DVD Review: Bootlegs And B-Sides - Vol. 1 by Sean Fields

I first encountered Sean Fields on his gory “Sawing DVD. On this DVD, Fields foregoes the geek magic and shows off his proficient card work.

This DVD with the unusual title offers Field’s approaches to classic card plots such as “Twisting the Aces,” “The Open Prediction” and Paul Curry’s “Out of This World.” There’s also a killer closer to classic “Ambitious Card” that will excite card enthusiasts. The DVD features some great material, but the routines are probably more for showing off to other magicians than for presenting to lay spectators.

Each performance segment is accompanied by music and the explanations are provided via subtitles and offered with music as well. Because the DVD assumes that you know the basics to the classic effects that the routines are based on, as well as moves such as Elmsley Count and Shapeshifter, this one is for intermediate and advanced card workers.

In U.C.C., a Joker is shown on top of the deck and two cards are freely selected and lost in the deck. At the routine’s conclusion, the Joker is shown to turn into one of the selected cards, which turns back into the Joker, which then turns into the second card. This one makes use of the flashy Marc DeSouza “Shapeshifter” move.

The move that card workers will love is Ambition Impossible, Field’s stunning ending to “ambitious card.” The first part of the routine where the selected card continually rises to the top is straight textbook. But at the end, the deck is gripped face down in one hand and the selected card seems to rise in the deck-you can see the cards in the deck subtly shifting-and then the spectator’s card appears on top, face up. This is a dazzler that will take some work.

Get Out is Field’s impromptu approach to Paul Curry’s “Out of This World.” In this classic routine, spectators randomly deal face down cards into two piles and later discover that they’ve separated the red from the black cards. Advantages with Field’s approach are that the spectator can shuffle the deck before hand and you don’t have to “switch” indicator cards in mid-stream during the deal.

To make the magic happen, this one requires a fast look through the entire deck after the shuffle and you have to bring the two piles briefly together at the end before showing that the reds and blacks are separated-something of a “switch” in itself. Overall, I still prefer the classic method that shows four piles of reds and blacks at the end.

InconTWISTant is classic “Twisting the Aces” but at the end, the cards all turn face-up and then face-down. In classic “twisting” the magician takes four of a kind, usually aces or queens, and makes the cards turnover, one at a time. There have been several who have come up with similar approaches, for example, Andrew Normansell’s “Twisting Dai Vernon on his Close-Up Magic DVD (click here to read our review). I often perform this routine in my strolling sets.

In O.P.P., a deck is shuffled and the magician states the name of a prediction card. The spectator deals all of the cards of the deck face-up, with the exception of one of their choosing which is dealt face down. The spectator doesn’t know the identity of this card. When the magician turns over the face down card, it’s the prediction that he named earlier. This one is strong.

The ill-named Brain Tumor is another twisting-style routine where the magician takes four of a kind and then shows that the cards are turning face up, one at a time. The difference here is that at the end, all of the cards appear to turn into a single ace. And then, the single ace turns into each ace, one by one. The final sequence repeats a specific move four times, which may be excessive.

I don’t know if Fields thought that he was being clever, but it’s too bad that he gave the routine this particular name. These two words can be mentioned by a doctor to a patient and cause chills to run down his or her spine and these two words will undoubtedly change a person’s life forever, if not shorten it. This title is unfortunate.

I don’t usually comment on DVD menus and such, but if you want to select and work on a specific move, the menu on this DVD is simply indecipherable. It’s the tricks that are supposed to be baffling, not the DVD menu.

In Bootlegs And B-Sides - Vol. 1, Sean Fields offers some good enhancements on classics that you can perform for your magician friends – the nuances will probably not play any stronger to lay spectators. The best thing here is that crazy ending to Ambitious Card. Master it and you’ll be a hit at your magic club’s next meeting.

-Wayne N. Kawamoto

MSRP: (US) $30

Dealers can purchase from Murphy's Magic Supplies, Inc.