Thursday, July 9, 2009

Frozen

If you watch the demo video for this, you're going to immediately freak out and think this is real magic. Hey, it's about as real as you could hope for! You borrow a spectator's quarter, and proceed to freeze it with your breath like Superman.

In theory this is one awesome effect. It's a lot better than the other "Frozen" effect out there that came out years ago (the signed coin appears in a block of ice in the magician's hand), but both fall victim to the same problem: impractical set-up.

This is not an effect you are going to do impromptu. As a matter of fact, there is a very tight window between setup and performance of the effect. You can't leave home thinking you'll do that trick today and wait an hour to actually try it. You've got at most 15 minutes to get it done after you set up, and that's pushing it. Adam Grace does give some pointers on packing it to go, but it's going to require fairly roomy pockets.

There is another setup he shows you that does allow you to do this the trick impromptu. Truthfully, I doubt he ever does this himself though. You might love the idea, but it didn't seem practical to me.

And finally the biggest problem: I've never gotten the effect to work. I use the exact same items he does on the video, I set them up the exact way he describes, and I've never had the effect work once. Forget 15 minutes, I'm trying it within 2 minutes of the set up and it still won't work. That may be just me, but I can't remember the last time I couldn't get an effect to work at all no matter what I tried.

You may get it and you may love it, but for me it's just too limited to be practical. I have to say though that if it works for you like it did on the video, you'll blow the spectator's mind.

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