Call of the Wild

Tim, decent sleight of hand in this video. Your words sound fake and scripted. In fact, it sounds like you are reciting a memorized script rather than talking to people. I know that this is a difficult thing to overcome, but it is assuredly worth working on. If your speech isn’t natural, nothing you do will be natural.

Now onto the effect – I realize that you are not responsible for the workings of the effect itself, but nonetheless I will point out some problems with its workings. I am not of fan of the “game” the way that you describe it here. So, a gambler vs. magician effect… but you each start out with four blank cards and share the ace of diamonds. Putting all magic and gambling aside, it sounds like the dumbest competition ever. Who would do such a thing?

Continuing, it’s kind of warped that you would fairly show both sides of your ace before purposefully putting it in such an odd spot, namely, fourth down from the top. I know it’s necessary for the effect to work, but that is precisely what it looks like to a spectator -”He must need to put it there for the trick to work…”

I really, really, really don’t like the line “This is what WE CALL, a royal flush.” Um…that’s what everyone calls a royal flush, it’s not specific to cocky sounding magicians.

This trick is another John Bannon mystery…why would anyone handle cards that way?

So, Tim, I’m not going after you as a magician. You did everything well (as the instructions said to do them.) I believe you just picked the wrong one to show. Better effect selection and working on sounding natural in speech, and work some on scripting, and you’ll have a really good thing going. Thanks for the video.

Rating: Three Light bulbs and a Milk.

(Rating system is completely arbitrary, depending upon the kind of day I’ve had.)