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Joshua Jay: Unreal Review

Four DVDs, nine hours and $150 bucks. Is it gem or is it rubble? Stay tuned to find out.

Effect/Method

It's hard to narrow this down to "effect" and/or "method." So let's just give a heavy preview of what's on each of the disks.

Disk 1

This is the live show entitled "Unreal." It's full show with mostly practical routines that have the potential to have a serious impact on the audience. This show is one that Joshua Jay put together mainly for himself. It was meant to be the kind of show he would like to watch. It was also meant to give his "take" on magic and address common questions that spectators have about magic.

There's a running theme/event throughout the show which is Joshua Jay sitting on a park bench talking to someone on the video monitor. The person on the video monitor is, of course, pre-recorded, but the conversation between the person on the bench — it's a different person at different times in the act — and Jay seems very real time and not rehearsed.

This leads into the first effect of the night which is that a spectator in the audience predicts what song the guy in the video is listening to on his headphones. I say this is the first effect, but it's not quite. The first effects is called Playing The Cards and is a sequence of several effects that all fit together and are done silently to music. Within the group is a very visual and flashy T&R card. However, none of this sequence is taught on the DVD set which is a bit of a bummer because that T&R was beautiful. But you won't get to learn it.

Next up after the Song Prediction is Reverse Logic which is a clever premise for a routine, doing a card trick backwards. Following that is Hitchcock, a multiple phase card routine that plays big on stage and has a very powerful surprise ending.

There's more and more on the live show. All in all, it was a fun show to watch, but when it comes to the methods, there are a few things we need to discuss. First, as mentioned, no method for the opening sequence was given. Second, his Bill in Lemon routine was not taught either. In fact, he specifically said, "I'm not going to talk about Bill in Lemon." His reasoning is that there are many resources for this. This is true. However, in his particular routine he used a torn corner bill and at the end he did one of the cleanest corner restores I've ever seen, but again, not taught.

His closer, Around The World is one of the best ways I've ever seen a multiple selection routine performed. It eliminates many of the problems with the routine and is a much better version of the effect. The final revelation, however, was done with the aid of a custom made very expensive prop that Jay had made for him by a friend. You won't, likely, be able to duplicate it.

Even though there are things missing in the explanation section, on some level, I can understand this. The intent of this show was more for use to kind of see the journey of creating the show, and how to — learning by example — create your own show that fits you and your needs. Some of the effects are so personal to Joshua Jay that you couldn't do them because they don't mean the same thing to you. His Bandage Routine, for example, is about the true story of an accident he was involved in. The story is very moving and emotional for him and to watch, but for us to perform it would be nowhere near as powerful because it's not personal.

This, on many levels, is a good thing. It gets us to think about our own magic to make it more personal. This is a subject that is touched on quite a bit throughout the 4 disk set.

Disk 2

A handful of parlor style routines are presented here including his marketed effect, Inferno which, to his credit, he taught in depth and even gave permission for you to make the gaffs yourself without having to purchase the effect. Also on this disk is a very clever bill to impossible location, Cornered Complete, that uses the torn corner method. However, it ends with a complete restoration of the torn corner, and the best part is that the method does not require you to palm anything or steal anything. It's a very smart, self-contained, system for impossible location with full corner restore effects.

Next up: Sherlock is an effect that puts you in the roll of Sherlock Holmes where you deduce which of six decks a spectator chooses. You further deduce which card they chose from the deck. This is the kind of thing that packs relatively small, but feels very big, and the method, though simple, is extremely deceptive and seems absolutely impossible. Six decks of cards are placed on the table. You can leave the room while the spectator chooses one deck and removes a card. They place the card in a wine glass and cover it with an opaque silk.

The spectator can hide all the decks of cards and this can all happen while you're out of the room. Yet when you enter the room, you are able to tell them which deck was used and which card was selected. No stooges are used. This is a one person operation.

The Coins and Glass routine is a coins to glass effect with increasingly impossible phases — it's three total phases. The final coin arrives in the glass while covered with a silk. When the coin arrives, you hear it and you see the silk move. Plus there's another surprise at the end that I'll leave as a surprise.

Lastly, we have Trash to Treasures which is a smart and logical adaptation of David Roth's Wild Coin. This is a bit gaffed, and will require a few specialty purchases along with a table and a servant. The effect is that a small can of "trash" (e.g., scraps of paper, a loose screw, old key, etc.) one at a time become money.

All of the effects with the exception of the dollar bill effect, on this DVD will require purchasing and/or making some "stuff" to be able to perform the effect, but the whole routine plays pretty big for relatively small props. You will, however, need a table and a servant and/or a case next to the table for some of the methods. Again, this is a parlor show, not a strolling show.

In the extras section, the interview by Luis De Matos that started on disk one continues. Plus there's a brief segment about some of Joshua Jay's influences followed by a one minute-ish segment talking about how/why he came up with his Sherlock routine and then a brief overview of the story of the accident I mentioned in the disk one section.

Remember, the overarching theme of this set is kind of "how to make your own show personal." We learn this by example, not by direct instruction.

Disk 3

Moving on to the "close-up" disk, we start with his routine for two of his marketed effects, Prism Deck and Phantom Deck. Next up are three different versions of Triumph handling. One of the Triumph handlings is a modification of Sankey's Back in Time. I have no problem with the modifications he made, but I felt he was a bit condescending toward the original effect. This is a common theme throughout this disk set. He constantly lets us know how poorly other magicians do things thus leading him to create better methods. In his defense, he often succeeds in creating those better methods. I just felt that he could check his ego a little bit — who doesn't need an ego check? Following Triumphs is Prediction Piece which is a very clever method for a very clean T&R card that leaves the spectator with an impossible seeming souvenir.

The final two pieces are both card effects as well. One is a very powerful effect that is done with the premise of "how I did a trick for a blind man." It's a very smart idea and a clever method. We end with a three card mentalism effect were you are able to divine three thought of cards. It's a very sneaky method that is extremely clever.

Part three of the interview can be found in the extras section. Further, Joshua Jay shares with us two episodes of an Internet show, Astonishing People, that he used to do. We see his interview of Seth Godin which is inaccurately spelled "Seth Godi" on the DVD case and his interview of Diana Al-Hadid.

Disk 4

The final disk, I won't detail too much, covers multiple effects, including his take on Al Baker's The Pack that Cuts Itself, Jay Sankey's ring on card, coin vanishes, coin appearance, an assembly effect and more. You'll also learn his Discreet Displacement which is an extremely versatile card move that can be used for switching cards and several other effects — many examples are shown on this disk. This concept is one of the most powerful concepts I've seen in magic in a long time.

There's a section covering details on the Bluff Shift and the Bottom Deal. Lastly, this disk wraps up the four-part interview and shows a trick that you might use if you get a TV spot. The effect is a "thought of" card floats to the surface of a swimming pool after the entire deck sinks to the bottom. It's not the most practical thing, but for that one-off TV spot or maybe something on your YouTube channel or a promo video for your site, this could have potential.

This disk was kind of the filler disk, and I don't mean that the material was "filler" (i.e., bad) material. Rather, this was sort of stuff that didn't fit into any particular category and was more like miscellaneous stuff that he wanted to share with us.

Ad Copy Integrity

The ad copy, both written and video, are spot on. I have no doubt that this stuff is tried and tested as it claims. The effects are also, for the most part, different from what you've seen. Sure the plots are familiar and similar but the methods are so unique in many cases, that the effect slightly changes and becomes more impossible and more clever.

I believe, as well, that there will be effects that fool you. That doesn't mean they are good or bad effects, but rather, it means that the methods are unique and unfamiliar, thus giving the magic a more original and fresh feel.

Product Quality

The DVDs, as with all Essential Magic Collection DVDs, are beautifully produced and amazing. They're well lit, well mic'd, etc., etc. However, the menu system is killing me. I'd say that about 75% of the time I clicked on something, it took me to the wrong place. I'd have to go back and click it again. I watched this on my laptop, so I was using a mouse. Every menu item had to be clicked once. Then it would light up. Then you click it again and it would (75% of the time) send you to the wrong place. Sometimes, it would send you to a place that was on a completely different menu. So I had to go back and dig through the menu and get to the place I was trying to go.

At first, I thought that maybe I was clicking the wrong thing, but then it started happening so much that I decided to be very careful and deliberate and watch exactly what I clicked. It was definitely not a problem with where I was clicking. In fact, to further prove that point, as I mentioned, several times it would take me to a place that wasn't even an option on the screen I was clicking from. So obviously it couldn't have been a mis-click because the place I went wasn't even something I could click.

This was extremely annoying. As I mentioned, earlier, there are a handful of effects that are not taught. In most of those cases, it was pretty frustrating that the methods were not discussed or covered. Also, in my notes, I wrote down "doesn't teach how to make 'Chaos Deck'." I'm not sure what that is referring to. I don't know what disk I was watching when I wrote that, and without watching everything again from scratch, it will be hard to find that, so I don't know how much of a hit this should be. I do know this: it was something that was used in an effect that needed to be taught in order to perform it, and it wasn't taught.

The stuff that was taught, however, was in great depth and great detail and great clarity. As long as you can look past some of the seeming arrogant and patronizing tone that often comes across, you'll be able to learn the stuff taught with exactness.

Final Thoughts

As you know, I don't give final ratings based on effects. However, in a project of this nature, I have to spend a lot of time talking about effects for you to even get a sense of what you're getting. With that said, you'll notice that when I spoke of method, the word "clever" appeared a fair amount of times. Most of the methods employed are very well thought out and designed to really sell the power of the effect and make it extremely impossible seeming. I'd say that 80%, or better, of the time he succeeded in creating, modifying and/or improving the method.

I did find a few humorous points where he talked about how much he hates certain things such as stock lines (and other things) in magic, but then in a trick or two, he used stock lines and/or did things that he was "politely bashing" other magicians for doing.

That aside, I really think that this DVD is extremely solid and is an excellent resource of a) some powerful routines, b) some incredible methods and techniques, and c) some solid real world advice. It's also an excellent example of how to build a show and create/find effects and methods that work for you.

Final Verdict:
4.5 Stars with a Stone Status of Gem.