Next Meetup: Wednesday 5th December

Next week we are reverting back to Wednesday Night for the magic teaching sessions. Come along from 7:30pm to Illusions Magic Bar to learn some new magic! Summary notes will be posted on the Teaching page as usual after the night.

See you then!

Next Meetup – Tuesday 27th November

So if you were scared away from magic soc last week by the prospect of standing in front of a crowd of slightly intoxicated lay-people, trying to baffle them with fiddly double lifts and top changes whilst attempting to maintain the aura of a showman, fear not – this week we are reverting back to a regular magic teaching session.

We are meeting on Tuesday (tomorrow) the 27th November, at Illusions Magic Bar, from 7:30pm. We look forward to seeing you all again, and showing you some cool stuff =D

Performance Feedback

During our last meeting, our treasurer, Doug Tilston, made a series of notes whilst watching everyone perform; these were not related to the technical aspect of performing, but rather the audience interaction and overall presentation. He has written a few words on each of the comments he had, which are given below:

Firstly let me say how impressed Conor, Andrew and I were with what we saw: though we hate to admit it, we never started out that relaxed on stage! However, after years of performing and being given advice around the subject, there seems to be a set of unspoken rules – it is these I will briefly go over.

1. Be original. It doesn’t matter if it’s original handling or original wording, being unique makes you not only hireable but also far more memorable. This is one of the key qualities required to be a successful magician.
2. Smile when performing: you may feel nervous as hell but if you don’t look like you’re enjoying yourself then there’s little likelihood the audience will enjoy watching you either!
3. If you’re performing to a large group of people and there is background noise, make sure you project your voice so that everyone can hear you and will feel involved.
4. Make sure that you give everyone eye contact: don’t just stare at your hands. I know it’s hard to present this image of openness when we are desperately trying to get that double lift, but it makes a huge difference to the perceived fairness and provides tonnes of misdirection too!
5. Eliminate “dead time”: the moments when you are doing something that is necessary to the effect, yet nothing is really happening. For example, shuffling the cards but not talking or moving the routine forwards in any other way. The easiest way to avoid this is to script what you’re going to say, but generally you just get better at filling in the time the more that you have performed.
6. Try to relax: it will make you slow down your presentation and relax the audience, making them more amiable towards yourself.
7. Make sure that you ask for the spectators’ names (and use them) when they are participating in the effect, and treat them politely. It’s true that if an audience like you then they’ll like your magic, and vice-versa!
8. Sooner or later a trick will go wrong – it is inevitable. All you can try to do is prepare for what might happen: think through all potential reasons a trick might go wrong and work out what you could do to change/rescue the trick.
9. Start and end the performance clearly: begin by introducing yourself to the audience; end by thanking them for watching, even if for no other reason than making it clear that you have finished.

I hope you found these notes useful and enjoyed your taste of performing – we look forward to seeing you all up there many more times this year!

Performance Night

Congratulations to everyone who performed last night – it was great fun, and we saw some impressive stuff! All of us in the committee were very impressed with how much you guys have learnt, and how willing you all were to throw yourself into performing at Illusions. We snapped a few photos and videos for you to enjoy – check them out.

Congratulations to Sam Evans – our independent judges decided to award him the prize of a pint, but it was a tough decision! We hope to run more of these performance nights in the future; we can only speculate on what future prizes will be… 😉

Performance Week

Hi all-

We are meeting next Wednesday (21st November) at Illusions Magic Bar from 7:30pm. This week it will be a performance night! We are going to encourage you to have a go at performing something behind the magic bar. It doesn’t have to be long, and don’t worry – we’ll be nice! But performing in difficult environments is the best way to learn and progress quickly.

If you are worried you can’t remember any of the tricks: from now, we will start writing up what we teach. These will be summary notes only: just enough to jog your memory if you forget a particular part of the method. These will all be posted on the Teaching page (see above).

Hope to see you all there!

Magic Soc

Affiliation Success

Good news! We just got word that the University of Bristol Students’ Union has decided to affiliate our society with the union. This means we will soon become an official UBU society, will be able to start booking University and Union rooms, and will start managing memberships through the Union system. We will start migrating all current members onto the official database ASAP.

Come along tonight, Wednesday 14th November, to Illusions Magic Bar at 7:30pm and have a celebratory drink with us! We will, of course, teach you some magic too.

Adios,
Magic Soc

Wednesday Night Magic

Hi all,

We are meeting this Wednesday 7th November, at Illusions, at 7:30pm. We will be trying to focus a little bit on magic without cards (but of course – bring them along anyway!).

As always – even if you’ve never been along before, come along and you can sign up on the night.

See you then!

Bristol Tab promotes Magic Soc

Thanks to the guys at the Bristol Tab for spreading the word about Magic Soc in their piece about our president.

We’re seeing a bunch more views coming straight from the Tab website.

Details of next week’s meetup will be available soon, and we will also have some exciting news about our affiliation with the UBU in the next few days…