Reviews: Read What Frederic Clement Is Saying
4 ★★★★★ reviews
4 ★★★★★ reviews
1 ★★★★★ reviews
1 ★★★★★ reviews
Stage Illusions
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Frederic Clement (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Monday 22 April, 2024)
There are the good old illusion books, like the ones of U.F. Grant, which are full of good ideas that are, for the most, still accurate and usable today, and there are other old illusion books, like this one, which have become completely useless for today's performers. Save your money for better books. Even for 6$, you probably won't get any valuable information in this book, for which almost every illusion uses a very complicated setup with trapdoors in the floor, big wire rigs with pulleys passing under the stage, etc. Almost all the methods used would make no sense for today's stage conditions and anyway, today, we have hundreds of better methods to have better effects without all the trouble of those nonsense enormities. Usually, I like reading old illusion books to get inspired for new ideas, but to be honest, I didn't find anything inspiring in this book. Plus, the explanations in a very old English style are often hard to understand and the blurry illustrations, scanned in very low definition, are hard to decrypt and often times, it's even impossible to read the words, letters and numbers written on them. This is the second worst illusion book I have ever read, just to give you an idea of how bad it is...
Sawing Illusion Secrets
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Frederic Clement (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Tuesday 09 April, 2024)
A little quick booklet to give you a brief idea of many different techniques to cut someone in two. For 3 bucks, you have enough for your money but don't expect to have any details on how to build these illusions yourself. This is more like a decision maker document, so you can then investigate further on the methods somewhere else after you made your choice of method...
Tops Treasury of Illusions
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Frederic Clement (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Tuesday 09 April, 2024)
Wow! What a great and generous illusion book for inspiration! So many effects are explained in good detail, for a reasonable price! You will find at least 5 illusions that you will want to include in your show and tons of inspiration to create your own! Of course, this is an old book and of course, some material in there is outdated, but you have to read it as a history book, full of seeds for planting ideas in your mind that will grow in various directions! The best illusion book I found on Lybrary.com yet...
27 Illusions
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Frederic Clement (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Friday 05 April, 2024)
If you are looking for a good illusion book, this one is not for you. The project was surely original and cool for the architecture students, but these "illusions" have been totally thought by amateurs, in an amateur way, for amateurs. Most methods are so simplistic that anyone in the audience will figure them out immediately. But the worst is that all the pictures are about 1 inch by 1 inch and are blurry and taken from 75 feet away, so you can't see anything. And the plans are hard to understand without good explanations to come with them. If the price was set at $3, then, maybe it would deserve 2 stars, but at $20, it is a big waste of money!
Levitation Secrets
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Frederic Clement (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Wednesday 03 April, 2024)
Not too bad little compilation list to have in your repertoire, just to remind you all the possibilities you have in terms of levitations. However, I was disappointed to see how poor the texts and drawings are! Ok, the very low price partially compensates for the lack of any details and explanations. This booklet certainly won't help you to know how to build illusions yourself, but it is a good little notebook to serve as a decision maker, to choose what method you want before investigating yourself to find out how to build it yourself or where to buy it... Worth your 3$, but not a penny more!
Illusions Illusions
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Frederic Clement (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Wednesday 03 April, 2024)
A great compilation of Abbott's illusions plans that is a must for every professional illusionist. The instructions are easy to understand and the plans are clear and precise. The only downside is that many illusions in that book are marked as Abbott's property and creation, with absolutely no mention to the real creator: U. F. Grant. Many of them are even taken directly, without any changes, from Grant's books! Would it be possible for Abbott to correct that and to finally give credit to the creator?
Modern Levitations
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Frederic Clement (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Wednesday 03 April, 2024)
I give it only 3 stars, because I was expecting more effective levitation effects. In this book, I only found two. Super X levitation is a classic and here you will find a way to build it for a few bucks. Best Yet Levitation is a way of doing a levitation almost impromptu, without specialized equipment. There is also a floating table effect that is somewhat interesting, but other than those 3 effects, all the rest published in this book, which means the Parlor Ashra and the Miracle Suspension, is pure junk, or to stay polite, rather useless material!
Grant's Illusion Secrets
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Frederic Clement (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Tuesday 02 April, 2024)
A good little illusion book by a great Illusion creator, for a very cheap price! Highly recommended to produce a big scale show with a tight budget. However, if you are going to buy the Devon Knight's compilation called Grant's Lost Secrets, you don't have to buy this one, as most of the illusions of this book are in the other one.
U. F. Grant's Lost Illusion Secrets Revealed
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Frederic Clement (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Tuesday 02 April, 2024)
Very interesting compilation of illusions and documents written by U.F. Grant. Dozens of great illusions ideas and principles that can be adapted to fit your own show. This is a historical book, so you have to know in advance that some principles are outdated for today's reality. Also, a few illustrations are missing, mostly in the last section. However, you have to read it to get your own imagination stimulated to create your own stuff, and most of the illusions that don't have illustrations, you can figure out what it's supposed to look like. But still, many of the illusions in this book can be used as is, and they are near perfect as is! Even if you only use one of them in your show, it's gotta easily repay the price of the book. Talking about the price, it seems a little too pricy to me, compared to other books of that age, and of public domain. $20 or $25 would have been more appropriate. But that being said, I don't regret my purchase and I would buy it again knowing what I know now...
Four Told 2: Modern Symbol Edition
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Frederic Clement (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Saturday 30 March, 2024)
The psychology behind this mental feat is ingenuous and explained in great detail like Devin Knight is always doing well. The downsides are :
1. The relative complexity of all the techniques you have to remember and adjust, depending on the different possible situations are not for the beginner. You have to think fast and be alert and concentrated to do that kind of effect. If you are easily distracted and you have difficulties following a logical deduction reasoning, this is not for you.
2. This kind of effect is extremely difficult to practice in advance until you perform it on a real audience.
3. Someone wise could probably catch the method used rather easily. You are not asking questions, but telling people to do this or that depending on their choice may be perceived by many as tips for knowing who's thinking about what.
4. Limited choices to only 5 items, making less impressive than a book test or other, more diversified choice's mentalism number.
But despite those downfalls, it is as close to pure mentalism as you could get for starting a show, if you are experienced. It could be presented as a test to check who's good to transmit thoughts before going deeper into mentalism.
Overall, I highly recommend it to anyone fast minded who wants a pure-looking mentalism effect to start his show or for any performer who wants to improve his concentration in mentalism.
Victory Carton Illusions
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Frederic Clement (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Friday 29 March, 2024)
This book is a must for any amateur or professional magician or illusionist. It shows us how illusions don't have to be expensive to be impressive! These simple but effective illusions can be built in minutes, they cost a few bucks to build and they play as big as any $5000 illusions! Cardboard boxes look like usual stuff that people know and use in their everyday life, so they are more susceptible of being impressed if you can do something extraordinary with them than if you use fancy, suspicious boxes and specially built props that mean nothing to them. Cardboard boxes seem less possible to be tricked and I am sure that the impact on the audience could be better than many professionally built illusion props. Of course, if you want to have highly durable boxes, you can replace the cardboard with cheap plastic sheets with gaffer tape. I highly recommend this book!
Walking Through a Woman Illusion
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Frederic Clement (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Thursday 28 March, 2024)
Not too bad for the price. To me, the use of tables to hide the body looks a little fishy and too much hiding, but at the same time, this is what makes it feasible anywhere any time without any preparation, with chairs, foldable card tables and tablecloth or sheet that you can find almost anywhere.