Well, seems like Aaron is at it again with his Paper Engine DVD series.

First developed by Aaron in 1994, The Revolution is perhaps the easiest, most visual color change ever invented. This new DVD presents two distinct miracles made possible by this incredibly easy, visual transformation.

Helter Skelter
Simply the most astounding, easy to perform color changing deck you'll ever see — and it ends clean! This effect first appeared in The Paper Engine, but Aaron has been guarding this new, incredibly simple method for years. All the difficult sleight of hand has been removed — that means if you can do a double turnover, you're ready for this trick right now.

Revolution #9
You can perform this effect with any deck, any time. A wave of your hand causes a face-down selection to visibly reverse. But that's just the beginning. With another wave, the entire deck turns face-down. Unlike the method taught in The Paper Engine, this new approach uses only basic sleight of hand. You'll have to see the effect in action to believe it!


Over a decade in the making, The Revolution featuring Helter Skelter completes The Paper Engine Trilogy with Aaron's strongest release to date. Aaron has been performing these effects for over 10 years.That means this magic is tested, verified and trustworthy. You'll LOVE performing the magic on this DVD.

Join the Campers!
This DVD will give you a brand new experience. Much of this production was shot live at Sorcerer's Safari Magic Camp — the world's finest youth magic program. After you learn the effects on the DVD, you'll get a front row seat to work with Aaron along with the other campers. You'll hear real questions — and get information that will make watching this DVD the next best thing to being there.

The Effects Are Just the Beginning
As always, Aaron will show you how to put it all together. In addition to Helter Skelter and Revolution #9, you'll learn invaluable lessons about how to clean-up tricks, switch decks on the fly and recover from any conceivable situation. After you see the DVD, you'll use this information every time you do card magic.

Price is 29.95

Link: http://www.aaronfishermagic.com/revolution.htm

Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N9mbhnah......embedded

Any thoughts?

I just purchased this in combination with The Graduate (which I will not review here).

First I have to say that both Revolution #9 and Helter Skelter are obviously incredibly visual magic. And that is what it is all about today. In addition, it isn't just visual, it is very magical and very natural. It looks like real magic.

The sleight is also pretty easy to learn, is very good on angles and Aaron's teaching is excellent. I would rank it as being easier than a double lift or an Erdnase color change because at the time you do the move, there is no heat or very little heat. The visuals are so strong that the misdirection is built into the routine. So unlike a double lift or double turnover, where the spectator is looking right at the DL when you do it so it better be perfect, in this case, there is much more room for error. As Aaron notes in the video, eventually the way you improve your magic is to get out and perform in front of people. Because the visuals are so strong, this makes it easier in my opinion to get out in front of people and try this out. It doesn't mean you won't want to practice this, but I would argue that that this is 1-7 days of practice depending on your level of experience, not weeks, months or years.

The Join the Campers section as noted in the promotion above was not what I expected and is poorly described. It is much better than it sounds. In fact, the promotion above made me think the entire video was shot with Aaron teaching a bunch of nerdy magic geeks and I was a little nervous about that. First, the video shows Aaron performing the effects at the Magic Castle and on the street. The explanation is shot in a studio or someone's living room somewhere. The Join the Campers section is an additional section that shows the campers asking Aaron questions about learning the Revolution change. This is an excellent addition because it is edited down to show you the kinds of questions that you are likely to have as well. Also, these kids are intermediate magiciians that look like they are in their early to mid teens and they were all quite serious about their magic and asked great questions. So this is in fact a great addition.

Now back to Aaron's instruction. He does not do just an excellent job, he does an exceptional job. He covers all the nuances of learning the slight. He also covers nuances of angle management and also of using humor to cover a move. He is very thorough. A bang up job all around.

There are two extremely small criticisms I have of the video:
1) The presentation of Revolution #9 is not actually of Aaron doing Revolution #9 as he describes it in the DVD but of him doing Revolution #10. Also, this performance shows him using the gravity half pass which he does not cover in the explanation. That said, his explanation goes back and shows the technique for doing the trick without the gravity half pass and also shows him very briefly in performance using the technique that does not require the gravity half pass. Note that the gravity half-pass really isn't needed to perform this trick. In fact, I think the routining is better with the approach he suggests that does NOT require the gravity half pass. It makes the gag he uses later to cover a different move that much funnier. Regardless, we never actually see Aaron perform Revolution #9.

2) The music. Aaron, please, just take a gun and shoot me in the head rather than play that music behind your explanation... the background music has got to go. As punishment, I think Aaron should have to play the segue music for Sankey's Revolutionary Coin Magic #2 DVD on his iPod on repeat for a day as punishment. I can't decide which music drives me insane more. I guess it has to be Sankey because his music was only during the seques and it was still annoying whereas Aaron's played all the way through.

Lastly, what is nice with Revolution 9 and 10 is that they can both be performed with a borrowed or even spectator shuffled deck so it is very impressive impromptu magic as it is the kind of thing I think lay people would expect to use a trick deck.

So my recommendation is to watch the demo and decide if you like the effect. The demo doen't show the entire routine, but only shows the card change but that IS the effect and what you see in the demo is how it plays in real life. So if you like the look of card/color change, then buy it becuase the rest of the trick requires no sleight of hand at all.

Regards,


Todd