X-Marks The Spot vs Toony Angel & Cardtoon DVD

I am legally Deaf and therefore cannot hear what is being said,and since no Magic DVD on the market has Subtitles or Closed-Captioning I have to rely on Visual Demonstration.

Both effects on these two DVDs have great potential and the Magicians Justin Miller and Dan Harlan are FANTASTIC, but are they good at explaining things visually?

Toony Angel & Cardtoon - Dan Harlan is excellent with his visual demonstration, so I had no problems understanding the purpose of each move and how to perform them. So Dan Harlan gets an A+ for excellent Visual Demonstration.

X-Marks the Spot - Justin Miller did about an average job with his visual demonstration. In the Set-up explanation he had a pile of cards over here and another pile of cards over there, and it was a challenge trying to figure out what each pile of cards were all about. He does show the cards of both piles, but way to quick to the point where is dialog took over. He spent more time with his dialog and paid less attention to the props in his hands. It was like he cared more about what he was saying and did not care much about the props in his hands. With whatever experience I have with Magic I was eventually able to figure out what was going on, but if a deaf person who was new to magic they probably have a difficult time figuring out what was going on and not know what kind of cards Justin Miller uses. I give Justin Miller a C- for Visual Demenstration.

If you people are going to produce a Magic DVD and not provide Subtitles/Closed-Captioning at least you could do is provide good Visual Demonstration.

Magicians just love to talk talk and talk. I don't care for any of that since you are not providing Subtitles/Closed-Captioning, it's not worth it at all, therefore what is more important about Magic is VISUAL DEMONSTRATION. For the deaf community visual expression is an Art Forum, and in the Hearing Community verbal communication is an Art Forum. Hearing Magicians ought to go to Washington D.C. and visit Gallaudet University the only Libral Arts College for the deaf in the entire world. Hearing people could learn a ton of stuff about Visual Demonstration from the Deaf Community! Hey, go to Gallaudet and perform without an interpreter and see how far you get.

In Charlie Chaplain's silent films there was a deaf actor, Redmond Granville, who helped Charlie Chaplain with his acting. If it were not for a deaf actor such as Redmond Granville, would Charlie be as successful as he was?

I just discovered something today, BAUER is a Magical DVD that has English Subtitles. I am in a state of SHOCK!.

Maybe there needs to be a list somewhere that has Subtitled DVDs.

Now all I have to do is save up some money to buy BAUER.

Smiling
Keith

This is an excellent idea. My parents were both seriously hearing impaired. Dad never used the closed-captioning feature of his cable setup. It would have been very good for those around him.

We don't pay enough attention to our fellow magicians who are deaf. This should be remedied.

Anyone up to sending a letter to L&L, Murphy's or any of the other producers of DVD's?

Madkiki,
What an excellent idea. I will talk to Kozmo about this for upcoming dvd releases. Thank you for the pointers.


Justin N. Miller