Before I Forget DVD by Mark Elsdon

Going back a little in time to the early half of 2007, Alakazam Magic presented us with a fantastic DVD by Mark Elsdon called 'Before I Forget'.

On the DVD, Mark shows live performances of his routines and then it goes into his very descriptive and detailed instructions on how the effects are created. There is also a couple of Bonus routines not to be missed at the end along with deserved credits.

You get around eight routines in the main section with two extra bonus routines in the later section. These routines are;

Balance:
The magician takes a deck from it's box and shows the cards are perfectly normal. He holds the deck with both hands, fingers either end, and gives the audience the choice of which hand to remove. On removing one hand, the deck stays mysteriously balanced in the most impossible way and spectators are encouraged to look under the deck. The magician even slides a card out from the bottom of the deck whilst still balanced and circles it around the deck to prove there are no strings involved. It doesn't stop there as the magician then gives the audience member a choice of any finger at all and he then proceeds to balance the deck in the most impossible way on the finger of choice. When I say balance, basically his finger is at the very end of the deck below the shortest end, thus the cards appear to look as though they are almost floating. The cards can then be used for the next card routine.

Chaos and Order:
A card is produced from a deck of cards and has a green and red button visibly marked Order and Chaos. To prove the point of the Order and Chaos card, the magician shows a deck of cards and the spectator takes a card. The spectator keeps hold of the card as the magician clearly cuts half the deck and turns one half face up and the other half face down, puts them together visibly this way and places the Chaos machine card on top. On pressing Chaos, the card is taken off and the deck fanned out to show that chaos has now totally mixed face up and face down randomly throughout the whole deck. The spectator slides their card into the mixed up deck, the Chaos and Order card is placed on top and Order button is pressed. On removing the top Chaos Order card, the deck is now shown and all the cards are now face down with one card turned, this card is the selected card.

No Moves:
Spectator picks a card which is put into the deck and on spreading the deck, the selected card has turned over. The magician shows them again by sliding the selected card back into the deck, seemingly lost in the middle but a click of the fingers has the card appear back on the top of the deck. Finally the magician advises he will try something completely different by sliding the selected card into the deck, which he does, then places the deck on the table explaining that he will try something without touching the deck and backing away so that he is not near them. With this, he fans the deck across the table then steps away. A card now appears spookily pulling itself out of the fanned cards. Everyone can see the magician is nowhere near the cards as the selected card comes out from the deck itself in a very spooky and mysterious way.

Swindlesque:
A 52 card number deck is given out to be shuffled, a card is chosen by the spectator and then it is lost within the deck. Now the magician asks random questions and drops a card onto the table to spell out the answer from the spectator, i.e. he asks what colour hat you are likely to wear in the rain, spectator answers blue, then the magician spells B-L-U-E dropping one card per letter to the table. He continues this way with a few more questions. Spectators at any point can say whether they want more questions or not. When the questions have ended, the spelt deck is picked up as the magician proves a mathematical principle by out jogging every other card and eliminating these. Out jogging every other card again and eliminating these until one or two cards remain. The spectators have the choice which to eliminate and the final card is shown to be the very number that was chosen at the start.

Climber:
A rubber band is used and can be borrowed, and a ring is borrowed. The magician snaps one end of the band and asks the spectator to hold one end up in the air as the magician slides the ring onto the band and holds the other end. Deep concentration ensues as the ring starts to move eerily up the band toward the spectators fingers.

Celebrities:
A card is placed on the table face down and a deck of cards produced, showing that the back of each card shows the name of a well known and famous celebrity such as Brad Pitt, Michel Cain and so on. The spectator says out loud any card they like and this card is visibly taken out of the deck and placed face up next to the prediction card that was resting on the table in view at all times. The card that was chosen by the spectator is turned to reveal a name of a well known personality and the prediction card is turned and has the very name of that famous personality. The prediction card can be given as a souvenir.

Memorisation:
The deck is visibly shuffled and the magician then as fast as he can slides through each card face up to remember the deck in a very unique way as he describes this method of memorising to the audience. A spectator takes out a card from the deck and places this somewhere else in the deck, obviously remembering what his chosen card is. The magicians back is turned at this point to show he can not know where the card was taken from or where it is going. Once complete, the deck is pulled together and the magician starts to look through the deck, in no time, the magician says the position the card was taken from and the position it has been moved to along with the exact name of the card. The magician again shows this, but this time has two or three people remove the card from the deck and placed in their pockets. Again the magician will look through the cards, say roughly where the cards were taken from and what the cards are that is in the spectators pockets. The cards can be given out to prove they are perfectly normal.

My Grandfathers Book:
The magician takes out an old looking brown envelope and places this on the table and removes a deck of cards with each card containing a picture of an old classic book, each one different. This deck is cut and the magician describes about his Grandfather being an avid reader and so forth and his particular favorite book is contained in the envelope. Pure chance or co-incidence occurs as the spectator checks the book to which they freely cut to in the cards and the book is slid from the envelope to match exactly where the spectator had cut. It doesn't end there as theres an old bookmark within the book with his grandfathers name on. The bookmark is given to the spectator to slide anywhere within the deck and after being given the opportunity to move the bookmarks position, ends with one card either side of the bookmark. The spectator freely chooses whether they would like the card above or below the bookmark. After the spectator has chosen the card they wish to use, the magician explains how his Grandfather would write a message of which book he would like to read next, this message is revealed and again matches the very card the spectator chose. It doesn't end there as a finale, the other card that is next to the bookmark is picked up and the two numbers the spectator has is chosen as a page number, so as an example, if the cards they have is a 5 and a 3, they could turn to page 53 or 35. The magician will write a prediction word on the bookmark and when the spectator is asked to reveal the first word on the page, the magician reveals it to be the word he wrote.

Two Bonus Items called Prefigurisation and Card in Mouth:

I don't want to keep rambling on about what is packed into this DVD so I will not describe the bonuses and leave them as a mystery, but believe me, I think the bonuses themselves are worth the value of the whole DVD alone.

Personal Opinion:

I personally believe this DVD is absolutely fantastic value and almost every effect on this DVD is worth the price paid, even if you only know two of the effects. I say two because there may be one or two that you may think you are unsure of. Some of the effects do require to purchase extra items and in some cases can be very difficult to get hold of, but there are alternatives that can be used.

You can take in allot from this DVD towards something you may wish to use or take inspiration for some idea towards in the future. The rapport between Peter Nardi and Mark Elsdon is fantastic with great public performances and hillarious patter throughout this extremely descriptive DVD. It is a few years old now, but I felt the passion to revisit this to share with you as it is worthy of being in your collection if it is the kind of magic you perform.

You can have a look at a snippet of this DVD here: http://youtu.be/avXlJr5MzkM

And Alakazam, whom presented this DVD, have this on their site so please take a look on:  http://alakazam.co.uk/

Overall I think I would give this 8/10 and I believe it is a great addition to any DVD collection.

Thanks for reading and see you soon ;)