 Hey everybody, welcome back to Magic Orthodoxy. My name is David and this is a Magic Review. Hey, today we're going to look at Narcissus from Chris Philpot. What is Narcissus? It is a mentalism effect, it's a mind reading effect kind of, more like a mind control effect where you're able to take printed cards, show them to your audience, and then they see a different image than everybody else sees, or they see a different image than their own camera sees. You want to see the trailer for this? This is it. There were five effects on Narcissus. In each one, the photo of a spectator magically transforms on a borrowed, locked phone. We got this postcard at a museum in Budapest. You hand someone a postcard with a picture of an old fortune telling machine on one side and a fortune written in romany on the back. Using their own phone, you film them trying to read the fortune. Do you understand that at all? But when the video is played back, they can read the fortune perfectly. And the name of a lucky chosen card. Do you guys like Harry Potter? Yes. Do you remember the spell Aperissium? Aperissium is something that reveals hidden secrets. Do you remember this? Yeah, I know. When you're trying to think of a person placed within... One, two, three. Then you cast the revealing spell from Harry Potter, which makes their secret thoughts visible. Yours is I'm thinking of a table, and yours is I'm thinking of a tool. All right, I believe in God. What just happened? I believe it. Some people say that fortune telling can be dangerous. I want to see my future. And that's what it says on the card. No one gives their consent to a reading, only to have that consent. Holy s***, what the f***? What the f***? Reveal their future. What the f***? Can I post this? Yeah, you can do it like that. The spectator promises to assert their free will and make a free choice. My will is stronger, I will make a free choice. But in the end, we've controlled their every decision. What? Okay, this is weird. You guys are already hypnotized. Finally, there's unhypnotized, a beautiful and powering fact that will leave your audience feeling wonderful. Oh my god. Here's my dance. Did I? Yes. Whoa! Did I do that? No. There you go. How do you see? Give me some paint, my dad. I wish you guys... Alright, so that was Narcissus from Chris Philpot and Magica Online. Why Narcissus? What does Narcissus mean? Narcissus was a youth, a very attractive youth from mythology who saw his reflection in a pool of water and kind of like a mirror fell in love with his own reflection and he just laid by the pool staring at himself until he died and that is where you and I where we get the word Narcissus from and so as this review goes on and as you've seen from the trailer you can kind of see why Chris Philpot chose that name for this trick and I think it's a very creative, very highbrow name. So a couple questions we always ask about all of our magic reviews and the first of which is what's in the box? What's in the box? You're going to get a ton of stuff. You're going to get pre-printed cards, which I saw in the advertisement. You're going to get those. You're going to get a big stack of pre-printed cards that you can do a ton of tricks with. You're going to get a 90-minute DVD. So you're going to get 90 minutes worth of instruction, 90 minutes of Chris Philpot's ideas. And then on a separate DVD you're going to get 66 pages of PDF that's 66 pages long, just going further, going more in depth, way more ideas about what you can do with this trick. Then you're also going to get 145 JPEGs that you'll be able to print out and do anything you like with them. Is it what I thought? You know what? I really didn't know what to think. When I first saw this trick I was probably like you, saw David and Lehman do this effect on Harry Mandel on America's Got Talent and it seemed like what we saw happening on the show was real and then you figured it was a trick but then you could see all the angles and you could see that it was the same card, the card never changed. So you couldn't understand why, how he couldn't read it. So yeah, I think I went into this with a lot of questions wondering what it would be like. How are the angles? There are some angle issues, okay? I won't say how or what or why, but there are angle issues. The pictures are kind of like magic eye if you know what that is. So you can blow the effect at the wrong angles. Can it be inspected? Yes and no. Yes because you allow them to hold it and they get the sense that they actually touched it and felt it, but after the trick is over I wouldn't then hand the cards back. That would be an issue. I think then they would be looking for the secret. I wouldn't be handing the cards back after the effect. What's the overall quality and production value of the video? The video is pretty much Chris walking around doing live performances. It looks like he's in some sort of beach community like Santa Cruz or San Diego or Venice Beach, something like that. He's performing live and then all of his explanations are back in his kitchen, I guess, with a curtain behind him. The video did feel very homemade. It felt very Windows movie maker, but don't let that deter you. Chris more than makes up for it with content and ideas. Is it well made? The cards that you get are provided on very thick card stock and so they'll last you a long time. And the great part is with those 145 printable JPEGs you can now print your own cards. So literally with the way printing is and paper your options are limitless. You could make water bottle labels and carry it around with you. You could print these images on the back of your business cards and carry them around as tiny cards. You could make these posters in your house. You could make these any size you want, right? So I think beyond the card that you get the scope of this trick is gigantic. How much practice does this require? The trick is practically self-working. There isn't a lot to do. Once you figure out the secret, I think the practice will be in your routine, in your pattern, in your story. How does this trick, how does Narcissus fit into your persona and what are you going to do with it? How are you going to present this in Walk-Around? Because Chris has definitely taken this stage principle of the 100th monkey. The 100th monkey is usually a principle that's done on stage. What Chris has done is he's taken that down into the walk-around realm, into the close-up arena and now it's up to you to kind of figure out, well how does that work? How do you do a stage effect for close-up? And definitely I think Chris gives you some ideas and you see him do it. I don't necessarily say you want to steal those ideas, but you definitely need to start thinking about how this fits into what you do as a magician. How much setup and reset is there? Very little. Practically not. The cards do all the work for you. There's really nothing to set up or reset. Positives. Alright, so what are the positives to Narcissus? Chris has turned the 100th monkey principle into a beautiful walk-around routine that not only wows, but leaves the spectator with a lifelong memory. Negatives. What are the negatives to Narcissus? You know like we say right here, there's negatives to everything. These are just the negatives that I see. They don't have to be the negatives that you see. I just thought it was interesting that at the very beginning, Chris says I want to make this explanation very brief and then he talks for an hour and 30 minutes. So it was just an hour and 30 minutes was a long time to just sit and stare at his face talking back at you from a kitchen. Like I just would have liked not necessarily more content because I think Chris does give you content. Just maybe a more creative way to present the information. I don't know. It just, it was, it wasn't hard to watch. It was just, it just felt slow and a little bit. I don't want to say boring because it wasn't boring. It was just, it wasn't exciting and upbeat and catchy as all the other DVDs, but like I'm saying, don't let that deter you. Chris has put just a mountain of ideas in this and it has kind of a homie throwback to the way magic tricks used to be sold kind of feel to it. Is it worth your money? You know what? Narcissus is on the high end. It's $60. So it is on the higher end of tricks. And so what I would say is you're not paying for necessarily the materials. Don't think of it as you're getting these materials and the materials are worth $60. You are getting the idea. You are paying for the knowledge to do this effect. And so I would say that is kind of how you need to think of it and certainly that's how you should think of that going forward. All right, so who would like this? Who would like Narcissus? Well, I think number one, I think the price tag certainly puts it over into the working professional side. I think working professionals are going to be the ones who want to shell that money out for this effect, certainly. I think Chris is targeting people who do street magic. So if you want to add kind of an eerie mentalism, strange kind of what just happened into your walk around or into your street magic, this might definitely be for you. All right, so that is Narcissus from Chris Philpot and Magica Online. As always, I want to thank Murphy's Magic for providing this trick for me so that I can do the review for you. And if you would like to purchase this trick for yourself, you can find it from your favorite Murphy's Magic dealer. Thanks, bye.