Edit: Looking back on it, this got really long, sorry about that. Thank you for reading it all!
Hi gents. New to this forum, apologize in advance for posting in a wrong place if so..
Looking for magicians review on my video. Any feedback is appreciated.
Hi there, first of all welcome to the forum! It's great of you to share your work!
While not strictly speaking a magician (aspiring card mechanic), I'd still like to give my 2p on the matter. Please, take everything I write with a grain of salt, as I haven't been doing card sleights very long (not even a year).
First off, let me just say that I really liked your videos. There are, however, a few points of criticism (I'll do my best to make it constructive) I'd like to make:
1. On the tricks: I personally quite enjoyed them, though more because of the technique than the tricks themselves. One thing about the first one (production of the hearts): I really liked what you did there (not sure whether naming the technique would count as revealing the trick), and they were quite well executed as well. However, revealing that the whole deck is in order afterwards more or less tells everybody what you did and how you did it. Of course, it is important to show it for the follow-up trick, but I personally think this isn't the best way of doing it (maybe perform a few tricks in between when doing it in performance?).
On the follow-up trick (the faros): This trick feels a little long-winded, as 8 (?) faro shuffles do take quite some time to do. You found a way around that by showing the poker hands, but I think that people who aren't well versed in poker or just play it occasionally would be confused by that (example: me). Also, as the restoration of deck order is more or less simply mathematics, even laymen could think of the explanation to the trick*.
2. The techniques:
2.1. False shuffles: First off, I really like your false cuts. They seem very natural and it's very hard to keep track of the individual packets. Your Zarrow shuffle looks really convincing from this angle, though to really judge this well a different angle would be good.
Your push-through shuffles are a my biggest point of criticism on this matter: Try to do the push-through action a little quicker and a little more as one action. Right now it looks a lot like this: You interlace the two packets; you push them together until the packet are (nearly) square -- and then you push them even further. The way I see it there are two main points in a push-through shuffle where people might see it: The point where you seperate the two halves, though this can be taken care of with enough speed, and a the point where the push-through action happens, as here the hands often move differently than when doing a normal shuffle.
As I said, if one knows what to look for, this doubled action of pushing the halves together is a tell. My tip would be: Do a few true shuffles. See exactly how you do them and then try to make your false shuffle look like that.
You might want to try the strip-out shuffle as an alternative, as the same principles are at work here but without the push-through.
2.2. Wow. I really,
really like those deals, especially the Greek and Centre deal (I still haven't been able to do those). Your bottom deal looks solid to me, though it is pretty loud and you still have some finger flash (though that can be mostly get rid of with lots of practice). (By the way, do you do a strike bottom deal?) Also, one thing I noticed, your index finger sort of spasms when you do the bottom deal. I'd work on fixing that as well.
Just a general word I'd like to say on your deals: You seem to have been influenced by Daniel Madison on quite a few things. One of those things is the tendency to imitate a golf swing, as I've heard it be called, when dealing (this is of course exaggerated; I have the highest respect for Mr Madison, as he introduced me to a lot of useful principle). I'd try to lose that. A little bit of swinging while dealing is normal, especially when sailing the cards, but I'd try to keep it to a minimum; it just looks more natural.
This whole review sounds very negative, so let me just emphasize again that, on the whole, I really liked the videos. It's just easier to find individual points of criticism than to find individual points of praise.
Thank you for reading through all this rambling.
Really nice work, and thank you for sharing!
*Once, when showing a false shuffle to a friend of mine, he thought I was doing just this: Simply shuffling the deck until it is back in order. So yes, I do think laymen could think of this.