The Veins of History
Bristol Cosplay Clubnights. A (Brief!?) Introduction.
As stated in numerous facebook groups, flyers and forums around the net, the Bristol Cosplay Clubnights, now dubbed the BCN (Bristol Cosplay Nights) by it's fans are small events based around getting together, showing off costumes, drinking and dancing the night away to J-Pop/J-Rock and Game soundtracks. It recently occurred to me that in my alcohol fuelled state that I like to ramble and I thought that it would be nice for you all to know just how these events started and what improvements we made over the year. So here goes....
Back in October 2007, some of the Bristol Animé Club where huddled in the living room of one Miss Donna Beaney somewhere in London, having spent the weekend enjoying the MCM Expo and Video Games Live. We where chatting about events that the club could do other than just our general meet ups in Forbidden Planet and then wander around Bristol for the day eventually ending up in a Whetherspoons. Sarah mentioned to me that Sascha had looked into various venues around Bristol for the purpose of screening animé, although when it came down to it it seemed like our primary choice of venue seemed better suited for a more night time dance event. That is how the now BCN's came to be. We decided there and then on the floor of that town house in London that we should have either three to four events a year, as pre-con celebrations and meet ups.
A few weeks passed and suddenly the ball got rolling. One club meeting Sascha and I gathered £20 off those willing to invest in the event as we needed a £100 deposit for the venue. The Cavern Club at the Crown in St Nick's Market seemed the ideal venue. It's usual gothic and alternative music nights had proved a success for the pub before and Gino, the Pub Manager was really interested in the idea as “you can't get much more alternative than Japanese music”. We also set about gathering a few bits and bobs for the event, things which I wouldn't have thought about until the the time we actually needed them. Thankfully I have an absolutely wonderful support staff, one which I hope will be willing to lend their skills to Nanicon, but that comes later in our story.
January 28th 2008 was our first event. The flyers, of which I still a ton of, had been circulating slowly via universities, bookshops and the Crown itself and I was assuring Gino that the night would go off without a hitch and we would make the quota for getting back our deposit. The morning of January 28th sill lingers in my mind as one of the quickest days in my short years. I woke up that morning on the sofa of my university course mates, after a heavy night of drinking. I remember stumbling out into the cold at around 11am and getting a bus to meet Homan Cheung. I met up with him in the centre and we went from shop to shop. We were looking for something to record the cosplayers for the competition and we thought a polaroid camera would do just the trick, so after a quick trip to the bank we got ourselves a till float and headed off in search of a camera. I although had some other issues to deal with that required me to head home, as I had all the music and having come straight from a friends house I needed to go retrieve them all. So I got home did the usual Triple S's as my Dad likes to call them and sat in front of my now defunct PC hurriedly copying music and installing the DJ software to a portable hard drive. This is were we had the first snag of the evening. It seemed that in our rush we neglected to print any posters and not having photoshop at the time meant that the file Sascha did send me still lies somewhere in my MSN folder unused and unloved but we had to press on as the sun had gone down, so I knew it was getting nearer to showtime.
I headed off into town, towards the crown, downed a pint of cider and black and two jägerbombs and suddenly I felt calm. You can't really imagine what it's like just before you open the doors to an event like this, or indeed any event unless you yourself have done it. There is a sense of dread and euphoria about the entire thing. You become emo, thinking that something will die, mess up and people will hate you and your event. Those are some scary thoughts to be going through your mind when your fuelled by jäger!
So this is the point where I write about the event but I don't want to. What I want to do is show you the event through the eyes of someone else. Someone who didn't know me or the BAC and had a jolly good time. So here is Tom Philip's review of the event...
“Aside from the Bristol Comic Con, my hometown of Bristol does not feature heavily in the anime calendar (well, the British premiere of Akira was held here but that was ages ago!) so it was a welcome change to attend an event which I didn't have to travel for over two hours to get to. The event in question was a party entitled Bristol Cosplay Night run by the Bristol Anime Club (BAC) and was held on 24th January 2008.
This would be a challenging event for BAC to run. Cosplay parties, which basically involve drinking and dancing in cosplay, only really occur at anime conventions since there is a guaranteed high number of anime fans at such events. This would not be the case with the Bristol Cosplay Night as only the core members of the BAC would be guaranteed to attend. To be successful, and break even, newcomers would have to attend the event.
Held in The Cavern Club, the basement of The Crown pub in Bristol, it was a good sized venue with a dancefloor, bar, seating and TVs screening anime. Everything was set for a good night. Being an anime event in my hometown I wanted to cover this and interview several attendees and conduct video vox pops. My aim was to do this in a serious journalist manner, keeping my composure whilst everyone around me was getting drunk. Then I started drinking Jagermeister - oops.
Fuelled by the rock tipple of choice I got into full party swing and chatting to cosplayers or just as, if not more so, drunk then I was. Talking to Scorpion & Sub-Zero after I had drunk a few whilst the theme from Transformers: The Movie was playing was a highlight of the night for me. Fans were getting together and having a great laugh, be they in cosplay or not. By the time the night was in full swing at least 30 people had shown up and everyone was enjoying themselves. With no teenage Narutards to worry about, no hardcore con-goers moaning that cosplayers weren't posing well enough for pictures and no overpriced drinks, there was nothing that could stop everyone's fun!
As far as I can remember the night was one of the best nights out in Bristol I have ever had (I think *rubs head*)! Although you could argue that dressing up is commonplace in city centres due to hen nights and charity events, the difference with Bristol Cosplay Night is a) the costumes were actually good and b) it was easy to chat to everyone who attended and just have a laugh. On top of that the music played was top-notch as well with latest themes such as Bleach, older ones such as Love Hina and even a bit of randomness with Streets Of Rage, there was music for everyone.”
I think that says enough but if you still want to know how I felt after the event I'll simply quote my livejournal for you...
“The night itself went fucking brilliantly. The event was held on a Thursday, and I decided to go to Propaganda the night before hand, so I woke up at Nick and Adam's “Pad”, stumbled out and met up with Homan to sort a cash float and grab some bits and bobs for the evening. After which I went home, got changed, had a poster design sent to my unsuccessfully (seriously stuff on the night never goes well.) and then headed to Bristol and then to the Crown. I talked to Gino, who owns the Crown and we set everything up downstairs and I got the rest of the club who where there for kick off to help set up the door, and a make shift poster while I made some last minute changes to the playlist.
We opened the doors at 9pm to let people down and it took a fair while to get everything in the swing of things. By around 11pm the place was packed and people were drinking and dancing and it was all fabulous.”
We were a success! That made me truly happy. I couldn't of done it without everyone's help and you know who you are. This event isn't mine, it's ours.
Over the course of a few weeks Homan and Myself where unsure how to proceed at this point. We where stuck for days on just when to pick the next date and then it hit us. May in the UK is home to some of the two busiest events for some. The International Bristol Comic Expo and the MCM Expo in London both take place in this month and we thought adding our event to this line up couldn't hurt surely? We had set in motion three weekends of fun. The Bristol Comic Expo was held on the 10th if memory serves me correctly and our event was slap bang in the middle of this and London Expo on the 24th. Friday the 16th of May was the return of the BCN.
The run up to this event was actually fairly easy going. We had no problems of any kind, and I turned up the to the Crown as I normally do on Friday nights. The problem was that nothing actually went wrong so I don't remember anything about this one in much detail...I really don't other than that I might have had to go to work on the Saturday morning. Maybe. Well time makes fools of us all so I'll just post the interview that Tom did with me after the event which has yet to see a write up.
What changes did you make to this cosplay night, compared to the first?
Absolutely nothing. There wasn't much that could be changed other than tweak a few more organisational issues, with the somewhat late delivery of flyers and the posters. So this time they went out earlier and were designed by very skilled hands. You don't change a winning team.
By moving it from a Thursday to a Friday, was the night more successful?
By looking at the amount of money taken at the door it was a huge success compared to the last one. Although we noticed that we had a few niggling problems with moving the day, while it allowed people to potentially stay later with the night-flyers it seemed we got a few drunks from upstairs. Although having said that a few of them thanked me for an interesting night, which I found rather amusing. A few days later I received a phone call from the manager of the Crown, and he congratulated me on our success and he wanted to see if we where interested in making it a monthly or bi-monthly thing, although I still believe once every three months or so is still a good game plan.
Did you see a lot of a new faces this time?
There where a large amount of people there I sure as hell didn't recognise and that makes it worth doing.
Is a third cosplay night planned?
We are indeed planning a third. On the night we announced we might hold another towards the end of August, and then a fourth in December. Details at this time are sketchy as after Amecon a majority of the BAC are off to Japan for a couple of weeks, so it might be pushed into September but I think aiming for four a year seems good so far.
You announced intentions to run your own con, Nanicon, in Bristol in future. What has been planned/confirmed so far?
So far, and bare in mind this is still early days, we've looked at various hotels in and around Bristol and at the moment we have our main committee and a vague idea of what events we want and what dates we are aiming for. At the moment we are aiming towards Mid-June 2010, and around a 350 to 400 attendees and a very good potential venue looks to be the Thistle Hotel. Although at the moment I can't confirm anything specific, more info will slowly come to light via the Nanicon Facebook group, Bristol Anime Club podcasts and announcements made at the next few Club Nights.
Any favourite moments from the cosplay night?
Personally I loved handing out the prizes to everyone, as I really like the idea of rewarding people for their hard efforts. Other moments would for me would just be Dj'ing, I love playing my favourite songs for people, whether its Dare by Stan Bush, Hitomi no Tsubasa by access or even Caramelldansen. Watching people dance and enjoy themselves to songs like that, as corny as it sounds, brings a tear of joy to my eye.
Who were the cosplay winners of the night?
We have 5 winners this time round, we had top two male, top two female, and since a few came in non-anime cosplay we decided to add the category of best non anime cosplay. Andrew Milford won best non-anime for his marvellous Dr.Who. David Gardner won second best male entry for his Ishida Uuryu. Leaving Antony Hall to win best male with his Vash The Stampede costume. For the female entries second prize went to Claire Haugh for her wonderful Reno from Final Fantasy 7 and first place went to Lucy Belle Guthrie for her daring Mink outfit from Dragon Half. All winners received prizes in the form of DVDs with the exception of the first prize winners who got a bit more aswell, Antony got a sonic plushie and some sexy Soul Calibur cards, and Lucy got a bag full of goodies too numerous to list.
We did try something new at the second BCN that deserves a write up but before I get to that I'm going to just list things off the top of my head about this one so here goes.
Two Battle Royale Students.
No Animé on the TV.
A Boob off.
Magical cider that would always appear near the DJ booth.
Free Jager.
Me covered in tinsel.
Video footage.
So other than what I am going to write about this is were I write about the live performances. Over time it occurred to Homan and Myself that the addition of live performances would lift the events slightly higher in the eyes of those attending, if only a a little. We had a Shinigami-Ky, Amy Lawn and now my boss if you can call a chairwoman that performed for us. Now unless my memory isn't serving me right then I've probably just gone and confused myself but I think that's what happened. What actually happened on the evening of the third cosplay night was that the microphone was hijacked by Amy, Kirsty and Lucy so they could sing along to Jonathan Coulton's Still Alive.
Now Nanicon, I'm going to mention it in passing here as I feel that the BCNs need stay separate from Nanicon. As I believe that the BCNs are quick, painless and hassle free unlike conventions and there is still room for improvement.