(Hank) Moorehouse 1934 – 2011 - The Society of American Magicians

any object,” I expected a suspension-type effect along the lines of
the Magnetized Cards. Laws of Attraction isn’t that kind of effect.
Shoot Ogawa’s techniques will allow you
to create a very nice illusion of
various objects being attracted
to each other as if magnetized.
However, to present this as a
showpiece of its own would
be like forgoing Cigarette
Thru Quarter in favor of the
old Cups and Balls business in
which you penetrate the bottom
of the cup with the wand.
The technique at work is a combination
of some clever sleight of hand, the
use of sound, and good old-fashioned mime. In
many places, this looks very good. In a couple of places, it looks
amazing – in a few others, not so much. The DVD is an hour long,
and Shoot covers myriad possibilities for making things stick to
other things and then pulling them apart. The explanations are
very thorough – perhaps more than they need be in some places.
And after an hour, you might start to feel like you get the drift
already. That’s a good thing to keep in mind.
I’ve never seen Shoot Ogawa perform this in person, but the
DVD gives the impression that you could perform a whole routine
of these demonstrations amidst claims of “magnetism.” In my
opinion, that would be a mistake. There’s no build or escalation;
you just keep sticking things together and pulling them apart.
Not only does the repetition wear thin, but someone’s bound to
ask you to leave the two things stuck together without holding
them together. You know, like a suspension. And with these techniques,
you can’t. One solution is to not sell the effect very hard,
or not so hard that it can’t support the weight of its own claims.
On the other hand, if you do some kind of suspension effect with
an invisible thread or something like Gary Plants’s beautiful Magnetized
Cards, and you throw in some of these bits in or around
one of those tricks – ah, then you have something. Or you could
use these techniques to support a spurious claim of using “trick
magnetic” coins before going into a Coins Across routine to
explain how the coins jump to be next to each other. Maybe. (I
wouldn’t recommend it if you actually use magnetic coins in your
coin work.) But by itself, the illusion – while again it’s very good
– doesn’t hold up (hah!).
Which brings me to yet another observation on the “onetrick
DVD” phenomenon: is it worth spending $35 on what is in
essence a gag? I’m not calling it a gag derogatorily, either. It’s
a very good, magical-looking gag. It’s a useful gag, very worth
doing. But it’s still a gag, like the aforementioned Cups and Balls
business of making the cups penetrate one another or making the
wand penetrate the cups. There’s a difference between those types
of illusions and the kind that drive their point home hard, leaving
an undeniable feeling of having seen something that shouldn’t be.
If you can get anyone to buy hook, line, and sinker that these bits
on their own add up to “magnetism,” you might want to book
them into the act, because at that point they’re the entertainment.
I’m not sure what the answer is. Some performers will think
that the bits and techniques on this DVD are worth the price, and
find all sorts of places to use them. Others, like me at the beginning,
will be expecting a suspension effect and be disappointed. I can’t
heavily endorse Laws of Attraction because it falls short of my
expectations. But I can’t condemn it just because it’s not a suspension
effect; that feels like saying “Don’t buy this sandwich, it’s not
a car!” Let the buyer, at the very least, be informed.
66 M-U-M Magazine
V2F 2.0 dVd
by g
Distributed by Murphy’s Magic Supplies
Price $30.00
revieW by antonio m. Cabral
V2F 2.0 makes a very interesting claim in its ad copy: “While
everyone else is still doing card to wallet with their expensive
gaffed wallet, you can advance to the next level with V2F 2.0.” The
cost of this DVD is $30. My card-to-wallet wallet, a Tony Miller
Hipshot Wallet, costs $40. I suppose in this economy ten dollars
can make all the difference (ignoring the
fact that you’re spending money on
card tricks at all), but this claim
still raises my eyebrows
– particularly so in light
of what the “next level”
appears to be.
V2F 2.0 (the “V2F”
stands for Visual Vanish
Fantasy) makes a lot of simultaneous
claims. On the one
hand, it claims to be an amazing
visual vanish of a playing card. On
the other, it claims to be an amazing
signed card to any impossible location you
can think of. Which is it? Well, it’s an amazing visual
vanish, if by that you mean “pretty good color change.” And it’s
an amazing signed card to any impossible location, if by that you
mean “card fold, after which, with the card securely in finger
palm, you can load it wherever you like.” And it is, in fact, both of
those things at the same time.
The video quality is very good on this DVD, but the instructions
follow what I fear is becoming a trend in magic DVDs: the
hands demonstrate while the instructions appear as captions along
the bottom of the screen. If this goes any further, I half expect
to have to follow a bouncing ball to learn the next hot move; the
upside, I suppose, will be that no one will be able to complain that
the DVD crowd doesn’t read. I’ll also point out that if you’re going
to produce a DVD on the cheap, using a standard iMovie/iDVD/
iWhatever menu screen is a dead giveaway. But you should have
no problem learning the technique from this DVD.
G, the creator of V2F 2.0, makes the vanish look very pretty.
And when it is performed that well, it’s a very disarming
vanish – it almost looks like you’re erasing the card from one of
those magnetic drawing toys. Unfortunately, the move is built
backwards: it starts off looking very open and ends cozier than
I’d like. A better picture of the card vanishing completely would
end with the hand doing the “erasing” to be open and obviously
empty, which could happen here with a little more development,
but doesn’t as is.
The problem with any extremely direct method like this one
is that the secret workings of the trick follow the same path as
the audience’s attention. You’re doing everything directly in front
of their eyes and hoping no one puts two and two together. And
while there are other similar “under your nose” vanishes/changes,
the best ones are quicker and more startling. V2F 2.0 is a very
deliberate, slow visual effect that invites the audience to stare at it.
When you invite your audience to stare and wonder for a long time,
unless you’re doing a really thorough job of covering your tracks,
don’t be surprised if someone comes up with an answer. That’s not
to say it can never work, but a more standard color change would