Daniel Love – Dream signs
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"Dream Signs is an effect where you ask the participant to think of his or her star sign. You then proceed to name it. Quick, Simple and impromptu. This routine does not use progressive anagrams. You never ask him any questions. You do ask him to think of his or her sign and how it relates to other circumstances, but the spectator never utters a single word. Everything is based on a clever psychological subtlety. "
Ease of use: Once learnt very effective, but not for the inexperienced. I've been doing cold reading and psychological effects for many years, so I'd probably suggest this is for those with more of an interest in psychological mentalism.
Value for money: Hard to put a value on an ebook, but I've got a lot of millage out of this one. Definitely a great truely impromptu piece, no need for gimmicks or to carry anything around.
Positives: true impromptu effect, looks like real mind reading, does exactly what it says on the tin.
Negatives: requires effort and practice (mostly memory) on the part of the performer. Once this hurdle is overcome, it is fantastic. But do heed my words, its not an "out of the box" effect.
Rating: 9/10
Just thought I'd share my opinions on this effect as I've recently rediscovered my love for Mentalism and started performing outside of shows in impromptu situations, which has required me to rekindle some of the impromptu effects I'd not used for a while. Dream Signs was one of these. Anyway onto the review:
I bought this after hearing glowing reviews on other forums, from people I've got a lot of respect for (such as Craig Browning). decided to give it a chance as it's not expensive and the effect sounded clean.
The book itself is clear and to the point, there are a few typos (I notice these things) but what you would expect from most ebooks. Certainly dosn't distract from the content.
The effect, for a change, does play exactly as described in the advert.
You can literally walk up to a stranger, and without them uttering a word, you can know thier starsign within a few moments.
However, this is not an effect for the faint hearted. It requires practice, skill and learning. You're not going to read this once and instantly walk out and perform it. Yet the idea is clean and simple, and is very much worth the little effort it requries to memorise. It is one of the few truely psychology based methods available, and as such it requires a certain level of intelligence and understanding on the part of the performer.
In reality, if you commit yourself to learning this effect and have a reasonable memory and decent people skills, you'll be ready to perform this within a week of practice. What is also rather nice about Dream Signs is that as you develop with it, you also learn a whole lot about cold reading that is incredibly valuable in almost all other areas of Mentalism.
The principle behind the effect is very devious and clever. It's similar in some ways to a progressive anagram (which I've never been fond of), yet unlike a progressive anagram this feels much less mechanical or forced. If it had been a PA I'd have been ****ed off, but in reality I was very happy to discover a whole new concept.
I've used the basic concept myself and applied it to ideas other than StarSigns, and that is the true value of the manuscript. It's not one effect, its a way of thinking about mentalism. It's a simple idea, on the surface, but is incredibly deep the more you put your mind to it.
This is almost certainly not for everyone. Those who are used to effects that "do themselves" without any knowledge or understanding from the perfomers end, should steer clear. Those with an interest in psychology, nlp, bodylanguage and "Derren Brown" style mind reading, will probably love it, as I did.
The ebook itself is well presented, as much as they can be.
All in all, I'd give it a 9 out of 10.
