Dan Harlan & Nicholas Lawrence have taken a good effect & made it great with some modern upgrades.
It is with the utmost respect that I add my two cents to the reviews herein.
The demo video
tells you just about everything you need to know about how the effect looks when performed for a
cameraman: stunning. Hover Card Plus appears to be an excellent trick, and is likely to be even
better for those moments when a potential audiencemember says, "Oh no, not another card trick."
So, why three stars? Three words: no performance video.
Yeah, go ahead & re-read that, then
let it sink in. AT NO POINT during the instructional video do we see an actual start-to-finish
performance (live or in studio) of Hover Card Plus. Not by Nick Locapo, not by Dan Harlan, & not by
Nicholas Lawrence. We don't even get to see the instructors perform it for one another!
Oh,
sure: they TALK about it. They perform PARTS of it. They even tell you how to manage your
audience, & how to manage your angles. They also give you lots of tips & other great information.
BUT, they never walk you through the performance start-to-finish.
Almost every single set of
magic trick instructions begins with a preamble describing what the audience sees prior to revealing
the secret. After telling the secret, the instructions will descibe the moves, step by step. And
then the better instructions will take you through the performance from the magician's POV with
emphasis on what to say, when to say it, & why, what to do, where to stand, best environment to
perform, etc.
Sadly, it is entirely up to the viewer to figure out this very important stuff for
themselves.
This being the case, I do NOT recommend Hover Card Plus for beginners! Again, with
all due respect to the creators & Penguin Magic, I'm actually very surprised that all of you
overlooked this. Dan Harlan is ordinarily VERY thorough in his videos about annotating the
performance, as is Penguin. I'm simply floored that this went to market without so much as a
heavily edited performance for a bunch of Penguin employees. Heck, even performing for an L&L
audience would be preferable to none at all!
If Penguin ever decides to add a performance video
"bonus" later on, I'll cheerfully update my review to 5 stars. For now, 3 stars.
Performance...?
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