Miracles Without Moves
Schultz, Ryan
Big Blind Media
Miracles without Moves features seven jaw-droppingly incredible slices of card magic that require the barest minimum of sleight of hand.
Eschewing technical knuckle-busting moves for ingenious trickery, routining and plain old sneaky clever thinking Ryan Schlutz unleashes tricks that will utterly floor your audience yet are simple and fun to perform.
And these are not your run of the mill sleight-lite routines. No painful counting sequences, yawn inducing spelling or hard-to-master linguistic gymnastics. These are multi-layered, supremely FOOLING smashers.
"These effects not only fooled me but totally inspired me with their deceptive creativity. Unreservedly recommended.
- Jamie Badman
"Ryan has great instinct for creating fooling magic with devious simplicity. These effects are easy to perform and hard to resist."
- John Guastaferro
"Creating ONE trick that smashes an audience's mind without resorting to sleights is a challenge. How the hell Ryan Schlutz came up with SEVEN is totally beyond me. I had no idea how he did ANY of it!!!"
- Cameron Francis
"Want your arse fooled off? Look no further. Schlutz is definitely your man!"
- Dave Forrest
"The last time I was this fooled by card magic, I was 10. Ryan made me feel like a child again."
- James Went
"On this DVD you will see Ryan demonstrate powerful working material that is seriously fooling. Great construction and use of subtlety rather than heavy sleights gives you a powerful collection of material to add to your repertoire."
- John Carey
"Ryan fooled me time and time again with the material from this DVD. The fact that most of it is almost self working is astonishing! This is surely set to become a modern classic!"
- Iain Moran
Reviews
(Top ▲)
You know how it goes these days . . . ad hype . . . phony claims . . . blah . . . blah . . . blah. Finally, there's someone who lives up to the hype. Enter Ryan Schlutz. I don't know where this guy came from, but thank you Big Blind Media for bringing him to our attention.
Ad Copy
This DVD is perfectly named. Miracles Without Moves is a perfect way to describe what you'll witness when you watch this DVD. Schlutz has a clever knack for being able to combine multiple sneaky principles together in such a way that the whole is exponentially greater than the sum of its parts. His material very much reminds me of a lot of John Bannon's material found on his killer 2 disk set, Bullets After Dark.
The DVD claims that it features "Seven Jawdroppingly incredible slices of card magic that require the barest minimum of slieight of hand." All I can say to that is "Amen Brothers and Sisters . . . Amen."
Product Quality
Everyone stop what you're doing and bow to the mighty bearded one . . . Owen Packard. Yet another incredibly produced, well shot, well lit, well mic'd, easy to navigated DVD. Thank you Big Blind Media.
Effects/Method
I wouldn't quite call these self-working, but very close. Even the newest of newbies could do these effects. The technical skill required is minimal. I guarantee that you'll be fooled more than once while watching this DVD. That's how clever the methods are.
But fooling a magician isn't what makes this product great. These seven effects seem absolutely impossible. In almost every case, the spectator shuffles the cards before, during and after the effect. In the cases where a card is selected, the spectator is doing it from the deck that they just shuffled. Then they actually get to shuffle it back into the deck themselves.
You end up in a situation where it just seems impossible to end successfully, but you do. Schlutz's effect, Degrees of Board-Dom is by far the most deceptive and impossible seeming version of a Shuffle Bored style effect. The conditions, shuffles mixing, and choices made by the spectator make it seem impossible for you to have predicted the outcome, yet you still do.
Every effect on here is simple to do, and extremely deceptive. However, without you seeing the effects, it's hard to say if you'll like them or if they're your style. All I can tell you is that they WILL fool your audience, and they ARE easy to do. Take a look a the DVD Trailer. At the end of the trailer they show you one of the effects. Watch it. Watch how hands off it is. Watch how fair the handling and shuffling of the cards is. Watch the whole thing, and you'll see how impossible it seems. All of the effects are like that. Some are even more impossible seeming.
Final Thoughts
For $30 you get seven effects. That is a little bit on the pricey side these days. However, part of me likes this because the combination of principles being used is very smart, and it's the kind of information you hope most magicians don't know about. That makes me like the price tag a little bit more. The bottom line on this is that if you need some extremely deceptive, easy to do card effects, this is an excellent choice.
Final Verdict:
4.5 Stars with a Stone Status of Gem
(Top ▲)
Knocked Subconscious is an easy to do trick where the spectator has all the power they select a card, mix them up and you divine this. Ryan stages this so it resembles a think stop trick. This is very clever and fooled me. It does require a certain gimmick that he explains how to make. Its preparation is fairly easy, it takes up no extra space and the cards and case can be used as if they were normal.
Four Shadowed is the one at a time production of a four of a kind. It is a very slick trick and once again the spectator feels like they are in total control the whole time. That’s kind of a theme on the DVD. Ryan’s style is very laid back and easygoing which just cements the feeling of control that the spectator has. While the cards don’t need to be gimmicked for this there is a small bit of cleanup at the end.
Deconstructed Construction is think a card effect. Basically a thought of card is divined by the magician. To select the card the spectator just grabs a handful of cards and counts how many they have. They then select a suit and the magician names the card. That’s pretty direct, this is also a fooler.
Degrees of Board-dom is probably my favorite effect on the DVD. I love Shuffle Bored it is one of my favorite effects. Here Ryan gives you a version that you can use during walk around. It uses just a few cards and the spectator once again has total control over shuffling and dealing. This is a very direct version of Simon Aronson’s Shuffle Bored and cuts out a lot of the fat found in other versions of the effect.
It Cuts Deep is one of the few that you can perform with a shuffled borrowed deck. I love this principle and this is a fresh new handling of a trick that most magicians will be familiar with.
Methodical, this is a three phase card find where it gets seemingly more and more difficult with each phase. This is another one where you can borrow a deck and go to work.
1492 is a trick Ryan created specifically to fool magicians. Its always fun to have a little reserve of these when you get together with your buddies. This is very similar Knocked Subconscious with an added shuffle or two.
This is a good DVD with some solid material. It was a little pricey for a small handful of mostly pick a card tricks. I maybe would have liked to see a couple of Ryan’s thoughts on other card plots such as Out of this World or Oil and Water that don’t require a card to be selected but overall this was a good DVD.
(Top ▲)
This one got me. Coming from Big Blind Media, I assume Ryan Shultz was British. For all I know, maybe he is. But his accent is distinctly American.
Another interesting thing that's happening is the use of more subtle techniques and self-working methods. Personally, I think it's a good thing. Not having to worry about the technical details means we can spend more time performing.
I don't think there was a single effect on here that I could have told you the method before watching the Explanation section. And it's all very easy to do.
All of the effects are performed with cards, but I wouldn't call them "card tricks." Most border on mentalism or suggestion. So if you're a "no card tricks" kinda person, this DVD could still be worth a look.
What's more, most of the routines have a lot of interaction with someone from the audience. Assuming you're not a jerk, this is a good thing. This sort of interaction keeps the show fresh and us on our toes.
One final note: I love what they did with the crediting. At the beginning of each Explanation section, you see text overlays giving full credit to the people who influenced and/or created the ideas on which Ryan's routine is based. It's in your face, not a leftover for the last chapter of the DVD. Well done, guys!