Chaotic by Kieron Johnson & RSVPMagic

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Chaotic by Kieron Johnson & RSVPMagic

Postby Dan Q » Mar 13th, '14, 16:48



Chaotic by Kieron Johnson & RSVPMagic

Image

The Effect

DVD containing 9 of Kieron's favourite routines.

Cost

£19.99 direct from RSVPMagic

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)


Variable: 1 - 3

The advertising blurb

Welcome to Chaotic the brand new project from Kieron Johnson. Kieron, creator of our best selling trick of 2012, To the Max, invites you join him as he performs and explains nine of his favourite routines. All are from his current working set and are audience tested in the real world. This really is material that you WILL use.

CIO - Kieron's take on the classic Card In Orange routine. What sets this apart is that the spectator rips the corner off of the chosen torn card and keeps it. It matches, exactly, the card that is inside the orange! Brilliant stuff and a real worker!

Lollypop - Kieron's favourite opening trick, either performed fast or as part of a unique prediction, where the magician produces a thought of object in a flash of fire!

Stop Kicking Me - A sure fire classic in the making. A video is shown of the magician holding a face down card on his phone. A playing card is now FREELY chosen (no force) and the spectator now plays the video that was paused only moments before. When the magician in the video turns over the card he is holding, it's the freely chosen card! A real reputation maker!

Borrowed Phone in Ballon & Wallet- A borrowed phone penetrates inside a Balloon. The Balloon is burst and the phone removed. The balloon is now restored magically and the phone now vanishes visibly, appearing inside your wallet that has been sitting on the table throughout! Mind-blowing, reputation making magic that will get you repeat bookings.

Chaotic FKS - Kieron's unique take on the art of fork bending, including a unique moment where the fork actually twists in the spectators own hand. Unreal.

Transcend - A superb rising card that can use a borrowed Deck and two glasses. The freely chosen card rises completely under your control and inside the covered glasses. This is one that your audiences will talk about, long after you're gone!

Bigger - Kieron's unique take on the Sponge Balls that can play close up or on stage

The 5 Rules of Magic - A quick opening routine that is snappy and above all, amazing

Credit Crunch - A unique way to reveal a chosen playing card on your actual credit card!

The Devils Triumph - Kieron's take on the classic plot that's unlike any other!

Review

I really enjoyed To The Max and I love Re-Maxed Iceolation so much that I've felt the need to customise/fine-tune its gimmick. Furthermore, I'm a big fan of Kieron's style: both as a performer (where he is, as this DVD suggests, "chaotic"... what he would probably call "a messy magician") and as a presenter - if he's demonstrating a sleight, he does so with enough precision and care that I can understand it, and no more. (I've a personal pet hate of DVDs that show me the same thing six times over: really - I have a "rewind" button and if I need it, I'll use it!).

The DVD's well-produced: most of the performances are in small, close-quarters settings and only need a single camera angle, but the video and audio quality's perfect and the editing's spot-on. The tricks themselves vary wildly in size, from Stop Kicking Me - an intimate card trick which is only really suitable for smaller groups of a handful of spectators at a time - up to Bigger - a highly-interactive sponge balls effect that can only really be justified with a larger audience and ideally a stage. This certainly means that there's "something for everybody" on this disc... but it also means that for every magician, there'll be something on the DVD that they'll never use, too. That said: Kieron's an inspiring entertainer and I'd like to think that everybody will take something from his performances, even if they never work in the same environments or with the same tools.

The tricks are:-

CIO - a combination of a Card In Orange and a Torn & Restored Card; if you know how to do these tricks already, you probably won't learn much, but it's great to see how the two combine so well (especially if you're willing to eat your playing cards) and even coming from a position of knowing my way around these two tricks, it was still enjoyable to discover this new way of presenting them.

Lollypop - a clever home-made deck and a few other tools produce a very simple trick, but one that can be easily adapted to other small objects. Again, perhaps more-useful for inspiration than instruction, but certainly inspiring.

Stop Kicking Me - an clever twist on prediction and revelation, requiring only minor slights and easily-available deck modification. There's a significant set-up involved on your mobile phone before you first perform this trick (took me a couple of hours to get it "just right"), but the effect afterwards is mind-blowing.

Borrowed Phone in Ballon & Wallet - a nice trick... if you happen to have (or are able to afford as a "spare") one or more of the most-popular smartphones: I've not performed this trick (I have a less-common smartphone), and I worry that increased personalisation of phones in the future will make it impossible to perform "as is". However, for now it's a good-looking trick that really turns heads.

Chaotic FKS - again, Kieron takes a widely-understood trick (in this case, spoon-bending) and puts his own unique "twist" on it: in this case, quite literally a 'twist': using a novel and imaginative (yet reasonably simple-to-learn) approach to give a spectator some real feedback that they can feel. More than a little unnerving, and a wonderful idea: so long as carrying cutlery around with you is your thing.

Transcend - a traditional "rising card" effect, brought into a modern bar/party environment and all set and ready for a spectator to (inevitably) try to grab the card when it appears (and that's fine!). If you've already got ITR gear, you're set to perform it (and for me, this was the performance that finally made me buy ITR kit).

Bigger - Kieron claims that this sponge ball 'production' trick works well with smaller groups, but I'm not convinced - I think it benefits from there being 'space' between the performer and the volunteer: space in which balls can be thrown, and space to add impact (the further away the magician is when the magic happens, the more "real" it must be, right? ;-)) Requires a level of confidence with sponge balls that you can't learn from this DVD alone, but looks to be an impressive effect for those for whom sponge balls are a routine part of their work.

Credit Crunch - if there's one trick on the disc which I think Kieron under-plays the significance of, this is it: he reveals a little-known truth about your bank cards (possibly UK-specific) that creates the possibility of some spectacular in-spectators-hand-type prediction effects. It's so subtle that his audience members don't believe their eyes for a moment, and I think that it's got so much more potential than this DVD gives it credit for.

The Devils Triumph - a performance technique that really plays into the "messy magician" style, tied up with a mild horror story that'll leave audience members at least a little spooked. Plus, again, it fires up the imagination: "Hey," I thought, "I have [a particular electrician's tool] in my shed... what kind of effects could I pull off with this approach..."

Overall

This is a wonderful DVD, full of inspirational ideas and a good handful of real working tricks that you can take and adapt to your act without difficulty. Only a few of the tricks require 'background' experience: it's not quite for an absolute beginner, but somebody who's got a handle just a small variety of different card handling techniques will be right at home. Personally, I seriously love Kieron's presentational style, and he shines both in his performances and his explanations, on this DVD, and at £2.22 per trick, you're getting perfectly good value, too.

My only concern was that, as I hinted above, not every trick is suited to every magician. If you don't perform for larger audiences and you don't have much experience of sponge balls, you're not going to get much out of Bigger, for example. Perhaps it'd have been better if Kieron had released two DVDs: one of his favourite close-up tricks and one of his favourite stage tricks, for example. That said, getting his absolute favourites is probably part of the reason that this DVD is so energetic and passionately-presented (which is a major part of why it's so inspirational: you'll finish it and immediately have half a dozen new ideas for your own show, completely separate from what Kieron's shown you): perhaps we're already getting the best of both worlds.

Be aware that Kieron's a little bit of a fan of gimmicked props: if you decided that you wanted to learn magic, bought yourself a deck of cards and this DVD, you'd find that you were probably only equipped to perform a couple of them: you'd be likely to need to go buy a (readily-available) gimmicked deck, a blank deck, some flashpaper, an ITR, as well as take a trip to the bank (yes, really), etc. If you're a purist and you don't like the gimmicks, this probably isn't the DVD for you. But on the other hand, I can't think of anybody better to sell you on the idea of using some of them than the charismatic and imaginative Kieron Johnson.

Overall I'd give it 8/10: it's an amazing DVD, and anybody with any respect for Kieron's work should own it: there are plenty of discs with more tricks for less money, but Kieron's showmanship, passion, and charisma really makes this DVD stand out. But: be advised that you may require a couple of extra purchases before you can perform all of these tricks, and that some of the tricks might simply be unsuitable to the way in which you perform. Also bear in mind that it's probably not suitable for absolute beginners.

My first attempt at a review on TalkMagic. Let me know if I've done anything really off-target: thanks!

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Dan Q
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Re: Chaotic by Kieron Johnson & RSVPMagic

Postby JustCraig » Mar 14th, '14, 22:11

Great review and I agree - It's an excellent DVD - Probably one of my favourite DVDs that I bought last year (and I bought a LOT of DVDs lol)

The biggest lesson to be learned by watching this DVD is the value of truly making an effect your own.

JustCraig
Full Member
 
Posts: 64
Joined: Jan 21st, '13, 23:47


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