 Hey everybody welcome back to Magic Orthodoxy. My name is David and this is a book review. Hey today we're going to look at the creative element from Scott Olgard. Now you might remember actually did a review for Scott Olgard before. It was not really a book review, it was a book test. Remember I did the Dr. Jackal and Mr. Hyde book test. That was also from Scott Olgard and I believe, I believe they're self-published. All right so what this is is it is a collection of Scott Olgard's card tricks. It's 90 pages long, has 19 effects in it and if you want to see the trailer this is it. What's going on guys? Scott Olgard here and I just want to talk to you a little bit about my new book The Creative Element. This is a selection of my card magic that I've been developing over the last four to five years. It's nice two pages. The name The Creative Element is basically because the effects in here are unfinished and that's deliberate. They're finished for myself but I state in the introduction that I don't expect anybody to perform these effects as I have performed them because at the end of the day you're not me and I'm not you and I've gone to great lengths within the book to explain how you can take each idea in here and apply it to your own performing style. I've tried as best I can to explain different ideas and different thoughts, alternative handlings as much as I can within this book itself. If you have any questions in the meantime please get in touch and thank you very much for your interest and yeah I'll see you soon. All right so that was Scott Olgard. He's out in Leeds. Okay and so a couple questions we always ask about all of our magic reviews and the first of which is what is in the book? What's in the book? Like I said it's 90 pages, 19 tricks, you got three sections. The book is broken down into three different sections and it's basically encompassing five years of Scott's work with card magic. Now interestingly enough Scott also has a YouTube channel and his YouTube channel is guitar so it's actually him playing guitar and singing so he's also a musician, a guitarist you might want to go check out his channel. So the book now is broken down into like I said 19 tricks, three sections. The first section is going to be with borrowed decks. Okay so just a borrowed deck you haven't done anything to it he's going to give you five tricks with the borrowed deck and the middle section is a section that he's devoted to a slight that he calls the nowhere vanish. Okay now the nowhere vanish is really just a side jogged spread vanish so if you're already familiar with that he's just named it the nowhere vanish. Basically the cards return to the deck and it vanishes from the deck without you having to palm it off or ditch it. Okay and so he's got nine tricks with that nine tricks with the nowhere vanish and then his third section is with either deck stacks or gimmicks and he has three tricks in there and then at the end he has a bonus coin trick as well. So you have some with borrowed decks some with deck setups some with gimmicks some with vanishes okay. Is it what I thought? It's more than what I thought actually I mean it's a book obviously and you think well it's a book about card tricks but it's more than that Scott actually has put in video explanations to some of the tricks which is great and I've never really seen this done with any other magic book so what he wants you to do is download a program to your smartphone that would allow you to scan certain pages and then a little video pops up while you're looking through the phone down at the book like the video appears on the pages of the book it's really cool like it's a live action thing like happening right in front of you and he either explains a move or he goes over the presentation or he just shows you the effect so that's really cool like he's added modern technology into books so there's a little bit of something for everybody people that like books you know there's still some of us out there that enjoy magic books and then there's people that really love videos and so what Scott has done is he's kind of married those two together in this so that was really cool positives one of the positives to the creative element you know it's always nice to get a peek into a creative mind like Scott Olgar so the creative element is a wonderfully adventurous approach to both magic books and card magic negatives what are some of the negatives to the creative element you know like we say around here there's negatives to everything so these are just the negatives that I see they don't have to be the negatives that you see for me some of the tricks were a little macky little dirty and reading them through in my head I was thinking wow that's not going to work a hundred percent of the time or you know I just don't know how this maybe but probably works great for Scott but in my head reading it back I was thinking man in my performance I didn't feel as comfortable that they would work for me that was just me is it worth your money it's thirty dollars thirty dollars it's a paperback booklet it's like on the thicker side of a booklet okay and so 90 pages thirty dollars booklet it is self-published and so when you self-publish books that is a little bit more expensive to do so I don't really know what his profit margin is on that thirty dollars seems a little on the high side for this book so I don't know it's going to be up to you whether this is something that you think you want to invest in I think books are always valuable I think books especially from people that don't necessarily publish a lot I think become more valuable and so you learn over time as books either sell out or they become classics that people then gravitate towards them and say oh did you read the creative elements in Scott Oldgard no oh my goodness you know it's sold out now you can't get it so you kind of have to be on the beginning of some of these things before they blow up and turn into something bigger so I don't know you know you're going to have to see for yourself who would like this I think anybody that's into you know esoteric card magic books or people that are already fans of Scott Oldgard people that just enjoy these little you know nuanced kind of card tricks that aren't as widely seen you know you're gonna do some magic it's a little bit more creative a little bit more on the cutting edge a little bit more like on the on the underground or you have not as many people doing these effects I think might like this people that just like to pick up you know new card tricks I think would definitely love the creative element from Scott Oldgard all right so that is my review for the creative element from Scott Oldgard I want to thank Murphy's magic for allowing me to have this so that I can do the review for you and if you want to purchase yours you can find it at your favorite Murphy's magic dealer thanks bye