Random I-Tunes Song of The Moment: Phantom Lord by Metallica
Let's look at four things:
- The Gimmick
- The DVD
- The Method
- Ad Copy Claims
The Gimmick
The gimmick is pretty clever. You get with the DVD a gimmick that's mostly made up for you in advance. You still have to do a little bit of arts and crafts to put the final gimmick together. Also, whatever deck you're going to use has to have the same face design as the gimmick you get. If not, you'll have to make your own gimmick completely from scratch (rather than use the almost-complete gimmick that comes with the DVD). The back of the cards is irrelevant as long as the faces match.
In the preview trailer, you are looking at the gimmick. Essentially, you switch out the "selected" card for the gimmick which is a self contained card that can be shown to restore one piece at a time. It can be reused over and over and over.
The DVD
This may be one of the most annoying DVDs I've ever watched. Though I thought the Tron-themed DVD was clever . . . the novelty wore off in about 15 seconds. Throughout the entire DVD the loud techno music is never muted. In fact, in several places, it's so loud that it almost completely drowns out Chris Webb's voice. There were way too many places where I had to struggle to hear what he was saying. The lighting was a bit dim but good enough.
The menu items were extremely difficult bordering impossible (in some cases) to read. The graphics, colors and fonts were just very busy and way too hard to read. Too much effort went into the whole Tron thing, and not enough into making the viewing experience pleasurable.
Though I found the first three sections a wee bit boring, I do applaud Webb's efforts in covering the "history", "inspiration", and "credits" for this effect. The combination of the loud - nay obnoxious - music on top of the boring intro sections, it just seemed like forever before getting to the meat of things.
Finally, however, when we get to the teaching, it's very well explained, and everything you need to perform the effect is covered in great depth. This part of the DVD was interesting enough to keep my attention, but at the same time extremely (I cannot stress this enough) annoying due to the over-powering music. The DVD was just too busy all around, both visually and audibly.
The Method
In the trailer, you only see the piece by piece restoration. What you don't see is the awkward choreography to get to that point. Each time you perform you destroy two cards, and they both have to be duplicates of each other. So if you're using the Jack of Clubs, you will have your gimmicked Jack of Clubs which is totally reusable. Then you have Two other Jacks of Clubs on top of that, both of which are destroyed. Due to the nature of the gimmick, it will always be the Jack of Clubs, so you'll need to stock up with a one way force deck.
To perform, you have a card "selected." You then legitimately fold the actual card that they "select." Then you switch it for a duplicate and you tear that card up. Then you switch the torn pieces for the gimmick. You visually restore the gimmick - and it is very visual. You then switch the gimmick for the originally "selected" card.
If it sounds a bit awkward, that's because it is. The choreography and handling taught is very awkward. You have to hold the deck the entire time you are ripping the card and folding the card. Further, the way we are taught to rip the card exposes part of the secret. While holding the deck in left hand dealer's grip, you have a face up duplicate card on top of the deck that is pretty much in full view of the spectator while you're folding and tearing the card. The angles here are really, really bad.
At the end of the restore of the gimmick (supposedly the "chosen" card), he points out to the spectator that there are still creases on the card and says that he'll iron them out. It is here where he picks up the deck and adds the gimmick to the deck in order to switch it for the original "chosen" card as he pretends to iron out the creases. But wait . . . the card he switches to (the original) is still creases from the original folding. So he claims he will iron out the creases, but never does.
Without exposing the gimmick, I will say that there is double stick tape involved and during the performance you could actually hear the double stick tape even over the loud music playing. That's a big problem. Further, a signed version is taught. It's crap. In fact Chris Webb even admits that he doesn't do it that way. The main drawback, as Webb points out is that the face of the card is never shown. What's the point of having it signed if you never see the face where the signature is?
There's a section on the DVD called "Extra Ideas" . . . total filler. He basically half way talks you through a couple of other things you can do with the gimmick. He mentions that you could do it with a business card. He then shows you partly how to do it, but leaves out a critical part of the method. Due to the nature of the playing card, the gimmick is hidden, but with a business card, things are a bit different. He never shows you how to deal with this. He roughly makes a vague statement on how to do it, but it was unclear. In my opinion, based on the information he gave, doing it with a business card isn't really doable.
Further, he mentions that you could do it with loyalty punch cards from a coffee shop, but again leaves out so much information that I see no workable method. Due to the switches required, you need a stack of cards like a deck of playing cards or a stack of business cards. But who has a stack of duplicate loyalty coffee shop cards? This whole section was pretty much a waste.
What would have been much better is if they scrapped the Tron theme, cleaned up the text and graphics and overly-animated intros, cut the music entirely (at least during the speaking parts), cut the "Extra Ideas" and spent the extra time on an improved method. The gimmick itself is very clever and works very well, and if you can figure out some way to get to that position of holding the gimmick in your hand ready to restore it without all the extraneous and poor choreographed moves, you have a very good effect that is visual and super clear and clean. But as it's taught on the DVD, the method is clunky, angly, busy and awkward (except for the actual restore portion of the effect).
Ad Copy Claims
The ad copy is pretty accurate. I'll just clarify a couple of points. First, it claims that you can use any deck. That is true, but, realize that when you put the gimmick together, you are making a choice what one deck design you'll be using. In other words, you can't do the effect with multiple decks using the one gimmick. So if you plan on using a red backed deck of 808 Bicycles, when you make your gimmick, it will only work with red 808 Bikes. If you want to do it with a blue 809 deck, you'll need to make a new gimmick.
The ad copy claims that you can do it in a 360 setting. Not quite. The tearing of the card and handling of the deck up front is very angly. Once you're to the point of the restore where you are just holding the gimmick (apparently the "selection") then you have better angles, but the side or back angles are at one point or another vulnerable. In some phases, the side angles are good, but the back isn't or vice versa.
Final Thoughts
The dilemma here is that the restore is very clean and very visual and by itself a very good effect. However, getting to the point where you can do the restore is clunky. Further once you've restored, the effect is useless from the perspective of the audience if they can't examine the just restored card. If they can't examine it, then they'll just assume you used something to stick the cards back together . . . tape or something. So you need to hand it out to be examined which means you have to do a switch. Which means you have to (for no apparent reason) pick up the deck again . . . red flags.
So you have a very visual moment that requires you to sacrifice way too much to get there in my humble opinion. If you already do a piece by piece restoration, it's probably better than this one. If you don't already do a piece by piece restoration and you're looking for one, there are better ones (much better) on the market.
Final Verdict:
2 Stars with a Stone Status of Grubble (mostly rubble with a tinsy winsy bit of gem for a clever and visual gimmick)