John,

That video is not an EDITED version of the bonus trick, it's an edited version of the MAIN trick. If you had bought the trick you would understand what I mean. I've spoken to many people about the video, and they all understand why I had to edit the video.

The video is very CLEARLY labeled as EDITED. The button for the video is also labeled "PLAY VIDEO" NOT "PERFORMANCE VIDEO". It is used as a conditions list that is in a VIDEO format. It has Art Direction and music to be a NICE advertisement. That's all . . .

For a moment let me compare COSMOS to Dean and Michael's New World. If Dean had put up a demo video of New World, and people figured it out from that video, people would have STILL bought the trick.


Imagine if you could hit a PRINT button on your computer and GAFFED cards started coming out of your printer. You would NEVER buy Gaffed cards again! But we don't have that technology (yet).


COSMOS is 3 routines that you can do with any deck of cards. Hence I have to be careful about WHAT I show you in a video. Unless I decide not to do a video at all. But I don't want to do that because I think video is a great marketing tool. I'll use ANY marketing tool that I can.

take care,
Greg Rostami

Thanks all of you for a very interesting one hour read.

If I had all the time in the world I might be able t o go back and review the whole thread and make a point here and there. But that would only be interesting to individuals so I choose the route to PM people instead, for what it might be worth. But all in all I am very impressed with all of you, for your insights, for your dedication and most of all for your ability to stay civil in this discussion. For the last two pages I fully expected this thread to completely loose it, but it is still somehow on target so to speak. Special thanks to mr Rostami who is in the focus (although I know it is COSMOS that is in focus)

Anders

Greg,

When will it occur to you that you set yourself up for "less than expected " results, and record scrutiny, by your unprecedented hype/updates/etc. of this effect? Explanations and defensive answers do not sell tricks. The magic community will support a good effect and run away from a bad one. If Cosmos delivers, it will do well. If not, you are certainly not alone.

Best of luck. Let your audience, and time, run its course.

Well, I was sort of dissapointed, but I thought of it in a new light. if I'm working 1x1, then definately I'm going to use galaxy. but, if I'm using a borrowed deck, or have done other tricks and people "want to get in on the action" I'm going to use cosmos.

Oh yah, I think the principle in Cosmos is good, especially for someone like me who is new to that principle.

For those of you who have commented about the Ad Video I think I have a solution. I'm going to edit a NEW video that will say which version of COSMOS you are watching and it will say it's edited in the beginning AND the end of the video.

In fact the new video will have less cuts then the old one. I went back and looked at some of my editing decisions and they where purely for the TEXT that I wanted to put up. Since you think those TEXT edits are covering something up, I'm going to remove many of them.

all the best,
Greg Rostami

If the texts are important to you, perhaps you add them at the bottom of the video (you know, along the bottom margin).

Anyway, if you are redoing the demo video make sure to spell "actually" correctly this time

Hi Balducci,

Thanks for noticing the misspelling. I've already fixed it on the website. Now if I could only get high quality video to DownLoad through a standard modem!

I'm very happy to announce that RostamiMagic.com can now accept PayPal.

Sorry if that took a little while.


thanks,
Greg

Well, I just did it for some people and it was a real killer!! The one "sleight" if you wanna call it that it TOTALLY misdirected by calling for them to look at the black pile...pure astonishment...they charged me with the usual "you do that voodoo stuff" and I love it!
in my opinion I executed it perfect, after only 2 days of serious practice!

seriously, thanx again Grostami, and all the best for you!

Baba

Baba, are you using a bicycle deck?

So I've now tried Cosmos, for real people, during my restaurant act both yesterday and today. I used the gimmicked version, and it was the second of three effects I performed at most tables.

Cosmos plays very well for laymen as I would have expected. It fooled them badly. The reaction I found was at least as good as it is with any OOTW plot, and I found that your patter did justify why the deck was separated in the end. Also the idea of using two spectators did provide a lot of misdirection for the 'move' if you can call it that. While I'm quite bummed about not being able to do this with a non-gimmicked deck...let me rephrase that, while I do not believe the non-gimmicked version is deceptive or practical in a restaurant setting (a table shuffle just won't happen with food around), I do think that the gimmicked version does play quite well for laymen and does make the trick doable for walkaround. The best part is, when you perform it, you're then set for the regular OOTW!

I'm trying to give this effect a chance. Here's my bottom line for it, ultimately, it is a good version of OOTW, it's clean, and the gimmicked version does play very well for laymen (and magicians!). I'm not a fan of the ungimmicked version and still feel bad about the way the ungimmicked version was marketed for all the reasons I gave in an earlier post. The effect in itself really is not all that original with Greg and many of these ideas have been done before. The way he has combined them, however, does make for an routine that is fun to perform, does an excellent job of justifying the separation, and provides ample misdirection for the move at end of the effect (which I'd say is a great way to go about doing the move). Was it ultimately worth my 20 bucks? I don't really think so for what I got...am I disappointed with the effect? No. I do like the effect and had it been priced at about 10 bucks (like most other OOTW versions) I think it would have been well worth it.

Hopefully this helps people who are on the fence about buying this effect.

Thanks to everyone here for answering the bulk of my questions. Greg, even though your demo says edited, I was led to think it was an edited version of the OOTW/Cosmos effect on its own - not one of three effects. Maybe I'm confused here. I would say that if you mentioned that the video is an edit of ONE of the versions of your three effects, it would not seem so "misleading" to some. My only question is with the version using two people. If I'm performing walkaround magic, can I employ two people at random each time? And what is the big cheese about not using Bicycle cards? I use Fournier most of the time (the Spanish cards)? Maybe you can PM me about these questions? (Also, I only have Mac OS X!!!)

And if you're getting a lot of heat from everyone, don't take it personally, but market in a way so there would be no uproar. Everyone's fed up and has a gripe with misleading hype.

Hi Danny,

COSMOS has been designed to work with just about ANY deck of cards. I think some people have found that one part of the trick is just a little tiny bit harder with a Bicycle deck. I constantly do it with Bicycle cards without any problems.

As far as labeling the video is concerned . . . I am going to do a new EDITED advertisement video which will be more descriptive with much less edits.

thank you,
Greg Rostami

I think one of the main problems with what Greg has done, and don't get me wrong, I think the effect is great, is that he hasnt lied about his conditions, as they ARE all true, but he has written them in a random order, and not actually explained which conditions are for which trick. If the conditions had been broken down into serparate parts, I don't think all this comotion would have happened

Hi Chuds,

The conditions are for the first version of COSMOS (impromptu) on the video. They are also in chronological order of the performance of COSMOS.

take care,
Greg

Sorry, my post may have been misleading, I meant you should have put heading such as Cosmos, then stated its conditions, then Let it ride and puts its conditions Etc. People were expecting these conditions to be true for every version of Cosmos

Yes, I only use bikes...I almost made them into the gaffed version, but then I said there's no need...I don't see whats the problem with the ungaffed version...its supreme...

as an aside, I by no means mean to debase this strong routine, but just for "fun" last nite I grabbed a comrades deck and proceed to do a bit of "card calling"... as they were about to flip them over, I called "red" or "black" and purposely got a few wrong...it astounded them just the same...in other words, with Grostami's principle, there's much more that can and will be done!

Baba is the un-official Mascot/poster boy for COSMOS... after Breakthru, I thought I was thru with card stuff, but I am so joyful to know this mind boggler.

Baba

Greg, it seems the answer is just that simple. Why don't you just break up the conditions and put them in three seperate categories. Wouldn't that take care of everything? Wouldn't that shut people up? Wouldn't that be the rational fair way to describe the reality of what can and can't be done? Wouldn't that take no more than 5 minutes? If you truly do not wish to deceive, break up your conditions into three seperate groups. It's that simple.

Fellow Magis

Let me chime in here:

If you had read the original ad for OOTW back in 1948, by today's standards, it would be VERY misleading! Let's keep that in perspective. Any magic ad cannot disclose "everything" because there is always ONE weak point in any trick! If everything was disclosed, no-one would ever a buy anything in Magic. In summary, COSMOS is well worth the $20.00. I have merged COSMOS and Grant's version to create my one version!

Magically
Slydini62

Well said, and tis the bottom line....