Britain's brightest independent magic magazine

Issue 28 - Sept. 09

Review

Make Amends  

Wayne Fox
Available from www.waynefoxmagic.co.uk  

Price: £19.99  

Wayne Fox is an experienced close up worker who has released a small number of his ideas on to the market and he has sent a couple of them to us for review. Make Amends is a very visual instant restoration of a signed card. Essentially what happens is that a card is chosen and signed and is then torn into four pieces which are left in a little pile on the table. Picking up the empty and open card box, the pieces are tapped with the box and instantly the pieces are gone and a complete card is seen on the table. When a spectator turns over the card, it is the signed card.  

There are plenty of highly ingenious card restorations available, but most of them concentrate on finding impossible looking ways of putting a torn card back together piece by piece. Usually, the handling required is difficult and in many performing conditions (busy dinner functions, noisy pubs, crowded parties), the angles may be challenging and the audience may well be too distracted to wait while you laboriously restore a card piece by piece. Wayne 's idea short tracks the whole thing and provide a virtually angle proof and literally instant restoration which looks amazing and in which the magic is done in a second.  

Given that Wayne 's idea is designed for real world performance, is it suitable? On the whole, yes. On the plus side, the restoration is almost self-working, there is virtually no re-set and the effect uses a freely selected and signed card. On the minus side, you will need to palm a card at one point and the restoration happens on the table top (which in certain conditions might be a bit tricky if the table is cluttered or sight lines are blocked). Also, the signed card is initially shown, flipped face down and then dealt on to the table. Now my experience is that when you do this, irrespective of how casually or smoothly you do it, every so often a spectator will ask to see the card face again in order to confirm that you haven't done anything fishy! So, some audience management will be required to gloss over this should the request be made as the card cannot be shown again.  

With piece by piece restorations, the illusion of the card actually restoring is strongly reinforced. With Make Amends, because of the way the pieces lying in a pile on the table instantly disappear to be replaced by a complete card, my impression is that the spectators will not view this so much as a restoration but more as a very clever instant switch. If you actually saw the pieces on the table sort of instantly unfold themselves and restore in front of your eyes, then they would definitely believe that the original card had been destroyed and that somehow it had put itself back together again. When you see Make Amends, I'm not sure that spectators will really believe that the signed card has restored. However, this probably doesn't matter, because the magical moment looks great and is very fast, so exactly what the trick is supposed to be is probably irrelevant.  

When you purchase this effect you receive a DVD and a few bits and pieces which are required to construct the two gimmicks needed. The preparation you have to do is simple and is only required once as the gimmicks can be re-used repeatedly until they get dirty. The DVD instructions are well made and Wayne explains the handling, the psychology and the presentation behind the trick clearly and coherently. There are two live performances of the routine included in the footage, one of which looks like it is in a real show setting.  

Make Amends is well thought out and creates a neat visual effect. If you are confident about palming a card under some presentational misdirection you will not find anything else that is technically challenging as the restoration moment is basically done by the gimmick. The trick is available directly from Wayne although there doesn't appear to be any ordering system on his website. ML  

What's Hot: the visual nature of the restored card's reappearance
What's Not: you need to palm a card under scrutiny
Star Rating: ***  

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