Haha... a three year old magician. I'd like to see that.

Books are NOT necessarily a better resource. Believe me I used to teach Snowboarding, I also taught some firefighting classes, and I am currently and ESL teacher in Korea. You can tell an 18 year old kid that it is a bad idea to be in a box canyon when a fire is going but at that age they rarely fully grasp that concept until they see with their own eyes how fast fire rips through those. If you have the chance to show them a canyon fire on video they have a much better chance of "getting it" without having to live it. I'm not trying to slam books but when teaching a physical skill I'd say they are a small piece of a big pie. Mentorship, visual stimulus, auditory stimulus, personal experience, and books all go together. For people learning without a mentor a DVD may be a better choice. Not the only choice, but possibly the best for that person. A DVD can provide visual and auditory stimulus a book can only provide intellectual stimulus. You must provide the rest yourself.

You should see this kid...he seriously is WAY too smart for his own good.

What tricks did you teach him exactly that he could actually do at 3?

Just a couple with some really generic trick decks. Like a general pick a card trick with a Svengali deck and a pull four aces out of a stripper deck trick.

The Svengali trick took a bit of time to get him to do, but the stripper one was really easy. I had some really off brand stripper deck that actually had a logo in the center that actually looked different when the cards were turned around, so I showed him how to find that and turn it around, then how to pull that card out.

Oh yah, and he's four right now, he'll be five in early December. If I typed 3 earlier, I wasn't thinking straight. Sorry.

Of course DVDs are better for learning snowboarding and similar things. I wasn't talking about that.

Nevermind.

you know, after skimming these past 3 pages ive been thinking.

yea, you get more value from books and are at times easier to learn from.
but...how many beginners are you gonna get to read through MWCCIM? as soon as a novice wants to learn more, most likely (depending on their age) they will not want a book. they'll want a dvd.
now, we know the book would be better for them, but maybe they should be left to figure that out for themselves.
for example when i started getting serious i bought a bunch of dvds. i learned a lot from them but now i know i can get a lot more out of books for a lot less money. but i never would have wanted to start out with books.
so basically, to get more people into magic the dvds are good.

does that make sense? i'm runnin on empty now, idk how clear that was.

I know. You were talking about magic. On the sleight of hand/manipulation end of the magic spectrum you are learning a motor reflex "Physical" skill. Their are five basic modes of learning a physical skill, visual (see it), auditory (hear it), tactile (feel it), conceptual (think it), and experiential (do it.) We all are capable of learning in all five ways but we each favor one form or another. Books can be used by all of us but they appeal most to conceptual learners. I often hear people on this forum saying that books are the "best" way to learn. That is not true. Books are the best way for conceptual learning styles. If conceptual learning is your weakest form of learning then, regardless of how many tricks they pack in it, a book might be a huge waste of money. You just spent $30 on a beautifully hardbound book with 200 tricks in it but you haven’t properly learned any of them because you can't figure out what the writer is telling you to do. If that is you then you are better off with a $30 DVD that teaches 5 tricks.

All 5 of those learning styles apply to both reading and watching a video. It's a matter of how you're using the tool that determines what learning style is addressed.

Books:
-Reading out loud for auditory
-Practicing the moves or exercises described for tactile and experiential
-Images and reading text for visual and conceptual

Video:
-Listening for auditory
-Practicing the moves or exercises described for tactile and experiential
-Watching the demonstration for visual
-Reviewing without the video for conceptual

To me, the tool is less important than what you do with it. Hence why I use a combination of the two to get the strongest learning. I do the same thing when teaching.

-JT

Now this I agree with 100%. It still doesn't change the fact that people who favor different learning styles will learn more efficiently with different teaching methods. Thus, it behooves us all to discover what what our optimum learning style is and favor purchasing magic in those medias that appeal to that style. When I say "favor" I mean just that...not "favor to the exclusion of the other." I don't have a problem with books or people who recommend them. I do get annoyed when I hear absolute statements that imply a book is always better for all people. That is being pretentious in the most cliche' manner.

I vote DVDs over books but back to the topic.

I received my DVD yesterday. As a reference point, I am an 47 year old amateur that owns many of the standard magic texts such as RRTCM, MWCCIM, MCM, etc. I just finished reading Strong Magic for the second time and David Regal's new book.

The trick selection on the DVD looked very basic. I was very dissapointed. I mean, Magician's Force? Come on, that's not even a trick, it's a method. Force and Reveal? Coin From Ear? Pretty lame tricks.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed the DVD. Without a doubt, a lot of this material will be used by me. The routines are effective and the performance video's prove it. It really reminded me how these simple effects can be so effective with the right routine.

I would say the format is trick, explanation, street/restaurant performance, and short essays. The first essay is "What is Magic?" There is one on over coming nervousness, how to handle "touchy" spectators and how to handle a heckler. Oz explains what magic is and what it is not. Perlman goes over what can go wrong and how to recover, angles, exposed views, patter, timing, misdirection and a lot more.

To say there are 12 tricks is short-selling the material. There are multiple presentations for many of the effects including advanced handling sections. You're getting alot of really good routines and a lot of additional information. Sure some of these effects are in Mark Wilson's but the level of detail is superior (in my opinion) than in MWCCIM. You get to see a real magician, perform the effect to real spectators. In MWCCIM, not so much.

Does MWCCIM have more material? No comparison, of course it does. But this is a great magic primer with really good material. I don't think a beginner (or anyone) could go wrong. And at the price of "free" I had a great time watching it.

I've been learning about magic for less than a month I just got the dvd as a free add when I ordered my first invisible deck. I just finished watching the whole thing so here is my impressions from a new persons perspective.

Oz does a good job of teaching the material that is included. He tends to over cover the material with is better then not going over it enough. It seems like it would be appropriate for kids trying to learn but as an adult there are times I almost felt talked down to. The tricks seem pretty lame and even the clips of performance the spectators with few exceptions don't really react. At least it seemed kind of honest about the kind of reaction you'd get from an adult when you pull a coin from there ear. But understanding that he is teaching tricks that use some basic moves to give you a starting point to learn from. He does discuss a little bit about how to develop routines which could help in adding other tricks. Jessie seems to have no interest in what is going on around her and it feels like Oz has to drag her though every step. From my perspective it seems like the only truly useful information is the brief sections on overcoming nervousness, keeping secrets, and maybe the advise on where to go from here. Although even there a lot of the recommended material is by Oz, and I think everything was dvd's a list of some books would have been a nice inclusion. Overall, I'm glad I have it but I'm happier that it was free.

(sorry if I should have made my own product review thread for this different forums handle this sort of thing differently)

Wow, honestly it's like you really read my mind.

Haha... I agree with all that. I got the feeling that Oz thought his audience was mentally challenged and that Jessie, while very hot, had no enthusiasm about learning the tricks and didn't really want to be there, making things a little more difficult for Oz.