Blade, Digital Force Bag, Steve Forte, Benjamin Earl and Jason Ladanye.

Now then, good evening. Hope everybody's all right. I'm very off-putting, because I'm trying to set this up and develop. I'm trying to develop the channel, and it's really confusing. So I hope we are now live. I hope you can hear me. Please give me a sign. Give me a sign that it sounds okay, because I have been, sometimes when I don't get the leads quite right, I'll go to robot mode. So before I carry on, I will get you to give me a go ahead. I've got stuff here. Good evening. Hi from Germany. Hi, Oliver. Hi, Ahmed. Dane, how are you doing? Looks and sounds great. Fantastic. This is a, well, first of all, let's do the honors. Welcome to Real Magic Review. My name is Steve Fort. I'm so glad to be doing this. I've just realized it's got really bright all of a sudden, so I might be completely washed out in a minute, but that's okay. It's live. And I wasn't gonna do anything today. I've been with my kids all day with my son and dropped him off at mum's, got him back tomorrow, and I just wanted to talk to someone. I just thought I wanted to talk to grownups, and you are grownups, and I know you're there. So I just, and I wanted to talk about magic, because I've kind of had a really busy week, but I've been playing with a lot of stuff, and I haven't really written a review, and I thought I'd just talk about what I've experienced. So I hope that's okay. It will be a shambles. It will be a ramble. So a couple of things. Please like, please subscribe. Please check out cardmagiccourse.com. That's what is gonna pay for all this, and I've just invested more. So I'm really, really pleased. I don't know if you can hear that. There's a kind of, it sounds like there's a hairdryer on in the background. My laptop's really struggling, so that's why I've been getting a problem with lagging, and all manner of things. I'm investing in a new laptop. That's coming Monday, so things, you may not know it's a difference, but things that will just mean we can carry on, because I was worried it was starting to die, and I was thinking if it goes, I'm not gonna be able to get one, but we've gone for it. So any feedback on anything, just let me know, and we'll just keep developing the channel. It's been an interesting week. We are in the UK. We're talking about, there's rumors of the lockdown being lifted a bit on Monday. I'm not sure whether that's gonna happen. We shall see. Thank you for all your messages this week. There's been some really lovely ones. I'm just gonna talk about what I've done this week. So the first thing of note, well, the first thing we'll do a review. I've been playing with Blade by Nicholas Lawrence from the other brothers, and the abstract effects. It's interesting. The, so Nicholas Lawrence is a great thinker, and he comes up with really unusual, quirky tricks, and I really like them. I kinda like all of them, but whether I perform them or not is a different thing, and I think some of them are, really, you take Revolve. Revolve is just something that I still enjoy playing with. I get out, and I just play with it, and it's very versatile. I know that when we go back out again, I can take it with me and just play with it, and even if I just do a very basic thing, it's gonna get reactions. I just know it is. It's kind of got that meatiness to it. It kind of fits in with a Mercury car photo, so it can fit into existing things, and then there's the stuff that he does where you kinda go, yeah, it's nice, but it almost feels a bit Tenyo-ish, and don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with Tenyo. I'm just saying it kind of feels like it's in and of itself, which is apparently a phenomenal show, and I'm not comparing this trick to that show. Not that that's a bad thing, but so I got this out, and I saw the trailer, and I thought, that looks kind of interesting, I think. I didn't know how it was done, and I like the way he gets in and out of it. I will show you a little clip in a minute that is shocking. Let me just check. Yes, I am actually streaming at the moment. I don't want another disaster, and I thought, I do wanna play with it. I was kind of really intrigued. I like the way the card goes in and out, and it looks very fair, and I like the way it looked like a weird moment, and it looked like it might be something to go with like Bizarre Twist or something, the Paul Harris thing. I'll show you a very, and this is an experiment. I've set something up. It might not work. We'll see. This is me doing it very badly, but just to give you the idea of the idea. I don't think I expose anything, so let's have a look. So hopefully you can see that. You see what happens is you've got the, that's kind of what it, so it's almost like it's quite a classic idea, isn't it? And you put the card in. You don't see me do it properly here, but the card goes in very clearly. You don't have to walk up like that. You walk up with the cards, and you can show them all separately, which I really like, and then you can actually hand everything out with a little bit of practice. I didn't get that far here. So hopefully that works. So the, I like that idea. The problem with it for me, well, let's go with the good things. Good things, it's gonna make people go, what are you doing? That's really weird, and it's going to fool people. I'm pretty sure it's gonna fool people. It is something, it's easy, okay? It's not really angley. You're gonna be able to stand most places and do it to people around you. You might just have to angle the cards a bit, but it isn't one of those things that you stand behind, and you're gonna see everything. There's nothing major to hide there. It's very clever and very simple. It reminded me a little bit of, you know, the other brothers had that, what was it called? The sandwich. Oh man, it was like the out to lunch thing with the notes. I can't remember it. Midnight sandwich, was that what it was called? No, midnight breakfast. That was it, midnight sandwich. Well, fancy a midnight sandwich. Yes, please, Steve. That'd be lovely. Midnight breakfast, that's it. It reminded me of that in the way that it's something simple you could carry around, get in and get out, and I think you could do it with something like bizarre twist, if you know that trick, and then sort of the trick finishes, you then get into position and do this. I think it could work in that context, but for me, it's probably not something I'm gonna perform. I might have it on me in my wallet and do it to friends, et cetera, and in impromptu situations, but like some of these things, it is a really nice moment. Is it worth me adding it to my stuff at work? No, I'm probably not gonna perform it. Will I show it to a couple of friends and my kids and people like that in formal situations? Yes, and I might ask them what they think, and I may be pleasantly surprised. I will say the download, I'm getting a little bit disappointed, and it is just me, maybe. I'm a bit fussy with tutorials. I do like them to kind of sound and look quite good, and I do know that we're working, I don't know when this was put together. I think it was before. Yeah, it was way before all this, actually, wasn't it? But I do think sometimes it's nice just for it to look a bit nicer and to be a bit crisper, and I do feel like the download was a little bit rushed. I wanted some close-ups, and it was a bit like, come on, a little bit of editing would have been nice, and maybe a decent mic and a bit sharper. But I will say it does go into another, like he does with a lot of his stuff, which I really like, he tells you how to make it. So you get it ready to go. That's really important. You get the cards with it. You get a couple of spare cards to use, so you can take it out and do it without a doubt, and you'll be doing it very quickly. You do have to be a bit careful. It does take practice. There is a risk of exposure if you're a bit clumsy with it, so you do have to kind of practice getting into those positions, but they're very, very easy. So he tells you how to make it, and then he tells you how to make it with credit cards and business cards, which is really, really nice. You can have a business card, and you can draw a stick man on it and do it like a man in half or woman in half with a stick man, and that's how you kind of sell it with the Queen's trick as well. So I've really enjoyed playing with it. I kind of get up every day. I've got it on my little table. I play with it, sort of giggle to myself, and then put it back. So it's quite nice. I'm sure it's not that expensive. I forgot to look at how much it is. It'd probably go on there. It'd be 300 quid. No, I'm sure it's not. Most of this stuff is very inexpensive, and I played with that snapped thing as well, which is quite an interesting idea. So maybe we'll talk about that in a bit. So let me just see if there's any questions before we move on to other things. I'm gonna try and do a more informal roundup every now and then. It sounds great. It looks great. Brilliant. Great. We're here for you, Steve. Yay, lovely. We're adults in body only. Isn't that lovely? I'm thinking that today. Well, something's happening now, isn't it? I think with the generation divide. When I was a kid, people that were 40 were 40. They were 40, most of them. Unless I didn't really know people that were performers and stuff. Maybe it's different, but now there seems to be a nice... It doesn't feel there's pressure to be middle-aged anymore, and I'm 46 now, man, and I was kind of... I'm just answering someone saying that we're adults in body only. And I just feel like a kid still, and this is keeping me really young. And I'm learning yo-yo loops at the moment, and I was walking up the road. I dropped my kid up to his mum's and walked down the road earlier. I'm my own two metres from anybody. And I was practising yo-yo use, and I was thinking, how must this look? I keep forgetting I'm a grown man. And I'm getting really grey. Oh, God. But yeah, so we are kids. And that's what we're doing this for, isn't it? We're celebrating the fact that we just love playing with toys and showing people really unusual things. So the other thing I played with this week was Digital Force Bag. And as you may know, if you watched the Cubesmith thing on Monday, which was... Thanks for staying with that, by the way. If you weren't here, and I'm gonna ramble, because that's what this is. If you weren't here on Monday, I had this thing where I'd set up that countdown timer at the beginning. I was really proud of myself. I've got it all going. And I put the countdown timer on, and it went 551, and I started, and I did a 23-minute review. I know some of you might know this, so I'm sorry. And I really went for it in that review. I was kind of improvising, and I was coming up with stuff. And it does exhaust me. Usually after a review like that, I'm knackered for some reason afterwards. And after 23... And I saw all the comments coming in. I was like, oh, great, loads of comments. Because Thank You Smith was there, and he made Cubesmith, and I was like, great. And all the comments were coming in. And then I looked at the comments after 23 minutes, and they were all kind of going, where's Steve? I hope he's all right. And I hadn't been streaming, and I had to start again. And interestingly, if someone said that was gonna happen, that's as bad as it gets, I think. That's kind of like, oh, now I've messed up. And we all worry about messing up so much. It's like messing up a magic trick. And I'll tell you, when you mess up, it isn't that bad. And that was like, oh, man, people have been waiting 23 minutes. Most of them are gone, probably. I've lost my audience, but that's kind of... But it was all right. I didn't really mind that much. And a lot of you guys stayed with it. So thank you very much. And it just goes to show, don't be nervous about messing up. I am too, but it's kind of okay when it happens. So digital force bag. Nick Einhorn's digital force bag. I, again, I've got this weird middle-aged thing where I get intimidated by apps until I use them. And Nick had actually said to me, he said, there's a bit of a learning curve with it, so get in touch if you don't get it. And I thought it was really easy to use, really simple to set up. Nick had thought of everything. The only thing that switched me off about this when I first saw it is because I didn't feel that it was that strong an effect. I think it's because you take something like CubeSmith and I was going to say WikiLeaks, WikiTest and things like that. They kind of happen away from the fact that obviously they're phones, but it's not just a phone thing, is it? It plays bigger. And I saw this thing as, you know, you've got a list. You say to someone, name a number between one and a hundred and you force whatever on that number. So you could have a list of a hundred. It comes with these built in, but you can customise them amazingly. So a hundred greatest celebrities, name a celebrity, name a number, 32, and it'll be Tom Cruise. You open, you give them the phone. They open your notes and number, whatever, Tom Cruise. And I always thought, yeah, everybody's just going to say it's an app. But I hadn't thought about the verse, take it away from the app. So you do that, but then you do the routine. And that, what I did, I hadn't really thought of. I kind of dismissed it. As I do with a lot of apps. And then I'd realised it had been on a lot of very high profile TV shows and Rot and Storms, you know. So I was like, it's got to be someone in this. So I played with it and I've had a really nice time with it. I think even at a simple level, even if you do it without doing a big routine, when you're with friends and you do a thing, it's very easy to set something up quickly. You know, you can have something in the fridge and not going to, you know, you can do a list of groceries and things like that. But what I really like about it is if you've got a gig for a company, you can then customise the list very easy. And when people talk about apps and customisation, I always go, oh God, I'm going to have to go in and do some sort of weird code or something. But no, I mean, it's like writing a list. And what I love is people are sharing their lists as well on the Facebook page. You can download, you can share your lists with other people. So it becomes this thing. And Nick's got an amazing thing with QR codes and things like that, which is just, which adds another thing. So I've really enjoyed playing with it. Once I learned it, which took very little time, Nick very kindly did a Q and A, a live Q and A on one of the Facebook pages, which was, which is really interesting anyway, and talked through the whole thing, which I'm sure is still available. So pluses on that is it's really easy. It's like super easy. It makes, those of you that aren't as creative, and I'm not, I find it really hard to come up with ideas straight away. And I've got my celebrity presage book test and I thought, brilliant. So I've used that, with that, just to a couple of friends. I'll tell you what I did. I messed it up, right? Because I was on Zoom with some friends, very informal, not like on a gig or anything. So I hadn't really thought about it. And I'd just been playing with the thing and I thought I'm going to do the, I can do the Tom Cruise, fourth Tom Cruise, the celebrity presage, mix it all up, and I can do that to him. So I said to them, I said to my friends, ah, yeah, well, give me a number between one and a hundred. I'll show some celebrities, whatever. And they said 32. And I said, look, 32 come true. It's Tom Cruise. And they were like, yeah. That's brilliant. And I was like, what? Don't you think it's good? And they were like, so what? And I forgot to mention Tom Cruise at the beginning. So I forgot to kind of go, I'm going to make you choose, or I've got Tom Cruise in my mind. Give me a number. I just kind of, and then I did the celebrity presage and forgot, I couldn't, I thought I was showing them the page numbers and they couldn't see them. So that none, don't do that. That didn't work at all. But again, trick went wrong. Don't worry about it. It was all right. They just said, what do you mean, Steve? And I said, I don't really know. But with a bit of thought and rehearsal, I think that's a really nice thing you can do on Zoom. You can do, cause you can see the phone quite clearly and you can hold the phone up saying, no, you're not doing anything. It's not as strong, but it's, it's doing it in person. But I think there's again, a versatility to it. And there's web pages they can look at. You can set things up on your website, et cetera. So I think it's really good on the bad side, I suppose. Challenges of it is, is it an app? You know, I think you've got to think creatively to make it something with your friends. It's a bit different maybe, if you're going to perform it, you have to bring it off that app. And there's some great clips of people doing really strong mentalism routines with it, where you kind of forget they've done that bit. And that's the thing, that bit isn't the trick. And that's why, how the trick starts. And a couple of things I've seen this week, which I really suggest checking out, if you can, one of them you might not be able to do. The first was Jason LaDani. He is someone I, way early on, I reviewed Game Changer. I was really impressed with Game Changer. When Jason LaDani first came out, he was, to me, he was a bit too much like Darwin, autism, his mannerism. And a lot of people said the same thing, and I kind of couldn't see past that. So I kind of just kind of didn't watch much of it. And that was a long time ago, by the way, in my way more judgmental days. And when Game Changer came out, I read it. I think he's brilliant. And I started watching his stuff and he did the session. And I really enjoyed his, his work. And I'm not, even though I'm a card, you know, I've got the card course. One for watching card magic trick, after trick, after trick in lectures. I find it quite a challenge sometimes, but I enjoyed his stuff. And the big criticism I think he would get, and he does get, is this idea of you can't insult, you can't be cocky, a cocky magician, right? And I always say, cocky magician is so annoying. That thing of, you know, that moment of smugness after a trick, you know, when they wait for the kind of wave of adoration, but he has an incredibly strong character. And I reckon you should watch it. It's only 17 minutes long. It's live at the Magic Castle on YouTube. The links will be below, but I'm sure you can search it. Jason and Danny live. It's, it's really, really nice. And what's interesting for us card magicians, is that to watch someone, he reminded me of a street performer. And I mean a good street performer. Someone who it's almost irrelevant what they do, and that is not take, what he does is incredible, right? But he is, you've captured them with him. And he comes on, and within seconds, he has established that character of the cocky magician. But so much, the first line is, is just puts it straight there. The first line is, look how good looking that, you know, it's all that stuff, but it's very funny. And yeah, what is it? I know it's a lot to take it straight away. First thing. And then you just know, you feel confident that, that he knows what he's doing, but he's funny. And it is a character. You kind of know he's probably not that cocky in real life. And actually he isn't when you meet him. He's a very lovely guy. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. I've enjoyed the lines. I enjoyed the banter. I enjoyed the pattern. I know some people don't like that word, the scripting. And I enjoyed the tricks. There's free tricks, you know, and it shows 17 minutes, free magic tricks, not a boring moment. I don't think, you know, I, they were loving it. The audience are lapping it up. It kind of felt a bit like an L and L audience, cause they were laughing so much. And they were, I mean, it was funny. And they just had a whale of a time. He starts us with a kind of smiley mule thing, which reminds us how strong those kinds of tricks are. And then he has a, Oh, what's the middle one that he does? Oh yeah. Invisible travellers thing, open travellers, which is really lovely. Again, we forget how strong that is. And I've just revisited it recently. And you see the moment he put, he shows his palms empty and puts that card down. The audible, in the audience, they see that card appear, which I think is really worth looking at that. And he does it in a slightly different way than I've seen as well, which kind of seems to make it a little bit more solid. And then finish it with this incredible gambling routine. Again, I can, gambling routines can leave me completely cold, but it really entertaining. It ends up with this, the best ending, tiny bit flourishy, but not over the top. And that's kind of like an eight minute routine, seven, seven minute routine, I think. So have a look at that. Jason and Danny live at the Magic Castle. And the last thing I watched this week, well, it's kind of makes me realise I have a bit of time, is Ben El and Steve Forte. Now I've been working through the Forte books as I bang on about slowly. I've tried to do it mindfully. I'm really trying not to rush forward. And one of the things I wanted to see Steve Forte, but I was a bit, a bit trepidatious, really. I was worried that it, I see, saw an interview with someone I love. What was it? Daniel Kahneman, his work, I adore it. And I had an interview recently, and I actually thought the interview was a bit dull. It wasn't his fault, but it, so I was a bit worried it was going to be like that. I think, what if it's Steve Forte? And it's not very, and it was just absolutely amazing. What was it? A couple of hours, Ben El doing Studio 52, doing his, you know, 52 nights in a row. And tonight's going to be incredible. And then he's got this 24 hour thing. And I haven't watched any of them, because I just haven't been, I know I've had the kids so much, and I, but I made myself do it. I was like, it was night when I didn't have the kids. And I just thought it was so inspiring. The stories were incredible. It's lovely to learn from that book, knowing that someone that's lived that life. But what, the one thing I came away with, the one thing I've always had a problem with, with gambling routines, is the kind of smoothness of the shuffle. Do you know what I mean? You see someone doing up the ladder, and it's so incredibly smooth. And I think it looked beautiful, but you kind of go, it almost doesn't look like anything. It looks like its own thing. And that's what I've struggled with. But I've all kind of subconsciously tried to emulate that, because I've kind of gone, is that, is that what you're meant to do? And, but, and then Steve will say, no, he was talking about someone, him and Ben were talking about someone they know, that they said, it's a pleasure to watch him, because he doesn't look like a magician doing it. He's a card man. He's a, he's a player, a cheater. And, and his, his shuffles were kind of slapping the, and it just made me feel so much better, because I'm kind of a little bit like that. I kind of, I'm not very good at the really, really, really smooth stuff. And, and it was nice to know that actually I'd kind of do it my way, and it might be a better way to do it. So I really suggest if it, if those things are ever released, you know, try and watch them. I'm gutted I haven't missed them. He's done Chris Kenner and people like that. And there's a David Copperfield, and the 24 hour thing on his Instagram. So check out the Studio 52, Ben L's Instagram, not the Ben L one, the Studio 52 one, and you'll be able to click on live when it goes live. And I really suggest you watch what you can of that. That was round one, wasn't it? Blimey. Let's have a look. 27 minutes, let's have a look. Let's have a look at the, will it stay together in a wallet? If so, put it out in front of the spectators. It's not in half. Yeah, so the way you do blade, is you do, I don't, I don't really try and demo them if I'm not over-practiced on them, because I don't want to expose them. I don't really care about looking stupid. But you, sorry, I'm right in the sun there. You come out like that. You know, you come out and you can basically, you do that, and then you do that, and do that, and then you go into it. You put the, very openly in here. And if you know the bizarre twist, you start in a similar way. So it's very open. You can also, of course, if you haven't started the trick yet, and you can have these from a different trick, and then bring it in and put it into play, but if there's no heat at all, it's not gonna be a totally simple thing to do, but if there's no heat, you're gonna be able to do that. So yeah, I mean, you could have these cards in your deck already. They're not gimmicked. It's kind of bringing something in that happens. And the thing you bring in, very, very, you can stick it in your wallet, bring it around. It's pretty hardy. Very simple construction, but pretty clever. So that's some rain. I still remember waiting 27 minutes. Oh, man. That was, that was full on, wasn't it? I put off buying Digitforce for so long. I bought it about a week ago, and now it's about the best app I've ever invested. Yeah, I think a lot of people are gonna think that. It's kind of the simplicity of it, isn't it? I think with apps, sometimes we look for something really, and when we see, you know, when you describe WikiTest to someone, and I want WikiTest, I don't need to review it because everybody thinks it's brilliant, so I haven't got it, and I can't really justify buying it. Sun's all over me. But you, and people go, wow, and you describe DigitalForceBag, and you can't wait, wait for the verbal description. You kind of go, yeah, it kind of sounds all right. But then when you put, I think there's the possibilities of that thing, I think is great. So it's great. I really, I'm glad it's doing well, and I really deserved it. I've spoken to Jason online a couple of times. He's a nice guy. Jason is, he is. Jason Simmons, one of the best guys I've met via magic. Yeah, we're talking about Jason and Danny, but I'm sure Jason Simmons as well. Or Simons, depending on, you say potato. So, thank you for that ramble. It's done, for letting me ramble, and still being here, I really needed to kind of do something today. When I'm with my kids at home, I come to them and feel like I get quite lethargic, and I'm sure we're all, some of us are feeling like that. It is strange times. I do hope you're all right. I genuinely do. And, thank you again. One more thing, check out a blog. I've got a blog published on Vanishing Inc, which is called Rambles, funnily enough, this week. So if you have a look on the Vanishing Inc blog, even though Vanishing Inc, everybody thinks I'm affiliated with them. It's not doing me any favours in it, but they kindly asked me to. So I thought it was a really lovely thing. It kind of got me back into making myself right again. So my blog's on the Vanishing Inc thing. I'll put that below, or check it out on my Facebook, Instagram, at Real Magic Review. And, thank you very much. Yeah, have a great one. Check out the Car Magic Course, like, subscribe, all that sort of stuff. And, thanks very much. Cheers. Thank you for watching Real Magic Review.