As has become the "norm" in the magic industry, trailers for magic tricks are highly-produced and
highly-edited clips that give the sense of an effect without actually showing you the full
performance.
Sadly, when I received the effect, I understood why. The full-length
presentation (provided in the tutorial) is painful to watch. The handling is completely unnatural.
I lost count of the number of "moves" that have no motivation at all (other than making the trick
work). And, even then, the performance was still highly edited.
I'm giving it 2 stars
because the actual physical objects you receive are well-made and well-designed. Unfortunately,
mine will likely stay in a box with countless other unused magic tricks that turned out to be
grossly different from what was presented before the sale.
Maybe I'm naive but I expected
more with Paul Harris' name on it. Disappointing to say the least.
I've had the original Deep Astonishment for over 15 years now, and I've got to say that it's the most powerful close-up trick I perform. I don't own this updated version because the original works so well for me, but I can offer my presentation. Now keep in mind, in the original version you were able to have words with 2 or more of the same letter in it (example: look, elephant, ect.) so you were pretty much capable of having any word appear as a prediction. Because of this, I always choose names that are important in the spectators lives. This makes the effect very powerful because in their mind, there's no way I could've known who this person was. In some cases, the person that they thought of passed away awhile ago, which makes this trick beyond powerful. So the presentation I came up with is the following:
Magician: Ok, I have a wallet here. It's a checkbook wallet, and I have something written down inside, but I'll save the suspense for later. And I also have a deck of cards. Now, what I want you to do is think of someone very important in your life, and write their name down on the back of my business card (she does so, then the magician reads her chosen name out loud). Ok, now this persons name is going to be our "magic word" kind of like abracadabra, but instead it's going to be this person. This persons name is going to help us find a mate, a match, to a chosen card. For example, the ace of hearts, the ace of diamonds is the match to it. So the same color and the same value. But the kicker is, I'm not going to know what the card is. So if you would, cut the cards wherever you want.
Specator: She cuts the cards face up, and the deck is then marked at that spot.
Magician: Ok, now you could've cut the deck anywhere you wanted, correct? Ok, this is the card we're not going to look at, yet. (Magician spreads the cards face up to try to find the match). Now I'm going to remove the jokers because obviously they're not the match. Now I'm going to try to get an impression from the jokers and from "insert spectators chosen name". (Magician goes through a number of cards eliminating them one by one, trying to find the match) Ok, I apologize but I'm not having any luck finding the match. I'll tell you what, do you think you could find the match to this card yourself, with ("spectators name") help? I think you can do it. Do me a favor, cut the cards in half again.
Spectator: She does so, and the deck is marked at that spot.
Magician: Now once again, you could've cut anywhere you wanted to right? Ok, I think this is the match right here. (Magician takes one card face down from the marked cut deck) Ok, the moment of truth, turn over that card and see what it is.
Spectator: Turns over the chosen card from the beginning, and it is the "four of Hearts".
Magician: Ok, that means this card has to be the "four of diamonds". (Magician flips over second card to reveal the exact match). Isn't that wild? Now I know what you're thinking, why is the wallet on the table? I mean it's been here the entire time, why is it here? Well, remember when I told you I had something written down?
Spectator: Yes
Magician: Inside this wallet, I had a group of cards. Now we've been using a blue deck the entire time (magician shows the box, and the backs of the predicted 2 cards, and flashes the back of the blue deck). But these cards in the wallet came from a different deck, (magician turns over the first card to reveal a red backed card and quotation marks) and I wrote something on the back of each card. Do you know what that is? It's quotation marks, (magician turns over another card to reveal another quotation mark).
No words are spoken for the first time during the routine as the name is revealed one letter at a time.
Magician: "spectators chosen name"?
Spectator: (Totally mind blown)
The end
So as you can see, this routine is very powerful for the spectator. Because they don't know you, you don't know them, so you couldn't possibly know this person that they just thought of. So when that person gets revealed showing you not only knew who they were thinking of, but PREDICTED IT AHEAD OF TIME BEFORE THE TRICK STARTED? Well, they just can't comprehend that. This effect gets talked about years later.
Now what I like to do with this alot is a little cold reading. Once you know the spectators name, you can do a little cold reading and maybe get a hit on telling them if this persons name is their mom, dad, son, daughter, ect before you reveal the actual name. Then if you do get a hit, it's even more powerful. If you don't, you still have the mind blowing climax, so it's a win either way. Anyway, that's my routine, and I hope it helps with the presentation for this one.
I've had the Trick for almost a year. I've done it probably 6 or 7 times. The initial reveal of their chosen card and how you got there are a bit, lacking in "wow factor" I guess you could say. But the final reveal has never been less than amazing. It is one of my most talked about effects, and believe me I have hundreds of them. And I think that just because the cards dont float through the air and land in the wallet, does it in any way take away from that final reveal. While I agree that a lot of trailers are misleading, or dont show the full routine, I dont necessarily think this one needs to. Of course there has to be a move to load the wallet, and you can come up with any way to do that on your own. If you cant than that's on you. The load they lend us is just fine in my opinion, and like I said before has never detracted from that last reveal, which totally devastates people. This trick is awesome.
Disappointing to say the least
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