Derren Brown ?

[bigTee]

Of course they are all tricks.

But the ‘magic’ isn’t the trick. It’s how he performs it.

The guy is a very clever (genius even) performer who is the best at what he does.

[Famous Graham]

I think it was Chris Brookmyre who wrote a book that included someone performing the "pick an audience member and know all about their life" thing. I don't have it to hand, but as I recall, it was definitely a case of researching particular individuals beforehand and then staging the selection of the "right" people during the show. Ignorant/innocent stooges, essentially.

Edited by Famous Graham on Wednesday 14th January 10:34

[lawrence567]

Pharoah said:

I think the table moving was done by magnets. The tables were specially made with metal cores and a magnet used under the stage to move them / levitate them. I have some magnetic magic 'tricks' at home including a magnetised wedding ring that can pick up / move cutlery asnd stop watches...

That's the only thing i could think of it could be!

I watched one of his show's on TV a while back & he drove 3 people round in a taxi on a specific route that had random objects, people on them, he'd also say words like "rabbit" or something in a sentence, he'd then get them to draw a picture & he'd "guess" what they'd drawn.

I've found i can influence people's choices when playing rock paper scissors & i usually win the first hand everytime.
Nothing special but it's not difficult!

[Garlick]

trackdemon said:

Yadda yadda yadda..... all I want know is what with the facial tick thing? Is that a genuine affectation or is it another part of his stage persona designed to reinforce that he is somewhat different to us all? I thought the show was great FWIW

He 'nodded' throughout the show we watched too, so much it was all you noticed at times.

[superkartracer]

trackdemon said:

Yadda yadda yadda..... all I want know is what with the facial tick thing? Is that a genuine affectation or is it another part of his stage persona designed to reinforce that he is somewhat different to us all? I thought the show was great FWIW

The nod is a method used to push info - NLP technique, by nodding the head the other person has more chance of agreeing with. Our CEO does this often when asking/telling you to help with a task and it works.

[JBL930]

Garlick said:

trackdemon said:

Yadda yadda yadda..... all I want know is what with the facial tick thing? Is that a genuine affectation or is it another part of his stage persona designed to reinforce that he is somewhat different to us all? I thought the show was great FWIW

He 'nodded' throughout the show we watched too, so much it was all you noticed at times.

He did it allthe way through an interview with Richard Dawkins, not as pronounced as he was on stage but i think it's a natural thing, like Gordon Browns jaw dropping weirdness

[parakitaMol.]

More annoying than the bd love child of Jim Carrey and Robin Williams.

[Famous Graham]

"Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks" was the Brookmyre book, I've just remembered.

[ytrebil]

This thread goes to prove how fking stupid some people are.

Use your common sense.

[bobbylondonuk]

Its all trickery....but the brilliance of Darren Brown is that he keeps us guessing on how he does it!!!

The gorilla trick is easy and expected...especially as he wanted us to keep a look out and did the trick again...Something to make us excited in a 'got that trick..easy' kind of way.

[Oakey]

Pharoah said:

I think the table moving was done by magnets. The tables were specially made with metal cores and a magnet used under the stage to move them / levitate them. I have some magnetic magic 'tricks' at home including a magnetised wedding ring that can pick up / move cutlery asnd stop watches...

I joked to my girlfriend during the table levitation trick "The crappy music is to hide the sound of the huge electromagnet under the stage". I think that's the most obvious trick, hence why they held the cloth (otherwise the table would probably just flip right off stage somewhere).

[jackal]

superkartracer said:

He did did a gig at our Christmas party just gone, awesome when you're pissed up. The closing trick was simply mind blowing!!

He got people to shout out 9 random numbers *1-9, then pulled back a black cloth covering a marker board, with a number writen on it.

He then added the random numbers up the people had called out, he had written them on a board, 3 across 3 down, they added up
to the number he uncovered going in each direction!! horizontal - diagonal and vertical backwards and forwards.

F**k knows how he did that.

its a variation on the zimmerman effect called 'Dream Vision' prodcued by Don Wayne

Copperfield did it once on a huge scale

[jackal]

Horse_Apple said:

sstein said:

dwilkie said:

I've been watching it and trickery or no trickery, it's amazing. Not sure how he was guessing half the stuff he did from the audience when he was blindfolded either!

I'm guessing the people who had bought tickets got random phone calls a week or so before the show. Sort of, answer our questionnaire and have the chance to win a holiday etc..

-

Stuart

Indeed. That was one of the core tricks which I could work out.

He basically already knew the information about those individuals and simply called out their name and rough age to get them to reveal themselves.

Would not be at all surprised if all those people had pages on freely accessible social networking sites like Facebook.

I would also bet that all of those people were the ones who paid for the tickets directly rather than being the unknown guest/partner of the person who paid online.

He is brilliant and I suspect that he has a team of researchers digging out this basic information.

wrong, the basic information was written on each billet !

it asked not only your secret question but also your DOB (where he got the star signs from) and also one personal thing about you (your thinking of having kids, you died your hair tonight etc..)

when he verbalises these bits of information it appears amazing to the individual because he still cant work out how Brown accessed that info on the card but it appears even MOR amazing to everyone else (i.e. most of the audience and everyone watcxhing on TV) because you only knew about these 2 extra questions on the cards if you went up to the ushers and got one.

[jackal]

shakotan said:

I saw one of his shows when he was trying to guess pictures that people had drawn.

I picked up on one of the pictures, when he was telling the person to draw something, his speech contained keywords like 'wave' and 'sail' (although not directly in context, something like "Let your thoughts come over you like a wave, let your mind sail into the distance to think of an object to draw").

Sure enough, the person drew a crude picture of a yacht, which Derren 'guessed' correctly.

http://www.fabricedelaure.com/en/clipboard.php



or a variation thereof

Edited by jackal on Wednesday 14th January 11:15

[jackal]

lawrence567 said:

There is a lot of trickery & that involved.
I know the people were moving the table, it's when it was floating that gets me!

teh 'moving' table is probably the actual only true natural mentalist phenonmenon on the show
motor neurone movement by suggestion... its well documented and works

teh floating table was a standard trick, 'The Losander' table (see youtube) but improved with an anti gravity box


http://uk.youtube.com/results?search_query=Excalib...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BnreORgiT5s

Edited by jackal on Wednesday 14th January 12:53

[Piersman2]

The table. We all assume the table is made of solid oak or something equally heavy. But I assumed the table was made of hollow balsa wood and probably weighed a few grammes. I also watched his hands very carefully and he had hold of the cloth with at least one hand the whole way through.

So a small stick or two, attached to the corners of the table and his corners of the cloth... and voila! A floating table.

[superkartracer]

It's all fun Oldschool entertainment tho , better than X factor and the other celeb wk on TV.

Great live.

[jackal]

Piersman2 said:

The table. We all assume the table is made of solid oak or something equally heavy. But I assumed the table was made of hollow balsa wood and probably weighed a few grammes. I also watched his hands very carefully and he had hold of the cloth with at least one hand the whole way through.

So a small stick or two, attached to the corners of the table and his corners of the cloth... and voila! A floating table.

the losander table is done with fingertip control

[SJobson]

bigTee said:

The guy is a very clever (genius even) performer who is the best at what he does.

What, better than David Blaine?

[youngsyr]

ytrebil said:

This thread goes to prove how fking stupid some people are.

Use your common sense.

I wouldn't mind betting that you'd be an easy target for Mr Brown in that case. His illusions are specifically designed to use common sense against the person on the receiving end, for example by doing all the trickery away from the area where common sense says you should be watching.