Derren Brown - SPOILER DO NOT READ!!!

--amadeus-- · 02-10-2009 9:01pm #1

Here be spoilers

If you haven't watched yet please don't read

--amadeus-- · 02-10-2009 9:02pm

Wow - seriously wasn't expecting that. I had suspected a fake casino based on how small and quiet it was but the result kind of shows that it must have been genuine.

Any thoughts?

Firewalkwithme · 02-10-2009 9:05pm

Thoughts, yeah I've got one.

The house always wins.

OK-Cancel-Apply · 02-10-2009 9:08pm

He took bulls**t to a whole new level tonight.

Busi_Girl08 · 02-10-2009 9:08pm

So what do we think? Is his career over?

I hope not though, there is a lot of proof that he can be amazing, but maybe he bit off more than he could chew this time round?

The hypnosis bit was pretty cool though :pac:

TanG411 · 02-10-2009 9:08pm

Woah!

Now that was unexpected. At least it shows he's human and can make an error. Fair play to him for being one away

F-Stop · 02-10-2009 9:09pm

It was intentional I reckon. The internet is going to be on fire talking about his 'failure'. It's more misdirection. Or else he knew the risk and knew that he couldn't lose. It's a headwrecker.

--amadeus-- · 02-10-2009 9:26pm

Yeah, the more I think about it his reaction was a bit weird.

"Ohhh, 1 out"

You'd think if he really had just bombed live on national TV his reaction might have been a touch stronger. And from where he was standing he could really only bet on 1 - 12, he couldn't have reached 30 from where he was standing. And 1 out is plausible for a mathematical calculation.

Could it have been a set-up or are we giving him too much credit?

hairyfairy00 · 02-10-2009 9:27pm

I work in a casino and there is no way he could have done it. It is possible to 'predict' what section the ball will drop in but not the number. I agree with F-Stop it had to be intentional.

zuroph · 02-10-2009 10:22pm

legendary ending! Jealous of him now!

Penn · 02-10-2009 10:40pm

When the camera was zooming out at the end as the credits rolled, did anyone else expect to see the number 30 on the back of one of the trucks? I thought there had to be more to it. But no. It looks like he actually just got it wrong

zuroph · 02-10-2009 10:41pm

paddyirishman85 wrote: »

When the camera was zooming out at the end as the credits rolled, did anyone else expect to see the number 30 on the back of one of the trucks? I thought there had to be more to it. But no. It looks like he actually just got it wrong

highlighted the key phrase here

--amadeus-- · 02-10-2009 11:25pm

Interesting photo

oeb · 03-10-2009 10:34am

As a friend of mine on facebook mentioned, Ian Rowland the author of a fantastic book on cold reading said: "A near miss is often more impressive than a hit"

--amadeus-- · 03-10-2009 11:45am

Brown says the same thing himself in one of his books - he suggests getting the first couple of attempts wrong with a difficult trick as this helps people subconsciously relax making the actual stunt easier as well as making your ultimate success more impressive. It's also something he does on stage along with it's counter tactic of performing a stunt and then - again when everyone has relaxed - revealing layer after layer of more impressive tricks.

fulhamfanincork · 03-10-2009 11:58am

So do we think it was fake then?

Personally I love him and find him very entertaining. Been watching him and all his episodes on channel 4 on demand. quality.

zuroph · 03-10-2009 12:47pm

fulhamfanincork wrote: »

So do we think it was fake then?

Personally I love him and find him very entertaining. Been watching him and all his episodes on channel 4 on demand. quality.

Put it this way, derren does EVERYTHING deliberately.

TheMorningLine · 13-10-2009 7:15pm

Someone as cocky as him needs reminding. Rather happy with it

oeb · 14-10-2009 7:08am

TheMorningLine wrote: »

Someone as cocky as him needs reminding. Rather happy with it

There are very few magicians who can successfully pull off the nervous or bumbling magician act.

Appearing confident is often the key to success with a magicians routine especially mentalism.

You might find that he is not cocky at all, but his persona is.

Busi_Girl08 · 14-10-2009 11:14am

One of the main things I like about him as a performer and as a person really is how he isn't afraid to show when he gets it wrong.

I've been watching his "Tricks of the Mind" series on C4 lately, and at the end of nearly every ep. he has a little "outtake", where the trick doesn't work on someone.

If he were as cocky as people say he was, then these events would never have been seen and he would have gone round acting like he could do no wrong.

Also it is funny to see his reaction when it doesn't work

Fuzzy Clam · 17-10-2009 11:13pm

Busi_Girl08 wrote: »

One of the main things I like about him as a performer and as a person really is how he isn't afraid to show when he gets it wrong.

Or maybe thats exactly what he whats you to think;)

AARRRGH · 19-10-2009 5:54pm

Everything Darren Brown does is fake. No doubt Ben is an actor, and the casino was a studio at Channel 4, etc.

oeb · 19-10-2009 6:59pm

AARRRGH wrote: »

Everything Darren Brown does is fake. No doubt Ben is an actor, and the casino was a studio at Channel 4, etc.

I most certainly would not make a claim like that without something to back it up ....

zuroph · 19-10-2009 7:04pm

its much easier for ben NOT to be an actor, but a genuine subject. The casino, yeah, that was spoofed, but Ben, I believe he was real.

AARRRGH · 20-10-2009 10:49pm

oeb wrote: »

I most certainly would not make a claim like that without something to back it up ....

The Guardian did an expose on Derren before. Basically, everything is fake. Google for it if you want.

oeb · 20-10-2009 11:21pm

AARRRGH wrote: »

The Guardian did an expose on Derren before. Basically, everything is fake. Google for it if you want.

Of course it is fake. Us magicians can not really read peoples minds, or change a card to another card with mystical powers, or actually predict the lotto.

I am referring to your claims that he used a stooge and a set. Magicians, in the large, avoid that kind of trickery because it destroys all credibility. Any second year multimedia student can edit a video shot to remove the lady from the frame as she walks out of the box, but yet it's magicians who get the jobs doing magic shows, even though a multimedia student and a drama student could probably put together just as convincing a magic show.

People like to be deceived, the reason most magicians are so against exposure is because finding out how a trick is done essentially removes all mystique from it. The formally extra-ordinary becomes ordinary. If a magician is 100% caught out using camera tricks or a stooge, then their career is almost irreparably damaged. People will stop watching the shows if they know how it's done, so you will no longer be able to sell your work to the TV stations. It's simply not worth it.

Now, the lotto trick that the guardian 'exposed', could he have done it with camera trickery? Sure. I have read claims that that is how he did it. I have also read claims that he had a printer embedded in the stand, I have read claims that he did it with more traditional magicians methods, hell, I have read claims that he is in-fact the bastard offspring of a demon with bona-fide magical abilities. Lotto predictions are old hat, traditionally magicians use the locked box method (Where the prediction is removed from a locked case that has been in full view through the act, or in a visible place for weeks etc, Derren is just presenting an old effect in a new and visual way.

I am nearly willing to bet, that sooner rather than later someone will end up working the circuit reproducing Derren's method of the lotto prediction on a live stage.

I have had discussions with other magicians about the effect, trying to work it out and we came up with more than one possible way of doing it (without involving camera tricks)

zuroph · 20-10-2009 11:25pm

Id be fairly sure he did use a camera trick in the lotto effect, but it is possible without it, I was almost sure it was via another method before then. My theory is that the camera effect was used as part of a much larger effect, that being the build up to the final show; Derren was grooming his volunteers to find the most suggestable.

The hypnotised Ben though, there was no need to stooge him, he was a simple candidate, and its much easier and cleaner to actually do it, because then you dont have to worry about him exposing, someone he knows saying hes an actor etc..

OK-Cancel-Apply · 21-10-2009 10:45am

zuroph wrote: »

Id be fairly sure he did use a camera trick in the lotto effect, but it is possible without it, I was almost sure it was via another method before then. My theory is that the camera effect was used as part of a much larger effect, that being the build up to the final show; Derren was grooming his volunteers to find the most suggestable.

The hypnotised Ben though, there was no need to stooge him, he was a simple candidate, and its much easier and cleaner to actually do it, because then you dont have to worry about him exposing, someone he knows saying hes an actor etc..

Why would Derren have needed suggestable volunteers for the lotto if nothing they did made any difference? I'm sure any group of people would have gone along with the experiment. And what other method could Derren have used (i.e. non camera trick method)?

As for Ben - would Derren really bank on him being home and watching the show? He said he had 'influenced' him to do so, but would Channel 4 really stake a whole live show on this one guy being home and being up for it? What if he had gotten a call from a mate to go to the pub, or was in the kitchen making food, or had to go out for some unforseen reason or simply decided to watch something else? To be honest, if this had been a movie plot, I wouldn't have bought it and probably would have switched it off!

AARRRGH · 21-10-2009 12:01pm

zuroph wrote: »

The hypnotised Ben though, there was no need to stooge him, he was a simple candidate, and its much easier and cleaner to actually do it, because then you dont have to worry about him exposing, someone he knows saying hes an actor etc..

Just think about it for a second.

Derren stole £5,000 from Ben.

No TV show will break the law like that.

oeb · 21-10-2009 12:20pm

OK-Cancel-Apply wrote: »

Why would Derren have needed suggestable volunteers for the lotto if nothing they did made any difference? I'm sure any group of people would have gone along with the experiment. And what other method could Derren have used (i.e. non camera trick method)?

There is more than one way to accomplish it, but you won't find it discussed here, firstly, discussion of methods is against the charter here, secondly, if you want to know how to do it, put in the work and learn the trade like we did.

OK-Cancel-Apply wrote: »

As for Ben - would Derren really bank on him being home and watching the show? He said he had 'influenced' him to do so, but would Channel 4 really stake a whole live show on this one guy being home and being up for it? What if he had gotten a call from a mate to go to the pub, or was in the kitchen making food, or had to go out for some unforseen reason or simply decided to watch something else? To be honest, if this had been a movie plot, I wouldn't have bought it and probably would have switched it off!

I did not watch the show, but I was under the impression that he hypnotised someone off the street?

AARRRGH wrote: »

Just think about it for a second.

Derren stole £5,000 from Ben.

No TV show will break the law like that.

Derren made it appear that he stole £5,000 from Ben, there are plenty of ways to offset this, the most simple being "Here is your money back" 5 min later.

It's smoke and mirrors, you can not predict lotto numbers, you can not predict how a roulette wheel will end up. These abilities simply do not exist! However you CAN make it appear as if you have these abilities.

Your claim was that he used actors, and your claim that the casino was all a stage. That is what I am disputing(That can be a very damaging claim to a magicians name, imagine it as being similar to accusing a garage of clocking cars), NOT that it is trickery (for feck sake, I'm a magician myself, I know how he does half the things he does)

zuroph · 21-10-2009 4:37pm

OK-Cancel-Apply wrote: »

Why would Derren have needed suggestable volunteers for the lotto if nothing they did made any difference? I'm sure any group of people would have gone along with the experiment. And what other method could Derren have used (i.e. non camera trick method)?

As for Ben - would Derren really bank on him being home and watching the show? He said he had 'influenced' him to do so, but would Channel 4 really stake a whole live show on this one guy being home and being up for it? What if he had gotten a call from a mate to go to the pub, or was in the kitchen making food, or had to go out for some unforseen reason or simply decided to watch something else? To be honest, if this had been a movie plot, I wouldn't have bought it and probably would have switched it off!

The suggestability was testing the volunteers he had for the casino show over the course of the 3 previous weeks to find a good subject.

banking on him being home, yes, thats fairly easy to ensure via hypnotism. Im sure there was a contingency plan in place and possibly a second person set up to go if the first one fell through for some emergency.

As for stealing money, no, he didnt. He made it appear that he did. All he did was hypnotise Ben to go to a building and return with an envelope in hand.

Derren Brown - SPOILER DO NOT READ!!!

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