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Maynia by Andrew Mayne

The Effects

Overall the DVD has five effects on it all from the mind of Andrew Mayne. The blurb and description on the back of the DVD is as follows.

Andrew Mayne presents five eye-popping, mind-blowing effects that will have your audiences on the edge of their seats and ducking for cover. All are easy to learn and perform. Andrew shares some of his personal secrets for the first time.

Pop Fist - Create an explosive opening using your bare hands. A simple effect that's ready to go whenever you need to make a big impression and create your own close-up pyrotechnic display.

Drawn From The Light - Draw a light bulb and make it come to life. A light bulb is drawn on a sketch pad. With a wave it comes to life and lights up. You then pull the lit bulb from the pad into reality.

Death Finger - Stab a marked card in mid-air with your finger. A spectator selects a card and marks it. The card is then lost in the deck. You spring the cards into the air and stab their card with your bare finger

Finger Saw - Perform an impromptu finger amputation with playing cards. Got a couple Jokers left in the pack? Use them to perform a gruesome close-up illusion that recreates the classic sawing a lady in half.


Stab'd - Deadly impromptu mentalism using a sharpened pencil. Andrew's impromptu version of the infamous mentalism effect that's scarred many performers. A sharpened pencil is mixed up in one of three envelopes. A spectator is given a total free choice to decide which ones are empty (no magician's choice!). You stab the first selection into your chest and are unharmed. You slam the spectator's hand into the second and they're unscathed. You then rip open the last envelope to reveal the deadly pencil. While there are more expensive versions of this effect on the market, many who have seen Andrew's version feel it's the best because it doesn't use any odd props, has an extra gritty feel due to the use of a sharpened pencil, can be performed on a moment's notice and is possibly the safest variation out there using a real sharp objec




Cost

Around £12 or $19.95. Obviously prices vary from shop to shop but they're a rough guideline.


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)

I would say that Maynia and the effects within it are from 1-2. Although some sleights are used they are all well explained and shown how best to execute them.


Review

Well what can i say, it is a solid DVD from our man Mayne. When i got home to find this on my doorstep i was very excited but unfortunately my first problem rose when i tried to watch it. Although the DVD itself was playing and i could see the images i couldn't get any sound out of it. This may have just been my DVD players but i found that by changing my player to region 2 that the problem soon solved itself.

The effects as a whole show themselves to be decent tricks with fairly easy to execute moves. Maynia is by no means a DVD youcanwatch once and perform each trick like a demon but the way it is presented makes learning the effects alot easier. Step by step instructions and tip for performing all help to speed up the users learning.

As the 5 effects on the DVD are very seperate in the illusion that they create i will review them one by one.

Pop Fist - To be honest when i watched the previe for this trick on the shockmagic.com website this is one trick on Maynia that i thought looked a bit naff, needless to say i was wrong. Popfist allows the performer to create an impromptu spark from your hand at any time during a performance, finishing completely clean and able to show your hands bare. What you would imagine to be an extremely messy effect is actually in practice very sweet indeed.

Drawn From The Light - This is arguable the most visual effect on the DVD. Its not everyday that a magician visually pulls a lightbulb out of a picture and makes it reality, let alone making the drawn bulb light up on the page. Although there is a tiny bit of preperation for this trick, once its set up its done and can be performed again totally improptu. Some props have to be bought in order to perfrom the trick but they are all fairly easy to get hold of and should cost no more than a couple of quid.

Death Finger - Mayne has took the classic stabbed card trick with a sword and made it his own and more importantly impromtu. Quite a bit of misdirection is used for this trick but again it is all explained in great detail on the DVD. A definate finisher trick for any performance.

Finger Saw - This although very simplewould have to be my favourite trick from Maynia. Mayne uses a simple principle and gives it his own touch, allowing the magician to saw a card through there finger or even for a spectator to do it for them. This is one trick that can be learnt and performed after one viewing of the instuructions.

Stab'd - The only mentalism effect on the dvd but what a cracker it is. Think Spike but on a budget. The method for this effect is pure genius and what makes it even better is how easy it is to perform. As before there are some sleights but they are all easy to execute and well explained. Although there maybe a few angle problems in a walkaround situation this can soon be solved. As well as the explanatin for the trick itself, Mayne also divulges into how it should be performed as well as how to get the best reactions out of any spectator



Overall

Overall i am very impressed with Maynia. Although all of the tricks on the dvd are spot on, i did have a few problems with the dvd itself. The sound issue as well as the lack of ability to jump from trick to trick instruction on the main menu combine to take Maynia's gloss away ever so slightly. I would definately reccomend this DVD to magicians both old and new and gets a rating of 8.5 /10 from me.

Fantastic review Mr. Ceaser, nice to see something other than card or coin tricks, interesting stuff.

personally, i was dissapointed with this..so much so, i couldnt bring myself to review it!

i hated pop-finger...i liked Drawn from the Light, and the Stab'd thing...and that was it...one thumbs down for me, the other hand is holding my nose...

but it's probably more that the effects themselves didnt appeal to me, im not knocking his presentations or anything...

Personally, the only thing I enjoyed was Stabd.

There's a lot of scope for the method involved... and could be ultimately a great 'impromptu' smash&stab... but, I don't think Mayne's handling was clean enough... it looked VERY cumbersome.

I personally didnt like anything from this.. it looked aweful 'childish'.

Looks like I'm the only one who really liked this lol. I think its more the fact that all the tricks are very visual that appeared to me rather than the methods of the tricks themselves.