Magic Tricks

OVERVIEW: This video by Ben Salinas contains material that will enable you to become a real show-off with cards. Unlike typical card magic, the moves taught here are not primarily magic or illusion in themselves, but are designed to show off your skill with card flourishing. These moves include a whole range of different cuts, fans, spreads, colour changes and even some magical appearing moves! The instructional DVD contains more than 60 moves, which you can use to add to your card magic, showing your audience that you have a lot of skill with cards, or to add some punch and spice to existing routines.

CARD FLOURISHES & MAGIC: Card flourishes add to your performances and show the audience something different that they don’t normally see with cards! But they also have practical application for card magic. For example, there are a number of flashy false cuts that are taught, which you can use to make it appear you lose a spectator's card when in fact you actually know exactly where it is. Also taught is a variety of `colour changes', which is where one card is shown and it magically changes into another card. This is a very visual piece of magic that always impresses and amazes the audience. The whole variety of these taught is very helpful and you can have a lot of fun performing them in your magic.

CONTENTS: The moves are also categorized according to various degrees of difficulty as follows: Level One (Beginner), Level Two (Intermediate), Level Three (Expert), Level Four (Master), Level Five (Showoff). So some of the material is quite advanced and will require a lot of practice to master. This means of course that the video can be helpful to magicians of different abilities. Whether you're a beginner or more experienced magician, you're almost certain to find helpful material here. See the publisher's website for a complete list of all the material here.

PERFORMANCE: The DVD has two sections that you can watch, the first being a whole performance of all the moves that can be learnt. This section contains over 30 minutes of the performances of the moves, complete with all the names of the moves. This makes it easy to watch and pick out particular moves that you might be interested in, and then go ahead and learn those moves. If you wish, you can just sit back and enjoy seeing some skilled handwork with cards, which can be really satisfying to watch!

TEACHING: The teaching part of the DVD is well done. There is an index that allows you to select any of the moves that you wish to watch and learn to do, making it easy to find a particular move that you may be working on or want to learn. The entire teaching component consists of an hour and 42 minutes of teaching time, which means that there is roughly two and a quarter hours of total watching time.

Each move is clearly and slowly explained by magician Ben Salinas, making it easily to follow along. There is verbal explanation of which finger does what, making it very easy for the learner to copy what is happening. The view of the camera is from behind the hands, which means that as you watch the video, you are at the same angle as if you are looking at your own hands, and this helps you to copy exactly what is happening.

Besides the verbal explanation, the move is also repeated multiple times to allow you to copy what is happening, making it easy to learn the move without backtracking the video repeatedly, something that can be frustrating in some video tutorials. What I found extremely helpful about the teaching is that for a lot of the cuts after the first few instructional run downs of the move, the move is shown using plastic clear packets (trainers) instead of the deck. This allows you to see all the fingers and what they are doing through the ‘cards’, which has the advantage of enabling you to follow everything that is happening, without needing multiple angles.

RECOMMENDATION: In short, Showoff With Cards is a solid DVD with a whole lot of material that will enable you to become a real pro with card flourishing. The moves are really impressive, and mastering some of what is taught enables you to perform a lot of visual eye candy, and some real impressive moves that show real skill. The teaching is very well done, and makes it easy to follow along and learn the moves. This is a great DVD for beginners or intermediate magicians to pick up, if you want to improve your mastery and handling of cards, whether you are looking to improve the visual appearance of your magic, or even to learn some moves with direct application for card magic. - BoardGameGeek reviewer EndersGam