The mechanic grip is the most basic grip, now I'll show you how to do it.

Image on Screen- The Mechanic Grip - Explanation (this stays on for roughly 10 to 15 seconds) fades.

The explanations themselves are good and well presented and the quality of footage is excellent. I do feel that explaning what the mechanic grip is and explaining how to do it could have been done without the need for constantly putting up the title followed by the title with explanation tagged on. I personally feel the titles are on way too long, often lasting longer than the explanation itself.


Overall

I'd recommend it for anyone starting out, I don't think I'll have it long before passing it on to someone I know who wants to get into magic.

Ps it does come with a free packet trick which apparently is worth more than this DVD. It's a good little trick utilising the elmsley count learnt on the DVD itself.

PPS - I did search the review forum and couldn't find this, apologies if a review already exists.