Derren Brown: The Events

Jaxley wrote:

satriales wrote:A good example is in one of the early series where he got some business man to draw something and Derren drew the exact same thing. He then explained how it was done by showing the man's taxi ride to meet Derren and all of the images he had drawn were hidden in shop windows throughout the journey suggesting it was purely subliminal thinking that had made the man draw what Derren had wanted him to draw. The reality is it was actually a simple magic trick and the taxi journey had nothing to do with it, except to make you think there were some mind games involved.

What's the real explanation for that one then? There must've been some kind of technique for it.

I just watched the clip again on Youtube. It's two advertising guys and gets them to draw a poster and tagline. He gives them his prediction first and then it's just a case of switching the envelope that he gave them before they started drawing for a new one that contains some new predictions now that he has seen what they have drawn although he makes it look slight different to add to the realism. There are many ways he could have switched the envelope but as they probably spent a couple of hours drawing and we don't see all of that uncut there is no way of knowing his exact method. If you watch the taxi journey again you can see that it's very cleverly edited so that you never see them and the symbols in the same shot, they could easily be filmed seperately and edited in.

Cuban Pete wrote:Good explanaiton of the trick you said he definitely used!

I said he definitely used a trick and he did. I'm not claiming to be a magician myself and so know the exact details of everything he does but if you look at it logically it's easy to see how it was done.

If it was all about subliminal messages then he would need to know that the guys in the taxi were looking out of the window at the right moments and that they saw the signs in the shops and also saw the symbols on the kids jumpers as they crossed the road. If you just think about it logically there is way too much risk involved as it would be so easy for them not to see any of those symbols. Then when you look at how that taxi ride is edited they clearly weren't in the taxi when the symbols were filmed out of a taxi window. Then there's the simple fact that rather than using an elaborate setup which involved planting symbols over London and hoping the guys in the taxi would look at them (and that's assuming that sublinal messages like that even work which they probably don't), the easiest way to achieve the same result would be to switch envelopes. Derren is a magician and an expert at card manipulation, so switching envelopes woud be a piece of cake for him.

http://derrenbrown.co.uk/blog/2009/09/events-2/

Derren Brown wrote:The Mirror and the Sun are correct. I’ve just got up, or you’d have got it earlier yourselves. I shall try and predict at least 5 out of the 6 balls correctly. I apologise now if it goes boobs-up.

This the culmination of a LOT of secret work and research. On Weds night, live at 10.35 pm, it will cut across all Channel 4 channels, and be broadcast on buildings in

London (Tate Modern),

Manchester (Premier Lodge/back-up Deansgate Lock),

Birmingham (5-ways Entertainment Complex/Bull-ring, Moor St Side as back-up)

and Edinburgh (Hunter Square/back-up Museum of Scotland)

Then, on the first Friday night EVENTS one-hour special (9pm, C4, Fri 11th), I’ll show you how I did it.

The following Fridays will offer other ambitious live or interactive stunts and treats.

- A subliminal piece of media that will stick you to your seats at home.

- A nationwide psychic experiment

- A casino-related scam with a twist.

I’ll let you know more each week.

Wish me luck for Wednesday – I might even pray.

A relief to finally be able to talk about it! xx

So he's only guessing 5 numbers? And there are 5 numbers in the video. I'm going to be rich! Woo. I have written them down but the bit of paper is at work, i'll post them tomorrow

Memento Mori wrote:Derren Brown's got a new miniseries starting with a 10 minute trick on channel 4 at 10:30 wednesday What he's actually going to do has been kept all hush-hush with Brown claiming if it gets out in advance he won't be able to do it. His show on friday will show how he did the trick if all goes well.

Reports claim that in wednesday's trick he's going to attempt to predict the lottery numbers which are being drawn at that exact time over on BBC1. Too late to buy a ticket by then unfortunately.

The ONE NIGHT that I actually have a life and am going out



Derren Brown is amazing. I remember doing his seance at a friend's house years ago and it actually worked and spelled out the right name. Friend was too scared to be left alone afterwards so I had to hold in my wee wee until she'd calmed down

Whats the crack with him predicting the lotto numbs?

Youtube wrote:TheLondontee (1 hour ago) Show Hide
derren browns a nob!!! anyone notice the man united bill board, its a real site but everythings bloody backwards..... how gay?!?

Balloon Sod wrote:I thought this was the one where he is going to try and incapicitate the home-viewing audience? As in, stop us from being able to move.

http://stucktomysofa.com/

Looks that way, but I'm betting that will be the climax of the series, not the thing on Wednesday.

Don't think I'd want to be part of the Stuck to my Sofa one if it is all the people watching. Seems a bit too freaky.

I just remembered the time he put a zombie arcade game in a pub, then made one guy who was playing it go to sleep and wake him up in an abandoned hospital with locked doors and a shotgun, against a zombie horde. That was incredibly cool.

Jaxley wrote:Don't think I'd want to be part of the Stuck to my Sofa one if it is all the people watching. Seems a bit too freaky.

I just remembered the time he put a zombie arcade game in a pub, then made one guy who was playing it go to sleep and wake him up in an abandoned hospital with locked doors and a shotgun, against a zombie horde. That was incredibly cool.

I had that on my PSP

Just found this for anyone who's interested:

The stuck to the sofa thing sounds cool. Thought I heard he might have to cut it for safety reason.

Didn't Paul McKenna have to change the title sequence to his show years ago because a young kid watched it and got hypnotised?

I wonder if one of The Events is the one in That Mitchell And Webb Look.

satriales wrote:What these new tricks which we haven't even seen yet?

The only certainty is that Derren Brown can't predict the lottery. He is not psychic and the lottery is completely random so there is no way to predict it. Without seeing the show it is impossible to say how he will do it.

If he literally just goes on air 10 minutes before the lottery starts and reads out his predictions, and it is confirmed that the lottery draw is recorded after his predictions were made, then I will be extremely impressed. I don't think his show will be as simple as that and so these extra variables will be the key to how the trick is done.

The lottery is actually governed by highly non-linear, chaotic - but technically deterministic - dynamics. It's not random.

Jaxley wrote:Don't think I'd want to be part of the Stuck to my Sofa one if it is all the people watching. Seems a bit too freaky.

How would that even work? Are people that suggestible?

~Earl Grey~ wrote:

Jaxley wrote:Don't think I'd want to be part of the Stuck to my Sofa one if it is all the people watching. Seems a bit too freaky.

How would that even work? Are people that suggestible?

Hell yes. He's done it before with people on his shows, doing it on TV just gives him better odds of getting at least a couple of people stuck

Although a lot of people will probably say they got stuck even if they didn't

~Earl Grey~ wrote:

satriales wrote:What these new tricks which we haven't even seen yet?

The only certainty is that Derren Brown can't predict the lottery. He is not psychic and the lottery is completely random so there is no way to predict it. Without seeing the show it is impossible to say how he will do it.

If he literally just goes on air 10 minutes before the lottery starts and reads out his predictions, and it is confirmed that the lottery draw is recorded after his predictions were made, then I will be extremely impressed. I don't think his show will be as simple as that and so these extra variables will be the key to how the trick is done.

The lottery is actually governed by highly non-linear, chaotic - but technically deterministic - dynamics. It's not random.

Can you elaborate?

Cuttooth wrote:

~Earl Grey~ wrote:

satriales wrote:What these new tricks which we haven't even seen yet?

The only certainty is that Derren Brown can't predict the lottery. He is not psychic and the lottery is completely random so there is no way to predict it. Without seeing the show it is impossible to say how he will do it.

If he literally just goes on air 10 minutes before the lottery starts and reads out his predictions, and it is confirmed that the lottery draw is recorded after his predictions were made, then I will be extremely impressed. I don't think his show will be as simple as that and so these extra variables will be the key to how the trick is done.

The lottery is actually governed by highly non-linear, chaotic - but technically deterministic - dynamics. It's not random.

Can you elaborate?

If every single variable was exactly the same, then you could theoretically get the balls to do the exact same sequence and come out in the same order. But by every variable I mean every single thing right down to the atomic level would have to be the same. The laws of motion are pretty simple and deterministic, after all - but when you have a complex system of things that all affect one another things get unpredictable.

Imagine if in the draw, the 15 missed the 8 by a millimetre and continued along its path into another ball (let's say the 24), causing that to bounce into the 11, causing that to bounce into the 6, causing the 6 to fall out of the hole.

If the initial ball (15) was off by 1mm (from in the above scenario), then it would hit the 8 - so it wouldn't hit the 24 (as the 8 would knock it off its course with it), the 24 would not hit the 11, etc.

But the system would be so sensitive, a difference of a micrometer would eventually have significant ramifications so as to completely alter the draw result.

It's the Butterfly Effect.

The lottery is semi predictable. I thought this was bs, Untill my boss starting writing down all the numbers from every single draw and checking the frequency of numbers and which balls were 'due'.

He was several hundred pounds up before he lost interest.

Falsey wrote:The lottery is semi predictable. I thought this was bs, Untill my boss starting writing down all the numbers from every single draw and checking the frequency of numbers and which balls were 'due'.

He was several hundred pounds up before he lost interest.

That's the Gamblers Fallacy, thinking that a number is more likely to appear just because it hasn't shown up for a while.

What Earl Grey says is true, that in theory if you could recreate every single variable on an atomic level then it should be possible to recreate a draw or potentially predict the numbers. There is still some randomness involved though as you would need to know the exact time between the machine spinning and the balls being released, and that would need to be accurate to billionths of a second. Basically it's not what Derren Brown is going to be doing on Wednesday.