I recently bought five of the Penguin Live videos for the five for $99 deal. Individually they are $30 to $40 each.
I'll post a quick review of the ones I bought. I stuck with the bigger names that I was familiar with. There are like 100 other ones, however I don't know anything about the vast majority of the people. I was wondering which ones that other people on the forum think are good for card magic.
If you don't know, these are filmed in a small theater in Columbus, Ohio. Dan Harlan is the host and after each lecture, he interviews the person. Each one of these is 3-4 hours total. You get 90-120 minutes of lecture and 90-120 minutes of interview.
Wayne Houchin
The best one I got was Wayne Houchin's lecture. He does, I think, five tricks. All of them badass. Two of the tricks are sold as individual videos and, as you may know, Houchin's videos are usually twenty dollars plus for each trick. Also, with the Wayne Houchin Penguin Live you get a bonus 30 minute video of Houchin performing at the same venue the night before the lecture was recorded. So for most of tricks he teaches, you get get two different full live performances. Also in the 30 minute video he performs his famous French Kiss transposition, but using sheets from a small notepad instead of cards, which made it look like a whole new trick.
Dan Sperry
This one is mostly about bird magic. I really only picked this one simply because I like the guy. The lecture is hilarious. Beside bird magic, he teaches his razor blade swallowing routine, which is also sold separately as twenty plus dollar download. I actually plan to do this for Halloween this year. But even you don't like the trick, or don't want to handle razor blades, the gimmick is genius and could easily be used as a utility device for other effects. Also, I give Penguin credit for not being politically correct. During the interview, he says "stop me if I get too inappropriate" and Dan Harlan just keeps laughing and egging him on to say more. I was pleasantly surprised that some of his statements were not edited out.
The downside of the Dan Sperry lecture is he doesn't really perform the tricks. He teaches them, but does not really show performances. I had to go on Youtube and search for videos to see what his razor blade swallowing act was actually supposed to look like.
Jonathan Pendragon
I had no idea this guy was so funny. He teaches a huge amount of material and it is all badass. I was really surprised by how awesome the card magic was. He even starts off with his famous sands of time (or whatever it is called) thing. He teaches how make a sweet gimmicked bowl for super cheap. To prove how easy it is, he broke his bowl on the way to lecture and told Dan Harlan to go to Party City and told him exactly what to buy. He starts off the lecture by showing his bag of tools he always travels with to fix props and then constructs a new gimmicked punch bowl. He also shows how to make a cheap gimmicked card sword that looks way cooler than the shitty direct from China ones all over Amazon and Ebay.
Like the Dan Sperry lecture, I picked this largely because I liked the guy. However, there was a lot of material in it that I actually want to perform.
Banachek
This one contains a huge amount of material including his famous spoon bending routines and his famous pk touch routine. Both performed by Chris Angel in season 1 of Mindfreak. However, there is a huge amount of other material. A lot of it is shockingly easy. During the interview section he goes into great detail about how he fooled Washington University into declaring that he had real psychic powers back in 1980.
Dan Harlan 3
Dan Harlan is the host of all these lectures, and does all the post lecture interviews. I had previously bought his video on card stabbing routines, which I found to be a great value for $15. He invented the "Toon deck" as well as a lot of other tricks. The stuff he does on this video did not really appeal to me. I'll probably watch it again down the line and look for something to use. Reading the descriptions of the lectures, I probably would have been much more interested in Dan Harlan 1, or even Dan Harlan 2. I simply picked number 3 because it was the newest one.
I do credit Harlan for his spit screen interview of himself. It clearly took a lot of work.
I'll post a quick review of the ones I bought. I stuck with the bigger names that I was familiar with. There are like 100 other ones, however I don't know anything about the vast majority of the people. I was wondering which ones that other people on the forum think are good for card magic.
If you don't know, these are filmed in a small theater in Columbus, Ohio. Dan Harlan is the host and after each lecture, he interviews the person. Each one of these is 3-4 hours total. You get 90-120 minutes of lecture and 90-120 minutes of interview.
Wayne Houchin
The best one I got was Wayne Houchin's lecture. He does, I think, five tricks. All of them badass. Two of the tricks are sold as individual videos and, as you may know, Houchin's videos are usually twenty dollars plus for each trick. Also, with the Wayne Houchin Penguin Live you get a bonus 30 minute video of Houchin performing at the same venue the night before the lecture was recorded. So for most of tricks he teaches, you get get two different full live performances. Also in the 30 minute video he performs his famous French Kiss transposition, but using sheets from a small notepad instead of cards, which made it look like a whole new trick.
Dan Sperry
This one is mostly about bird magic. I really only picked this one simply because I like the guy. The lecture is hilarious. Beside bird magic, he teaches his razor blade swallowing routine, which is also sold separately as twenty plus dollar download. I actually plan to do this for Halloween this year. But even you don't like the trick, or don't want to handle razor blades, the gimmick is genius and could easily be used as a utility device for other effects. Also, I give Penguin credit for not being politically correct. During the interview, he says "stop me if I get too inappropriate" and Dan Harlan just keeps laughing and egging him on to say more. I was pleasantly surprised that some of his statements were not edited out.
The downside of the Dan Sperry lecture is he doesn't really perform the tricks. He teaches them, but does not really show performances. I had to go on Youtube and search for videos to see what his razor blade swallowing act was actually supposed to look like.
Jonathan Pendragon
I had no idea this guy was so funny. He teaches a huge amount of material and it is all badass. I was really surprised by how awesome the card magic was. He even starts off with his famous sands of time (or whatever it is called) thing. He teaches how make a sweet gimmicked bowl for super cheap. To prove how easy it is, he broke his bowl on the way to lecture and told Dan Harlan to go to Party City and told him exactly what to buy. He starts off the lecture by showing his bag of tools he always travels with to fix props and then constructs a new gimmicked punch bowl. He also shows how to make a cheap gimmicked card sword that looks way cooler than the shitty direct from China ones all over Amazon and Ebay.
Like the Dan Sperry lecture, I picked this largely because I liked the guy. However, there was a lot of material in it that I actually want to perform.
Banachek
This one contains a huge amount of material including his famous spoon bending routines and his famous pk touch routine. Both performed by Chris Angel in season 1 of Mindfreak. However, there is a huge amount of other material. A lot of it is shockingly easy. During the interview section he goes into great detail about how he fooled Washington University into declaring that he had real psychic powers back in 1980.
Dan Harlan 3
Dan Harlan is the host of all these lectures, and does all the post lecture interviews. I had previously bought his video on card stabbing routines, which I found to be a great value for $15. He invented the "Toon deck" as well as a lot of other tricks. The stuff he does on this video did not really appeal to me. I'll probably watch it again down the line and look for something to use. Reading the descriptions of the lectures, I probably would have been much more interested in Dan Harlan 1, or even Dan Harlan 2. I simply picked number 3 because it was the newest one.
I do credit Harlan for his spit screen interview of himself. It clearly took a lot of work.