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Well by now I expect that Christmas and the New Year are just a dim and distant memory and you have all had a well deserved rest after performing at all those children’s and Christmas parties. So it’s back to business in this column.
After last month’s reviews of the balloon modelling videos you would have thought that there would be no more material to review. However we still have a new DVD that I didn’t have room to mention in last month’s column, so here goes.
It doesn’t seem like 7 months ago that Dirk Losander gave us an excellent lecture on the art of levitation. (2nd June 2006). We asked him for some notes on the lecture, but he said that he had not had time to write any. Instead he has now kindly presented to the Circle a copy of his DVD ‘The Art of Levitation 1 & 2’ which has been put into the library.
I have to say that I was disappointed with this DVD, having said that, anyone who is into levitation will find much to interest them here. Dirk covers nine effects in all as well as talking about lighting for presentation of the effects. Amongst the effects he covers are the Floating Bill, Paperball, Dancing Cane, Bubble Zombie, Jumping Card, Mystic Fork, Dancing Hanky and a whole section on Bubble magic. Most of this material he talked about in his lecture to the Circle last June. The reason I was disappointed was that whilst in person Dirk Losander is very interesting to listen to, I thought that on this DVD his presentation skills were somewhat lacking. The man is brilliant at his craft but has a very downbeat way of putting it across on video. Also all of the effects naturally rely on the use of his ultra thin elastic thread secured at one end to a static object on the stage. I would imagine that this would make it difficult to perform other effects. Anyway, don’t take my word for all this, why not borrow the DVD, (listed at $35 on Losander’s website by the way), and judge for yourself.
It may have occurred to some of our older members that next year (2008) is the Circle’s 60th anniversary. It all started from a small ad in the Telegraph and Argus on Saturday 23rd October 1948 calling for amateur magicians to contact Hassan Noor. Since then of course the Circle has been in continuous existence. Now this is where you the members come in. The committee would like to assemble an archive of video or film footage of members past and present performing or just attending meetings or outings run by the Circle. Almost any gauge is OK, standard 8mm, Super 8mm or 16mm all either sound or silent. I can convert most to video. The same applies to video tape or disk, although with video some of the older formats are no longer in existence but nevertheless let me have the old tape or DVD and we will give it a go. Between us we must have some old and interesting footage that was shot over the years. I already have one or two bits of video from the early nineties, but we must be able to go further back than that.
So come on, root around in the attic, turn out those old boxes and suitcases and let’s see what we come up with. It will be really interesting to be able to see what the Circle was like all those years ago.
Well that’s about it for this month and also for my first year as the librarian. I hope that you have enjoyed my odd scribbles and that you would like me to continue for another year.