First let me say that this DVD looks like it was shot with a cell phone camera. I am guessing that Daryl Sato is going for the cool, gritty, street magic look. But all that comes across is gritty. It is difficult to watch.

Remember when you were young and still relatively new to magic and you would come up with some killer idea/effect. You would be so excited and show it to your mentor or the guys at the club. And then they would school you. Telling you, good try, but here is how it should be/is done. And then you get an education on the history, methods, and psychology of magic. We would have so many great ideas only to learn we were still new to this thing called magic.

Well, Daryl Sato’s Transference strikes me as that. Something I might have come up with when I was young and still learning the basics of magic. He shows two methods to accomplish the effect on the DVD, the first is simply ridiculous. Oh,I am sure in the right moments you can fool some people with this method. However, if you are working in the real world for pay, you would never try this. Why? Because there are at least ten better ways to perform the effect already in print.

Not only that, but the idea that the magician would be holding the deck when the spectator calls out their card and then spreads the deck face up before putting it down for the big reveal, seems a tad bit obvious.

The second method is a bit better, but the author gives very little in the way of proper staging, scripting, thinking, or misdirection for the trick. The author does spend a great deal of time trying to convince us that people will be blown away by this trick. Frankly, although the premise is well defined, the climax is not convincing. I believe the first phase of a good ambitions card routine would be just as powerful if not stronger.

Not recommended