talkmagic.co.uk

Hundred Dollar Miracles
Available from Magicshop.co.uk
Currently £11.75 ( Bargain!! )

The Blurb

Restorations, Vanishes, appearances, transformations, divinations, penetrations, transportations and more!! All using the bill switch

Jay Sankey has been creating original and exciting applications with Mike Kozlowski's bill switch for years, and now here in one amazing volume Jay includes all his classic bill switch effects along with many other routines he is revealing for the very first time!

Jay teaches the switch from three different camera angles so learning the technique has never been easier. Jay also goes into great detail on such important subjects as preparing the billets, practicing the switch and executing the switch in different performance settings.

A Mind Blowing collection of 30 incredible magic and mentalism effects for close-up, stand-up, walk around and even stage performers!!
Learn how to use the switch to bend spoons, color illustrations from a children's book, cause signatures to transpose, push words through the middle of a bill, create wrinkles in drawing of a pair of pants, tear and restore a borrowed and signed bill, move a hole into a bulls eye, bring an image in a photograph to life, cause an illustration of a flower to gain a scent, find three selected cards, and even burst the drawing of a balloon complete with sound effect!

Reveiw

As with most Sankey products ( pouches aside ) , a lot of though has gone into this one as can be expected. The Dvd is presented in the highest quality and the content is amazing!!

It would be pointless to list every single effect on the dvd as they all use the one basic principle - the Kozlowski bill switch - however thinking behind each effect gives each one its own personality.

The Kozlowski bill switch is taught in explicit detail, very slowly and all points covered. Jay does the bill switch a little differently to say, Michael Ammar and I dont see any real advantages or disadvantages to either approach, its all down to preference but in any case, its taught very well here.

You learn how to prepare the bills, do the switch and how to deal with borrowed bills.

Then Jay breaks into his 30 effects - there is a HUGE amount of content on this DVD.. Ill just touch on my favourites

Show a uncloured drawing from a childrens colouring book. Advise the children you were never allowed to use crayons as a kid so you came up with your own way of colouring in picture!!

Show a blank cheque which can be examined. Advise the spectator that you are moving to a part of the UK where the 'unrich' wont be allowed to use the banks anymore so you have came up with a way to cash your own cheques!!

show a spec a picture of a spoon, and a real spoon. hand them the spoon to hold onto wrapped in a hanky. visually 'bend' the picture of the spoon. Then have them open their hand to find the spoon they had been holding onto is now bent!!

Show a bill and write a word on it. then with a click of the fingers, the words now appear on the back of the bill!!


The effects mentioned are a small number of the effects outlined on this DVD. The ones I have mentioned there have my own patter in them but you get the point.

This DVD has inspired me to come up with new ways to use the bill switch.Hundred Dollar Miracles is a great tool to inspire us to think about new ways to use a single concept. Its all good and well changing a £5 into a £20 but the real magic lies in finding other ways to use singular concepts.

I see my TT in a new light and will certainly take inspiration from this product to come up with my own 30 mind-blowing effects!!

Value 10/10 .. £11.75, cant be beaten!!
Content 10/10
Overall 10/10

Thanks for the review, do you think if you can already pull off a good bill switch you should still buy the DVD, purely because of Sankey's ideas?

Well if all you use the bill switch for is to switch bills.. then yes!!

There's no much more you can do with it.. for £11.75 can you go wrong??!!

Honestly, I was a little let down by the explanation portion of it (in my opinion the most important part). A total of 5 minutes was devoted into showing you how to do the move (while the video is 118minutes long), which is only 4% of the entire video. As this is the ONLY MOVE involved, he should have spent a little more time explaining it. The cover says that "Jay teaches the switch from three different camera angles", which is true, but they switch between the angles, instead of sticking with one, then the other and another. If you're used to the Michael Ammar ETMCM series, when you read multiple angles, you think picture in picture, which this is NOT. Jay tells you exactly what to do during the switch, but doesn't go into the details of what is going on. He says things like "Your finger pushes it", but when watching the video, you see his other fingers doing something else too to help, but Jay doesn't mention that.

And he only does the switch ONE TIME during the explanation. Most explanation videos show the moves several times, fast then slow then at normal speed again.

He does talk about practicing the switch, and while he's talking he's performing the move, but the camera is straight on, so all you see is what the audience sees. I would have liked to have seen a reverse angle of the switch several times.

With that said, the effects are amazing! Jay is very ingenious in the way he uses the bill switch. it goes far beyond just the "change $1 to $5" routines that I was used to seeing with a TT.

Value 10/10 - very reasonably priced

Content 6/10 - If you know how to do the bill switch, then the content is a 10/10, but if you don't, this video doesn't do a very good job showing you how it's done.

Overall - 8/10 - If you know how to do the bill switch already, then it's 10/10.

I order mine on the 5th April and it still hasn't arrived yet fer your know what sake.

I know have to write a letter to try and get the missing object investigated by royal mail. I'm not a patient man at the best of times. But this is a right b*****ks.

I wish you had've told me the DVD was terrible and I probably wouldn't be as frustrated as I am now.

I dont think the point of the DVD was to teach the switch so much as it was to open up your mind in terms of what you can do with it.

Wills, sorry to hear that man.. its a bitch when that happens. Have you spoke to Magicshop about it>? Maybe pay a visit to Royal Mail ( your local office ) and ask them to check if they have anything for you to collect for your address. Maybe the postie didnt put that red card through the door to say you weren't there.

That happened to me once when I ordered from America. I went to the local royal mail office and luckily that had it sitting waiting for me to collect.

Yeah I'm sure it happens to most people at some point when ordering online. I spoke to magicshop and they told me that I have to send in a letter (no emails) so that they can forward onto royal mail so they can investigate.

I'm sure that anyone who has had this happen to them before understands how annoying it is when your waiting day after day and you just wanna get stuck into something. My TT feels neglected.

Good point about visiting royal mail, I'll give that a whirl to see if they have anything. Cheers.

I.D wrote:I dont think the point of the DVD was to teach the switch so much as it was to open up your mind in terms of what you can do with it.

The cover of the DVD itself says:
"THIS DVD IS DESTINED TO BECOME THE "BILL SWITCH BIBLE." "

If something is touted as a "bible", you would think it would focus a little bit more on the actual sleight, the foundation of every other effect on the DVD. After all, if you can't do the sleight, the rest of the DVD kind of putters out.

Maybe I just read too much into the description, but I assumed that it taught the sleight in detail.

Don't get me wrong. He DOES teach the sleight. But he kind of passes it off as a "Well, in case you don't know how to do this, or have forgotten, here's a quick reminder of the steps."

On most of his DVD's, he has a "Special" section tha focuses just on the sleights used. I was disappointed he didn't have the same thing here. I have never used a TT, so had no clue how to do the bill switch. I now see how it's done, but I've had to step through the dvd frame by frame and listen to his descriptin several times just to successfully switch the bill.

Jay teaches the bill switch on several of his DVDs, and none of them are really described that well. So when I read this the DVD showed THREE CAMERA ANGLES, I just assumed the teaching would be better developed. But no. It wasn't.

Wills wrote:I wish you had've told me the DVD was terrible and I probably wouldn't be as frustrated as I am now.

This is a great DVD, as it presents several great ideas and Jay Sankey is very entertaining and fun to watch. The only bad thing I had to say about this is that the sleight isn't taught very well. That doesn't make it a terrible DVD, just a little disappointing.

i think it's taught pretty well personally - hey, thats opinions for you...

i never bothered with it before, i got it out of curiosity...but i picked it up pretty easy after spending sometime with it and a mirror...

the dvd did actually get on my nerves a little, as i found it - a bit toooooo long...which is counter-intuitive i know, especially as i have a stop button on my dvd...he does give you value for money on most of his dvds i'll give him that...

He taught it. But it's like someone teaching the DL saying, "and now you turn them over together," and not explaining any other details, like catching a break, or hand positions, or anything. There is a DVD out called "Double Take" by Gregory Wilson. That one did exceptionally well explaning the DL that I had no problem learning it.

I was able to learn the bill switch, but compared to Jay Sankey's other material, I rate his explanation of this right up there with Brian Tudor's explanations on "Heckler".

resdog wrote:He taught it. But it's like someone teaching the DL saying, "and now you turn them over together," and not explaining any other details, like catching a break, or hand positions, or anything. There is a DVD out called "Double Take" by Gregory Wilson. That one did exceptionally well explaning the DL that I had no problem learning it.

I was able to learn the bill switch, but compared to Jay Sankey's other material, I rate his explanation of this right up there with Brian Tudor's explanations on "Heckler".

I thaught the explanations on heckler were fine for the most part, it just assumes you know basic sleights to the level of RRTCM.

This is a great DVD, and I thought he showed the switch pretty well.

Granted he only show it once, and you have to keep watching it in order to learn the move, but that's not such a hardship is it?

He covers the folding of the bill in good detail, as well as showing the move from a couple of angles, which to be honest should be more than enough, providing you're willing to put in the practice!

Binary wrote:I thaught the explanations on heckler were fine for the most part, it just assumes you know basic sleights to the level of RRTCM.

So, comparitively, Jay Sankey teaches the TT switch, assuming you already know how to basically do the switch.

Carlos75 wrote:and you have to keep watching it in order to learn the move, but that's not such a hardship is it?

No, I don't have a problem with pausing, frame by framing it, and going over it several times. Jay teaches this move on several of his DVD's, and I think the only difference between those and this one is the fact that he used "multiple angles".

All I'm saying is this: I have a rather large collection of magic DVDs. Most of them, when explaining an effect, explain in great detail how something is done (Richard Kaufman On the Pass, ETMCM series, Art of Card Manipulations). Comparitively, this wasn't as good.

Does Jay teach you how to do the move? Yes. Can you learn how to do it if you don't mind rewinding, replaying, frame-by-framing the video? Yes. Does this mean that it was taught pretty well? No. In my opinion (and it is just my opinion), the fact that you have to rewind, review and replay just to find out handling positions doesn't make it a well explained move. I understand that you need to watch it several times to "get it". But you shouldn't have to rewatch it several times just to figure out how he's holding it.

Cool good review!

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