Blackmail by Bobby Motta From Ellusionist

http://www.ellusionist.com/blackmail-by-bobby-motta-and-peter-mckinnon.html

To me the biggest downside is that they give you six gimmicks and only five pieces of cardstock. They say the 6th gimmick is for practice and to use the matte side of the cardstock because it takes the writing better. But the problem is you can not erase the writing on the matte side. You can kind of erase it from the gloss side but it's still faintly there. I solved that by buying poster board and gluing two sheets together then cutting it into the right sized pieces. They say one gimmick will last 20 performances if you're not trying to conserve it. I believe that to be true from my playing around with it. But it only came the five pieces of cardstock not even enough to get a good practice going.

The up is it does what is said it would and does it well.

The DVD itself was good, about 45 minutes long, strait forward, nothing fancy, and ended with performance clips. They go over just about everything you could need to know to get started. And it offered some good routines, one of which is a stage routine from Bobby Motta.

It is very much a utility gimmick and not a trick and the more you know about mentalism going in the better. But I don't feel that you have to know a lot to use Blackmail but the more you know about it the better. You could buy it and just do the effects on the DVD, but it is a mentalism gimmick for use with mentalism effects. So the more you know the more use for it you have. Although as an out it packs much flatter than an invisible deck.

Update: I've been doing the lottery routine from the DVD and basically just playing around with the gimmick and so far it has only failed once and that was after it was damage in my pocket and I decided to keep using it just because it was my practice one and the damage was only at the top inch of the gimmick and I figured I keep away from that part. But other than that I'm loving it.

If you found this review to helpful or you thought it sucked let me know in the comments section.

Magic Maker's Hotrod Instructional DVD

Magic Maker's Hotrod Instructional DVD



I'll be honest I feel both screwed and not screwed by this DVD I'll try to explain as I go along. First What I paid: It cost $15 so with tax I paid $16.12 Not a bad price. What I got: I got one DVD and two hotrod gimmicks (the second allows a replay for the same audience) The gimmicks themselves were cheap pieces of painted square dowels. They were smaller and lighter than most Hotrods I've seen or handled. But on the plus side these were something I could make my self with a trip to a craft store. That said I lost both of mine and have not made the craft store run because I would rather get the larger heavier ones with gems.
As for the content of the DVD. There were 2 routines where the instructor performed just for the camera. Unlike on the shell game DVD by the Magic Makers this didn't annoy me as much because the amount of participation in a Hotrod routine is very little and can even be done with no participation from the audience. I  got this DVD to learn a specific move and I did learn the move I was going after and so I consider anything else I learned a bonus. Heres the part where I feel screwed. I feel that a lot of the "Hotrod moves" on this DVD will only work with the smaller lighter Hotrods that came with this DVD.

One thing I did like about this DVD is how it showed that study in different types of magic is useful. According to the guy on the DVD several of the moves came from cigarette magic.

So would I recommend this DVD: I would. For the price its good for anyone looking to learn the Hotrod or expand on what they know. The effect itself is a proven stunner. I mean that. More than one person has just been wide eye speech-less after witnessing this trick. It packs small and plays big which is what most close up magicians are looking for. Though I do believe the effect is weakened by the Hotrods that came with this DVD. So go get a good Hotrod if you're going to do this trick.

A side note: I bought this before I knew where my character was going. I would not buy this for my character. But I would still want this at some point because people are going to ask you to do tricks whether or not you're in character. Carry around a small hot rod and you're ready to fry their mind and go about your day.

If you found this review to helpful or you thought it sucked let me know in the comments section.