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Cor bloody 'ell! I haven't posted a video of me performing magic for many moons now! (Probably owing to my strong leaning towards mentalism and the bizzare now...) but I was chatting with someone online, discussed this trick and decided to knock a video out of for it!

I apologise for where my hand goes out of shot, and I also apologise for the TERRIBLE handling of "that sleight". But you don't get second chances with audiences, and it would be covered by misdirection (really, who's eyes would I allow there??) so I'm sticking to it.

So, enjoy (or not!) Visibly Triumphant!

By the way, for some reason I find the soundtrack to this hilarious!

PS: Ignore the title and tags. Just stops people looking for things like this.

PPS: Sorry for the shocking picture quality! Had to keep it small to upload it! Long story, but bad ISP

Nicely done mate Can't see you having any trouble with that on a normal audience. Try it with the missus

I'm going to watch it again now......... just for the soundtrack

80 views and one comment.

Has no one got anything to say about this?

OK since you ask. I will completely disregard the actual handling.

The main problem is that you do not highlight the magic and the magical moments.

After having shuffled the card face up fact down and then done a lot of more shuffling suddently the cards are spread out face up, with one card face down. The ace of diamond is shown to the camera again.

In my view you have essentially reduced a brilliant effect
to an effect where you pick a card and then find it again after shuffling for ages.

Your nice little addition in the end was very nice and to the point.

Suggestion (and an advice I got from the famous FISM winner Roberto Giobbi):
When you spread out the card there are two effects. The first effect is that all cards apparently suddently have turned the SAME way. The second effect is that their selection is the only exception to this.

To highlight the magic of the first affect the cards should be spread slowly so the miracle of what just happened is sinking in. First when the spectators begin to react (with you handling I am not sure the spectators would react at this stage) you reveal the next "kicker" that their card has turned over.

Another problem I have with your handling is that you shuffle the cards too much after you shuffled them face up into face down cards. The Hindu shuffle addition of yours ruined the effect since (at least to me) it looked like most of the cards at that stage was already the same way. Yes, there was a few packets that maybe was turned the other way around, but since you continued doing a few cuts etc. it would not be surprise a spectator that you somehow managed to cut the cards back to the original orientation.

I always try to rule out "false" explanations in my presentations. If the cards you shuffle face down all had a slightly different size from the cards up, your handling would not be magical. When I perform the effect, I do it in such a way that even if the cards had different size it would still be magic!

Finally, when tabled I always like to include Daryl's display just to make sure it really sinks in that the cards really are in a mess. Then it is very important that you hardly touch the cards AFTER that (please avoid all that extra shuffling after wards. It remove in my view the magic and turn it into a demonstration of skill which is not the aim of this effect).

Hope this make sense. My critique is not on your handling, but of the "thinking" behind your presentation.

I thought the trick was fine except for the video quality.

Soren, thanks for the informative reply.

The main reason I posted this was to show the handling... obviously with a spectator there would be patter, appropriate pauses etc.

I also wanted critique just like the one you offered there so kudos to you for your honesty and taking the time to reply to this video!

I will reshoot this once I am back home and try to incorporate what you mentioned into the video. I might even dig out my mic and patter!

Once again, thanks for an honest reply - after all, we magicians post our routines here so that we may learn from others views of our magic.
Many thanks!

Hope I catch you before you re shoot, or at least before you put it back on the internet. And this is meant to be constructive so don't take offense. 24 seconds in. I don't know if its a pass a half pass or something completely different but the fingers on your left hand are clearly doing something to the bottom half of the deck, or at least so it seems.

I know the argument is that only a magician would spot it. But I don't believe that argument for a second. Plenty of magicians show me affects and I don't spot anything. Our own Queen Of Clubs is a good example. For the most part I cannot spot her Invisible pass.

It may just be you have to tip your hands forwards so that your fingers are pointing towards the floor, showing more of the face (or back) of the cards rather then the edges. You probably just have to play around with it to either hide the action or make the action smoother, depending on exactly what you are doing.

bmat wrote:Hope I catch you before you re shoot, or at least before you put it back on the internet. And this is meant to be constructive so don't take offense. 24 seconds in. I don't know if its a pass a half pass or something completely different but the fingers on your left hand are clearly doing something to the bottom half of the deck, or at least so it seems.

Yes that's definitely NOT a good sleight... it's not a pass or half pass - but it's a move which really can't be done invisibly hence the angle is not good, but doing it by myself was a bad idea to start off with.

Will reshoot this at some point - most of my time is taken up with another project at the moment, but now my missus is around, I'll see if I can grab her to be the camerawoman

Nice routine Ecko - something you fancy sharing with us perhaps?!

I agree a little with Soren - the bit that confused me was when you were showing the cards to be mixed... I'll be honest, first time round I thought you'd gotten to the "showing them corrected" stage already, then it was like, "no, then there'd be only one card the wrong way... but there's four or five..." I'm not sure if this is a limitation of the method or what, but if it is, I would just leave it that you've obviously shuffled half up into half down and forget the "proofs".

Otherwise, nice - I like the addition at the end too, might have to try that out!