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The Effect

A double DVD set jammed full of card tricks


Cost

£19:00 (or £29:99 if you want a snazzy tee shirt and a set of Karnival death head cards)


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)

A bit of a mix as there's a lot of magic on here, but on average 3 or 4


The Advertising Blurb

BBM superstars Cameron Francis and Liam Montier team up to deliver a MONSTER amount of ass-kicking card magic awesome! Featuring material from their acclaimed joint PDFs ‘Released’ and ‘KaPOW!’ plus revised handlings and new stuff, (and heroic amounts of mucking about) these tricks will have you cracking open the cards and exploding brains in NO time!

Let Cammers and the Montinator melt your brain with these magic slices of mayhem – or learn on the move, because we have also included a PDF download of both ‘Released’ and ‘Kapow’ for your reading pleasure!


Review

My initial reaction when I stuck the DVD in the player was disappointing! The format is Liam and Cameron performing tricks for each other, then explaining them for us... plus a handful of interview pieces in between. There's no performances to any members of public for these tricks, and maybe it's just me, but I do like to see them done in the real world.

And the first trick, No Joke, for me is not particularly stunning... Plus I'm not a fan of these cardboard slip cases for DVD's either.

Maybe Big Blind Media have set the bar rather high (they made the Ultimate Self Working Card Tricks DVD, and Ultimate Impromptu Card Tricks as well... both excellent products) and at first glance, this seems to be a release that's just average by their standards.

So it's good that I waited a little while before posting this!

Once I got past my little criticisms, I realized that the card magic on here is (with the odd exception) very, very strong, and the teaching is excellent!

Cheaters Sleeve, the second trick is highly unusual. There's a bit of technical handling, but nothing impossible, and has such a lovely reveal at the end. (The clue is in the name!) I'm going to start learning it next.

Overcount is my initial favorite, combining mind-reading, predictions, and Bannons Overkill! I like this a lot... It seems to be my current "go to" trick!

There's a lot of magic on these 2 discs, 15 tricks in all! To much to go through individually, and more than enough to keep me going with new tricks for quite a while yet! Whilst there's a couple that to my eye's don't quite make the grade, the vast majority of the material here is excellent! (Triple play for example!) A lot of them are Liam and Camerons takes on classic plots (Repulsive, Hoffy and Subtle Soto) And the explanations are all very clear, very well taught, and include a lot of different techniques in there to work on.

And there's quite a few other plus's with this set! Firstly, it's fun! Liam and Cameron clearly had a great time making this, and they come across very well, as always! AND you get two PDFs for your money! .... AND Big Blind Media are nice enough to send you another free PDF with four more tricks on! Seems like great value for your money!

And while I think of it, there's a review of this on the green place that says similar to what I've said, but seems to like the tricks I didn't so much, and vica-versa... To me this shows that it's really all good material! Just that some people prefer different things!


Overall

I can see this disc getting a little lost next to the other monster discs BBM have brought out over the last few months. Which is a shame, as it really is what it says it is... Two DVD's of awesome card tricks. Nice and simple. There's no gaffed cards involved, very little set up in any of the tricks, and two excellent magicians! Another great product from Big Blind Media.




(And if you should decide to shell out for the tee shirt and pack of cards, the tee shirt is very nice! And not a replica of the one Cameron is modelling throughout this set! )