Hey everybody, welcome back to Magic Orthodoxy. My name is David and this is a Magic Review. Hey, today we're going to look at the Matrix Pad from Richard Griffin. What is the Matrix Pad? Well, it's kind of like it sounds. It's a new take on the classic Matrix trick. Now, the Matrix trick is usually done with coins. Sometimes it's quarter, sometimes it's half dollars. They start in four corners and under the cover of slide of hand and just magical gestures, the coins typically move from the corners down to one centralized location. Now, what Richard Griffin has done is he's taken that theme of the Matrix and he's transported it into using a posted notepad and a Sharpie marker just by merely drawing dots on the page. You want to see what it looks like? This is it. This is the Matrix Pad. I'm going to use this pad and also a Sharpie. I'm going to draw a little spot up here in the corner that makes one spot just there and draw another spot up here in this corner just here. That makes two. One more down here to make three and one more over here to make four spots. We get rid of the pen and I'm going to show you something rather unusual. If we take one of the spots, give it a little rub. I can actually drag it to join this spot down here in the corner. One more time, this spot over here, a little rub. I can drag it, join the other two in the corner there. The last one is the most difficult one to do. Just takes a little rub. Well, I did say it's the most difficult one to do. Watch a little rub. Let me drag it, join the other three just there. You can peel this off and you can keep that as a souvenir. All right, so that was Richard Griffin. If you don't remember, Richard Griffin did the slingshot. He did nosy volunteers. He did the comedy microphone. He does a lot of stage magic. Now, Richard said that he drew inspiration from this effect from the coin matrix, like we said before, and cardiographic. Now, to me, on the first take, on the first look at this, it looked a lot to me like Dugcon's pip trip where you actually take a spade card like four spades and you move the spades through magic from the corners down to one location. It's similar to that. It is a similar plot because it is the matrix trick. This was published by RG Magic Presents, so it's self-published. What I liked about it, what I liked is it's a nice, portable, seemingly easy to do modern rendition of the classic matrix effect. It has a very fresh take and I think a lot of people will like this. All right, so a couple of questions we always ask about our magic products when we do a review. The first of which is what's in the box? Hey, what's in the box? You get a paper, cover, title sheet. It's all put into a plastic ziploc bag. You're getting a DVD and you're getting two post-it notepads. One pad is gimmicked. It's one, one is gimmick and the other one is a refill. And of course, as long as you can buy post-it notepads, yellow post-it notepads, you always have refills available to you. And you're also getting your unnamed, unnamed gimmicked device that kind of makes it all work. Is it what I thought? It's exactly what I thought. When I saw this the first time in the commercial, in my head, I was thinking I would do this with blank and when I got it in the mail, that's exactly what it used. And so maybe if you have kind of like an idea of maybe how it works, that's how it works. I'm not going to give it away, of course, but yeah, what I assumed it was, it was. How are the angles on this? The angles are okay. It is an angle-sensitive trick. It is an angle-sensitive trick. And there's a little bit of deception in the commercial. Now in the commercial, the commercial is different than the video I gave you. I showed you the trick, actually how it plays out for a spectator. In the commercial, it does show Richard draw the top two dots. Now in the actual presentation, you can't show that. And so I just want to make sure that's made plain because that was a little deceptive on the part of the commercial. That's actually not part of the trick. And so I just want to put that out there and say that that's not in the trick. You can't show the deriding of all four dots. Can it be inspected? No, it can't be inspected. It is a gimmick. It's a gimmick pad. And so whereas somebody probably could hold it or see it on a table, maybe pick it up and maybe under just a really fast examination, they wouldn't see the gimmick. I mean, it's possible. But I would think under a really close inspection, it would be very obvious. All right. So what's the overall quality and production value of the instructional material? You're getting a DVD. It's about 33 minutes long production value. It's a little on the lower side. It's kind of shot like how I kind of shoot my videos. It's a white backdrop. There's no microphones. So it's a little echoey. It's all done with one camera shot, probably a camera mounted on a tripod. So you're not getting any extra angles. So it's done on a little bit of the lower scale from what a lot of us are probably more familiar with now with the higher end production values. So it's just a little bit on the lower end. Hey, is it well made? I think it's as well made as you can make it. I've heard some magicians complain that they don't feel like the trick has enough horsepower. I'm using somebody else's words that somebody else's critical words. I disagree. I think if you try to re-engineer this and try to make it better, you're actually going to make it incorrectly. What Richard has done is he's taken the subtleness of this and the delicacy of this. This is a very delicate trick. It is a delicate trick and it doesn't need more power to it. And so I just think it takes some finesse and takes some practice. And I think with a little practice, you could make this a modern miracle in your hands as well. All right. So how much practice does it require? Not much. The routine itself is pretty easy. If you're already familiar with a standard matrix routine, you got it down. There's just, you know, how you start and how you end. I do think you need to perform it in a calm and controlled environment. I think a parlor situation would probably work the best. I think maybe wearing a jacket and doing some light walk around would probably work the best. So just for as far as practice wise, I think performance area and practice, they kind of go hand in hand. Like I said earlier, this is a delicate trick. How much setup and reset is there? It does take some time. Setup and reset does take some time. It's not instantaneous. It would take just a little bit of reset before you would do it again. I would probably only do this effect once per night, but that's just me. You might be a more skilled magician. I think probably the more you practice with it and the more you play with it, the better at it you can become. Richard certainly says that he does this as a part of his walk around routine. Personally though, I would probably save this as kind of like an ending routine or an ending effect to a routine. And so like I said, yeah, the setup and reset on it is a little cumbersome. All right. So some positives. Positives for this. It's very visual, hyper visual. Like I said earlier, I think it'd be a great ending to a magical routine and it certainly does kind of punch up the typical coin matrix into a whole new realm. All right. So some negatives. Like we always say right here, there's negatives to everything. These are just the negatives that I've seen. They don't have to be the negatives that you see at all. Negatives, it's not really very transportable. Again, I'm going to say this, it's a very delicate trick. And what I mean by that is the materials are delicate.  I wouldn't keep it all bundled together with a deck of cards and a pen and some other stuff. It kind of has to be isolated by itself. It's probably not going to be the best for you if you're kind of like a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy. Again, I think if you're wearing a jacket, you're wearing a dinner jacket, and you have a nice big wide pocket to keep this in, I think that's really going to be the best. Richard does offer some tips on walk around and maybe wearing jeans. But I don't think those tips are very practical. I don't think they could be used in the real world, but that's just me. So I wouldn't really recommend this for street magicians or people that are a little bit more spontaneous. Like I said, I think it's best for jacket magic. And yeah, that's just my negative. All right, so is it with your money? It's $30. It's a $30 gimmick that uses post-it notes and a Sharpie marker, and you're not even getting a Sharpie marker. You're just getting the post-it notes and the gimmick and the DVD. $30 for the gimmick and 30-minute DVD. And like I said, it's really tailored to a specific type of person. I think more so a parlor magician or a stage magician, somebody that is probably going to do this effect once. And like a lot of Richard's other effects, it's really more towards the working professional. And so I think this is kind of on the higher end for what you're getting, but you'll have to be the best judge for that. All right, so who would like this? Who would like this? Jacket-wearing magicians. People who are looking for a matrix style effect, but they're really not into coin magic, I think would definitely like the Matrix pad. All right, so that's my review. Matrix pad by Richard Griffin. And if you'd like to pick up your own, you can find it in one of your favorite Murphy's Magic suppliers. Thanks, bye.