Review:
Surfaced by Chad Nelson
Producers: Dan & Dave Buck
Available at: http://www.dananddave.com, YFD
Price: $ 40,-

Brief overview of the contents:
On this dvd you will learn Chad Nelson’s Clip Shift and it’s various applications (controls, color changes, palming). In addition, seven effects that utilize the clip shift in some way are performed and explained.

The move:
Since this dvd is mainly about the Clip shift, I thought it was a good idea to review the move as well. So here it goes: The clip shift is a great move! Really, Really fantastic, great thinking from Chad Nelson, kudos to him for that. The clip shift can be used as a one-handed color change or vanish of card, but you can also use it in very deceptive ways to control a card or palm a card. I’m sure there more applications as well. Needless to say: I really love this move!

Difficulty level:
While I can handle myself pretty well with a deck of cards, I’m not a cardman. With that being said, I think the clip shift is very, very hard to do. It will require substantial amounts of dedicated practice. Besides that, your fingers will probably start hurting after long periodes of practice. I think the move is worth it though. I’ve read that some people think that the clipshift will take at least six months or a even years to get down. I don’t agree with that. I think that with a couple of weeks of serious practice sessions you can get the move down. In the weeks following that you can get it smooth.

DVD:
As I said, I’m a huge fan of the clip shift, but to be honest I wasn’t to thrilled about the dvd itself. I have a couple of reasons for that, which I will elaborate.
The dvd comes in a nice package and it includes an instructional booklet which describes the clipshift. There are four sections on the DVD (Watch, Learn, Achieve, More). In the Watch-section you see Chad performing the effects explained on the dvd in a strolling enviroment. While it is always nice to see a magician working in the real world, I don’t think the effects played out very well on camera. I had to pay very close attention to work out what was happening and even then I couldn’t follow it at all times. The camera work didn’t help either. It is very shaky and the camera changes angles constantly. To me this was very annoying and I actually skipped it after two effects when I was watching the dvd the first time. As I said, I like to see a magician working. On the Part Animal dvd set (Matthew Dowden) it worked out great. On this dvd, at least for me, it didn’t work out very well.

In the Learn-section of the dvd, Chad explains the clips shift and various utilities of the move (Color changes, Palming, Dribble control and a one handed pass). It was this section of the dvd that I was most dissapointed in. The clip shift is covered in lenght, but to me it could have been more detailed. Chad immediatly goes into the the grip used in the shift. A short introduction would have been nice, and more importantly: an overview of the move at his point would have been been very nice. Just show what the move is, what it accomplishes, and show what happens when the move is executed (“A card is moved from here to here under cover of ….while holding the deck in palm down grip”). A simple little intro would have made the explanation much more clear. Now we go right into the mechanics of the move. Again, the camera work was very annoying to me. It constanly switches angles, it zooms in and out, not helpful in the learning process. Something that I also missed in the breakdown of the move were pointers and tips that could help to master the move faster. The tilting of the deck, noise problems, the top card of the deck that can accidently be outjogged: all problems that a lot of people seem to have (judging from this boards), but Chad doesn’t give tips on how to overcome these problems. I felt the same about the other applications of the clip shift that were explained in this section. He covers it very fast and doesn’t give a lot of tips. More attention should have gone into this IMHO. The applications are great, though. Cardworkers will get a lot out of this.

In the Achieve section, the effects that Chad performs in the Watch section are explained. He also performs them again for the camera, which is nice, because earlier on, I had a hard time following what was happening. The only thing that I didn’t liked was that the performance is on a small square in the middle of the screen and not on the whole screen as in the explanantion part. About the effects detailed: Personally, I didn’t really care for them, but perhaps others will like them very much, it’s a question of personal style. There is a trick where a chosen card rises from the top to the bottom of the deck visually and back up again, there is a collecters effect, an effect where three persons look at the same card but in the end they all saw a different card and a couple of others. All the effects are technically quite demanding.

In the More-section, there is a bonus-effect, there are some contribtions from other magicians utilizing the clipshift and a trailer.
All in all, I have very mixed feelings about this dvd. I love the move and everything it can be used for, but I didn’t really liked the dvd as a whole, and the camerawork at times was very annoying to me. So, think I would give te DVD a 6 or a 6+ on a scale of 10. The clip shift IMHO, deserves a 9, though!

Regards
Simon

Any body alse have this, use it - just learning it ??? any other reviews ??