The Magicanada Project

Michael Kras

CARDS, COINS, THOUGHTS, AND THEORIES PART 3 BY BRIAN MILLER

Effect: The third installment of Brian Miller's excellent ebook series, featuring practical worker effects and routine as well as his personal essays and theories.

Review: Brian Miller's CCTT series has received great critical acclaim by magicians everywhere who have seen it, including David Acer. For such a young magician, Brian has a wealth of knowledge and some excellent original thoughts and theories about our art. This ebook series truly reflects these aspects of Brian's mind. Here he presents a few wonderful effects that are real reaction-getters... each effect is a real worker's piece and I can see at least one routine ending up in a close-up worker's repertoire, at least for a temporary period of time.

The ebook is very well organized and easy to read... no distracting colours and fonts, just stright white pages and crystal clear standard Times New roman font. Nobody should have trouble picking anything up in the ebook, as each explanation is clear and well-written. Brian was also sure to include as much crediting as possible and even shares a bit of history on how the effects were created in some cases. He has done a very thorough job on this. The ebook is 14 pages long and contains the following content.

I'd Swear There Were Two!: An impromptu effect in which the spectator's signed card appears to be situated in two different places at once. This is a very disarming effect and it gets very good reactions... spectators don't see it coming and find it positively disorienting. It imploys the use of a brilliant impromptu gimmick that you can make and use in no time... the gimmick fits in your wallet and can always be handy to present this very magical and illusionary effect. ****

Ned: A card is selected, shuffled back into the deck, and the deck is cased. A coin is removed from the pocket and instantly transforms into the selected card, despite the fact that the deck has been cased the entire time! The coin is now assumably in the card's original position, inside the card case. Instead of removing the cards, spreading through, and retrieving the coin, the magician instead causes the coin to visually pop through the side of the coin box. This effect combines two ideas by Jay Sankey into a visually stunning and logical routine. The effect itself has numerous moves that will take time to master, but it will be well worth it. *****

Experimental Imagination: This effect just screams magic and is really a believable feat. After a card is selected, the magician causes four indifferent cards to all transform into the selection, one by one, via the power of the audience's imagination. The spell is broken, each card is shown to be indifferent again, and to top it all off, it is revealed that the selection was never even in the deck at all. This is a very believable and once again, logical routine. It has many magic moments in it and a very surprising climax. A wonderful impromptu effect. *****

ESSAY- The Magic Is Really Secondary: In this informative short essay, Brian discusses the importance and meaning of thinking of more than just the magic and the "tricks". This is a very well written essay that exhibits some extremely thought provoking work on the subject. This is really worth a look for any magician. ****

Overall, I give this ebook a 9/10. Brian has yet again topped himself with this third installment of the Cards, Coins, Thoughts, and Theories series... this is my favourite of the series so far. Here's hoping that Part Four tops this one. If it does, it will prove to be excellent.

This ebook can be purchased at http://www.brianmillermagic.com/Products.html

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Michael Kras
Forum Administrator

Liam · Joined: 30 Dec 2007 Posts: 424

wow, looking forward to it!
i already see the genius in the first two, and this one seems to top them both.
as soon as i get my hands on ten bucks, this will be payed for and downloaded