Price$39.00
Media TypeTrick, DVD
CategoryClose Up
Date AddedSep 14, 2013
Her Majesty's Spell
DaOrtiz, Dani
Vernet Magic
(Based on 2 reviews)
Super strong card magic, full of surprises and with a mind blowing climax.
Imagine this: 3 spectators select cards, they are lost in the deck and they appear when you "call them". Yes, you can spell the first card, each card for letter, and it appears. You repeat the experience with the second card. Then you say that this is so magical that the spectator can lie and can name the opposite of his card and IT APPEARS. When the audience is still trying to recover from the astonishment, you finish with a mind blowing climax.
Includes:
- One hour DVD featuring Dani DaOrtiz
- Complete in-depth explanation
- Plus a live close-up show filmed in Vernet featuring some of his strongest card effects (no explanation).
- Bonus: Extensive interview that includes extraordinaire effect with explanation. Only this effect plays the entire DVD.
- Special deck included.
Reviews
(Top ▲)
Here I am once again reviewing an effect by Dani DaOrtiz. Overall I'm a big fan of his, but for us English speaking folk it can be a bit hard to watch with the Vernet translator talking over Mr. D. Further, Vernet seems to be a bit overpriced in their products. Their production quality is usually not the greatest. I've seen plenty of other products that have much greater production quality for half the price, and you get more stuff. Let's break it down.
For $39 bucks you get a DVD essentially a one way force deck. It's Bicycle brand, and top quality as you would expect. The DVD itself teaches two effects and contains an interview segment along with the performance of an effect that is not taught.
The DVD is in Spanish. However, you are offered the option to listen to the voice over Vernet guy translate for you. The problem with this is that he does the translation for all of the spectators and Dani DaOrtiz which makes it very unclear what's going on. There is no tone, no pausing, no inflection, no personality to the translation and during the technical descriptions and the interview, the translator goes back and forth between DaOrtiz and another guy on the screen. It sounds like one huge long run-on sentence that has no pausing, no stopping, and you don't know which person is "talking." It's very hard to follow.
The main effect is a spelling trick. That's a bit of an understatement because there is a lot of magic going on in this routine. Three cards are chosen. Two are spelled to. The third one, the spectator makes up any card name. That made up card is spelled (let's say Queen of Hearts). The Queen of Hearts is spelled to and at the end of the spelling is the third selection. Then the kicker: all of the cards (including the three selections) change into the made up card, Queen of Hearts.
If you're looking for some further umph to add to a spelling routine, there's a lot here that could be a closer for your act. The second effect is a variation of a L'Homme Masque effect. Basically the cards are riffled, and the spectator spots a card and remembers one. The magician names the card, then goes on to prove that the card the spectator saw was never in the deck.
Finally there is a third routine that is shown, but not taught. However, most of the material is related to the above two effects, and was likely placed there to show you how to apply what you learned in various other effects.
The method for this is pretty simple. It requires some mid-level card handling that'll take some practice, but nothing too tough. The deck does a lot of the work for you. Keep in mind that the Spanish names for playing cards spell with a different amount of letters than their English counterparts. This makes learning the effect a little trickier. They provide a chart that shows you how to change the set up to match for your language, but the chart made no sense to me. So instead, I watched the explanation and just fiddled with the cards to get them set up correctly.
Even then, it was a bit tricky because the voice-over guy was translating the Spanish to English, but he would then attempt to "translate" the numbers correctly. In other words, let's take the number 9. In Spanish, the word for 9 is nueve. He would translate that to "9" as in deal "9" cards. But then he would say "in Spanish." Yes he would say . . . "deal 9 cards . . . that's nine in Spanish." The reality is that the English version might require 12 cards instead of 9 due to the number of letters required to spell the name of the card.
Trust me. It was very confusing. Further, he rushed through the moves at times and it wasn't quite clear (at times) where exactly the cards ended up after certain parts of the routine. It would have been better to have a few more "position checks" throughout the explanation.
The second effect has a much simpler method and is very easy to learn from the explanation. However, both the second and first effect heavily rely on some psychological procedures that'll take some work on your part, and it's difficult to grasp the details of this due to the voice-over-ness. There's a lot of stuff going on that you're saying, doing and manipulating that gets the spectator's down the path you want. Frankly, this is the hardest part of the method and will be difficult for some to pull off. DaOrtiz is a crazy "all over the place" performer which makes much of the required skills easy for him. A less animated performer who's a bit more formal may have some difficulty pulling off some of the stuff needed.
The ad copy is very honest. However, I have no idea what this phrase from the fourth bullet point means: "Only this effect plays the entire DVD." Other than that, I have no complaints about the ad copy. In fact, if anything, they undersold the effect. Further, the DVD trailer doesn't even show the effect or even its potential. Based on the DVD trailer I wouldn't even be interested in the product at all. Which is unfortunate because it is a solid effect.
The price is too high. The production quality is low. The teaching is rough. The method is solid but parts of it border on "too bold." By "too bold" I mean that the magician has to be bold in his speaking and handling of the spectators. He has to be assertive. There are quite a few good points and concepts covered in the interview segment if you can get past the voice-over challenges mentioned.
If you like the effect and are willing to put in the time, you'll probably be reasonable happy with your purchase. It'll take some effort to watch the DVD and a bit more effort to learn from it. If you happen to perform in Spanish then most of the negative I've mentioned can be completely overlooked. According to the DVD, pretty much any language can be adapted to fit the routine. I'll assume that's true with any language. However if any of your playing cards spell with more than 15 or so letters, you may run into issues with the method.
- Product Quality
- Effect
- Method
- Ad Copy Integrity
Product Quality
For $39 bucks you get a DVD essentially a one way force deck. It's Bicycle brand, and top quality as you would expect. The DVD itself teaches two effects and contains an interview segment along with the performance of an effect that is not taught.
The DVD is in Spanish. However, you are offered the option to listen to the voice over Vernet guy translate for you. The problem with this is that he does the translation for all of the spectators and Dani DaOrtiz which makes it very unclear what's going on. There is no tone, no pausing, no inflection, no personality to the translation and during the technical descriptions and the interview, the translator goes back and forth between DaOrtiz and another guy on the screen. It sounds like one huge long run-on sentence that has no pausing, no stopping, and you don't know which person is "talking." It's very hard to follow.
Effect
The main effect is a spelling trick. That's a bit of an understatement because there is a lot of magic going on in this routine. Three cards are chosen. Two are spelled to. The third one, the spectator makes up any card name. That made up card is spelled (let's say Queen of Hearts). The Queen of Hearts is spelled to and at the end of the spelling is the third selection. Then the kicker: all of the cards (including the three selections) change into the made up card, Queen of Hearts.
If you're looking for some further umph to add to a spelling routine, there's a lot here that could be a closer for your act. The second effect is a variation of a L'Homme Masque effect. Basically the cards are riffled, and the spectator spots a card and remembers one. The magician names the card, then goes on to prove that the card the spectator saw was never in the deck.
Finally there is a third routine that is shown, but not taught. However, most of the material is related to the above two effects, and was likely placed there to show you how to apply what you learned in various other effects.
Method
The method for this is pretty simple. It requires some mid-level card handling that'll take some practice, but nothing too tough. The deck does a lot of the work for you. Keep in mind that the Spanish names for playing cards spell with a different amount of letters than their English counterparts. This makes learning the effect a little trickier. They provide a chart that shows you how to change the set up to match for your language, but the chart made no sense to me. So instead, I watched the explanation and just fiddled with the cards to get them set up correctly.
Even then, it was a bit tricky because the voice-over guy was translating the Spanish to English, but he would then attempt to "translate" the numbers correctly. In other words, let's take the number 9. In Spanish, the word for 9 is nueve. He would translate that to "9" as in deal "9" cards. But then he would say "in Spanish." Yes he would say . . . "deal 9 cards . . . that's nine in Spanish." The reality is that the English version might require 12 cards instead of 9 due to the number of letters required to spell the name of the card.
Trust me. It was very confusing. Further, he rushed through the moves at times and it wasn't quite clear (at times) where exactly the cards ended up after certain parts of the routine. It would have been better to have a few more "position checks" throughout the explanation.
The second effect has a much simpler method and is very easy to learn from the explanation. However, both the second and first effect heavily rely on some psychological procedures that'll take some work on your part, and it's difficult to grasp the details of this due to the voice-over-ness. There's a lot of stuff going on that you're saying, doing and manipulating that gets the spectator's down the path you want. Frankly, this is the hardest part of the method and will be difficult for some to pull off. DaOrtiz is a crazy "all over the place" performer which makes much of the required skills easy for him. A less animated performer who's a bit more formal may have some difficulty pulling off some of the stuff needed.
Ad Copy Integrity
The ad copy is very honest. However, I have no idea what this phrase from the fourth bullet point means: "Only this effect plays the entire DVD." Other than that, I have no complaints about the ad copy. In fact, if anything, they undersold the effect. Further, the DVD trailer doesn't even show the effect or even its potential. Based on the DVD trailer I wouldn't even be interested in the product at all. Which is unfortunate because it is a solid effect.
Final Thoughts
The price is too high. The production quality is low. The teaching is rough. The method is solid but parts of it border on "too bold." By "too bold" I mean that the magician has to be bold in his speaking and handling of the spectators. He has to be assertive. There are quite a few good points and concepts covered in the interview segment if you can get past the voice-over challenges mentioned.
If you like the effect and are willing to put in the time, you'll probably be reasonable happy with your purchase. It'll take some effort to watch the DVD and a bit more effort to learn from it. If you happen to perform in Spanish then most of the negative I've mentioned can be completely overlooked. According to the DVD, pretty much any language can be adapted to fit the routine. I'll assume that's true with any language. However if any of your playing cards spell with more than 15 or so letters, you may run into issues with the method.
Final Verdict:
3 Stars with a Stone Status of gem (with a little g).
(Top ▲)
This starts as a spelling routine, that ends with the entire deck changing into the same card, a card that was seemly suggested by an audience member!
This is a wonderful routine. I think it will appeal to people who aren’t normally drawn to spelling tricks because of the incredible ending that comes from no where.
The deck is special, but it’s in service of the end image.
DaOrtiz can teach in English, but for some reason, he teaches in Spanish and the English is dubbed over. It makes the learning somewhat difficult since it’s a spelling trick, but they give you all the info to make sure you can accomplish the effect.
You do need a fair amount of table space, so it’s not really suitable for walk around or restaurant, but for a formal close up show, this is killer. A wonderful closer for a close up session.
Dani also goes over the psychology of the effect, and how to set up expectations that can be applied to any of your magic.
If you are a serious card magic student, even if you don’t like working with a special deck, there’s plenty of knowledge here for you to get your money’s worth.
Five Stars
This is a wonderful routine. I think it will appeal to people who aren’t normally drawn to spelling tricks because of the incredible ending that comes from no where.
The deck is special, but it’s in service of the end image.
DaOrtiz can teach in English, but for some reason, he teaches in Spanish and the English is dubbed over. It makes the learning somewhat difficult since it’s a spelling trick, but they give you all the info to make sure you can accomplish the effect.
You do need a fair amount of table space, so it’s not really suitable for walk around or restaurant, but for a formal close up show, this is killer. A wonderful closer for a close up session.
Dani also goes over the psychology of the effect, and how to set up expectations that can be applied to any of your magic.
If you are a serious card magic student, even if you don’t like working with a special deck, there’s plenty of knowledge here for you to get your money’s worth.
Five Stars