talkmagic.co.uk

I'm surprised that I could not find any other reviews on this here!

Hello everyone, this will be my second review I have ever written for the magic community, and the first I have written for the kind folks here at talkmagic.co.uk. My other review was for Close Up!Up!Up! by Lu Chen and Zenneth Kok-Kok Hak, which can be viewed at http://zennethkok.com/content/review-lu-chens-close-upupup-dvd (originally I had written it for the Magic Café, so I was honored that the producer featured my review on his forum!).

Now, to review one of Cameron Francis’s signature pieces!

The Effect
"The Annihilation Deck is one of those things that you will take EVERYWHERE. It requires no skill, yet packs a MASSIVE punch. And it's repeatable with a different selection each time, making it perfect for almost any situation. With this deck in your pocket you KNOW you can unleash a brain-melting miracle at any point... and you can relax and concentrate on making your performance scintillating and memorable. The deck does all the hard work for you! "

Cost
$25 if you buy directly from Cameron Francis himself at http://www.cameron-francis.com/Annihilation.php. If you do so, you also get the original Annihilation e-book which helped sate my excitement as I awaited the DVD itself.

Difficulty
(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)

Probably a 1 if you use the method Francis provides on the DVD and e-book. If you use a different method as I have done for test purposes, you’re at about a 1.5-2. The other great effects provided on the DVD are approximately a 1.5-2 as well. Nothing complicated.

Review
The first time I had ever heard of BBM (and John Bannon) was when I picked up Bullets After Dark. That DVD led me on a great path. This is the second BBM DVD I have purchased, and you can be sure I will be purchasing more (my next purchase will be Omega Mutation, also directly from Francis in the near future). Let’s get to the specifics:

- Production: utterly beautiful as I’ve come to expect now from BBM. The menu is easy to navigate, everything is cleanly divided into performance and explanation, and the metal music in the background is a nice plus (for me, anyways). Also, the box cover is really cool looking.

- Teaching: Cameron Francis seems to be the kind of guy I’d love to have a drink or two with. He is funny, clear, and concise. The cues he gives to the editors (watch the DVD to see what I mean) add nice humor to the teaching. It is easy to follow instructions for everything, and he gives hints and advice for performing. Awesome teaching, just like Bullets After Dark.

- Effects: the title piece, Annihilation deck, is the reason I bought this DVD and it is a great effect that instantly resets and is repeatable to the same spectator in the same period of time (normally you should never do it but if you wanted to, you could). It is a great effect, and easy to do. Mr. Francis provides several other presentations, but I prefer the original. The other effects included are:
1) Do as I predict – a cool mentalism piece that requires a tad set-up. I am experimenting with ways to make it completely impromptu and I feel like I am close to it. You have the spec shuffle a deck, and cut one half for you and one half for him/herself. You each choose a card and they match two opposite-backed predictions that you have set aside at the beginning of the trick. Blew my mind when I saw it, method is very clever.
2) Red lite prediction – another cool mentalism piece with an incredibly devious method (they’re all devious, really though). However, I don’t necessarily think it’s for me as I specifically require tricks I perform to be technically repeatable to the same spectator. It is a great trick though. The spec chooses two cards face up, adds their values, and deals down that many cards. They continue to deal to another random card, which matches opposite-backed prediction cards. This is like an ungaffed version of Mr. Francis's Red Hot Prediction, but I think I will stick with RHP.
3) Convergence – I believe Mr. Francis sold this as a separate trick as well, but it is KILLER. It is my favorite effect on the DVD, possibly more so than the title trick. I am also looking at ways to revise it slightly to make it look even more random for the spectator. But basically, this effect rocks. The spectator randomly chooses a card, followed by another card whose number on the back is noted (all the cards have a different number). A second deck is taken out, and dealt that many cards, which will always reach the selected card. Truly amazing and simple method.

- Others: At one point Mr. Francis starts to hum and dance to Ice Ice Baby. I think we should see more of that.

Overall: 9.5/10. This is superb stuff. I have practically no bad things to say about this. For 25 dollars, you learn a cool method and some great whole-deck tricks. AND, Mr. Francis gives you a free red deck of Bikes. Can you get better value than that? The only downside is you might go through a couple of decks if you want to work all the effects as I have. But that’s not a big deal. They’re awesome effects.

Pros: great production, great teaching, Mr. Francis is a really funny guy, metal music is always great.
Cons: Needs more dancing and humming Mr. Francis. Also needs more funny voices and quotes as he does in the introduction.

I think I will eventually review the first three Moment's Notice e-books Mr. Francis has released, once I read through the third.

Thanks for reading!

Wow! Thanks for the great review!

Thanks for the review. I agree with pretty much everything you say - especially about Convergence which I can see myself using more than the title effect. I've reviewed it on Bicycle-cards.co.uk but didn't want to just re-publish my review here...