I have to say I really enjoyed this lecture Tom makes the lecture an absolute joy to watch he's a
very funny kid, I feel this is worth it alone just because of how entertaining he is to watch.
The effects taught in this lecture are extremely visual eyecandy that would be great for social
media content.
A few things in here aren't exactly things that you could work but would
look really good on social media, having said that the methods to some of these can be adapted to
things that are more practical, so a lot of these ideas will spark up your own creativity.
Some of my favorites from the lecture were...
1.) Tab nation: this is a really
interesting effect and could actually be done live quite easily, it is a one time gimmick
construction that will take you no more than two minutes to make It's really easy and has multiple
different uses.
2.) Mini Box Book Test: this is something that I can see myself using quite
a lot, this also has multiple different uses other than just the book test that he teaches and he
does give a few extra additional uses for this method. This is something that again can be done live
quite easily, the gimmick literally takes a few seconds to make, I really like this and will be
using this for sure.
3.) Listen up: this is a really cool effect using headphones that I
really like I'm a big fan of any effect that can be done with an organic item. Having said that they
mentioned that you can do this with a borrowed pair of headphones which you can but I'm not 100%
sure when most people might be in a situation where that's possible, I certainly don't find myself
in those situations very often but you can always do it with your own pair of headphones and hand
them out for inspection afterwards, again this does require a gimmick but it's fairly easy to make
and depending on your performance environment you may have to consider a different way to construct
the gimmick.
4.) Squish box: Tom himself said this was a rather silly idea and was more of
just a throwaway idea which I can see why he would say that but at the same time I see some serious
potential with this, if you played around with the gimmick you could actually use it for other
things instead of just a squished box. Again the gimmick is actually really easy to make and will
probably take you again about 2 to 3 minutes to make. I believe this is a perfect effect for that
off beat moment when someone is maybe signing a card.
Overall I thought this was a really
good lecture and although not everything in it is practical it really does give you a lot of food
for thought and will really help to spark your own creativity.
I will give this 4 stars I knock
off a star purely for the fact that not everything is practical.