Magic Tricks

What a nice and simple effect. The vanishes appear very straightforward and can obviously be achieved - as others have said - with the addition of a gimmick that all magicians will have. This trick won’t fool a fellow magician, but it should be very pleasing for a layman. However, the real fooler - simply amazing - is when the four aces reappear. How was that done! I watched time and time again - never mind the vanishes, that’s standard stuff - but the reappearance ? Simply amazing and I was about to part with my money for that alone, until ….

I realised there’s camera trickery involved. Why do so-called respectable magic companies do this? It’s so unhelpful and, sorry to say, deceitful. A split second after the magician waves his hand over the pack, revealing the upturned aces, there is a video cut. The shot appears to simply cut a fraction wider, the edit - as intended - is barely noticeable, but it means time has passed. Time that you don’t see. Time that has been cut out of the performance and for the magician to do other things that the spectators will have seen, but you at home don’t. It could be a lot of time, but my guess is it’s just long enough to ditch the gimmick. However, long or short, the effect - the four aces returning to the top - is good, but not as good as the video would have you believe.

So, a sorry moment in what is otherwise a nice trick. Subliminal video edits, especially edits that are ‘hidden’ by the action, and pass unnoticed, which are employed at the very moment of ‘move’ or deception in a trick, should be outlawed in promotional magic videos. They give everybody a bad name.