Merged Derren Brown - predicting lottery numbers

Stray Cat said:
Well just don't bother watching then if it's going to be soooo lame. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

That's a pretty childish response. I don't see what's wrong/invalid about criticizing an entertainer for what has to be a poor trick. I've loved a lot of Derren's stuff, but I do not have high hopes at all for this upcoming trick.

Stray Cat said:
Brown's genius over the years has been his presentation of some very old tried and tested tricks. His presentation of them is usually new and interesting and his enduring popularity (and belief in his 'superpowers') bears witness to the fact that approach has been successful.

There is no way that Copperfield can fly... does that make it any the less entertaining to watch him make it look as if he can?
Click to expand...

Yes, but the enjoyment often comes from working out exactly how he is doing the trick. If you can clearly see the wires, it loses its appeal.

If Derren Brown does a gripping lead-up to a stunt, and then simply pulls a rabbit out of the hat in normal old-school style, would you not be disappointed in some way? I would be.

There is a lot more to good magic than showmanship. You use showmanship to make a good trick great, it doesn't work with crap tricks. You might as well just go to a pantomime and watch Peter Pan get whisked accross the room on string.
 
Emperor_Gestahl said:
Humphries makes a valid point. This is interesting simply because there's only one real method to do this trick and it's an obvious and lame method. Not so much a question of how it's done but why he's bothering.
Click to expand...

Ditto.

Good magic, for me, is when I simply cannot think of how they could have done it.

I used to love doing amateur mentalism stuff for my classes, mostly to get them thinking. I would never reveal how I did it, but I would encourage my students to come up with all of the ways it could be done. Often they would nail it in one of their explanations.

In the end, we will never really know how a trick is done. It's no different to psychic powers - we don't know truly if a psychic is mindreading or not, but given there is a mundane way it could be done which for all purposes looks the same, it becomes far less amazing.

Athon
 
Humphreys said:
That's a pretty childish response. I don't see what's wrong/invalid about criticizing an entertainer for what has to be a poor trick. I've loved a lot of Derren's stuff, but I do not have high hopes at all for this upcoming trick.
Click to expand...
Childish to me is writing it off before you've even seen it.
Yes, it may well be rubbish... however, as a magician I enjoy watching the performance and delivery even if I know the method. The DB shows are not aimed at magicians, they are aimed at a much lesser informed public who will no doubt be suckered in by the performance.

Humphreys said:
Yes, but the enjoyment often comes from working out exactly how he is doing the trick. If you can clearly see the wires, it loses its appeal.
Click to expand...
For you perhaps... for most people, the enjoyment is in engaging in the fantasy.

Humphreys said:
If Derren Brown does a gripping lead-up to a stunt, and then simply pulls a rabbit out of the hat in normal old-school style, would you not be disappointed in some way? I would be.
Click to expand...
I've seen him do lots of 'old school' magic tricks using 'old school' methods. His delivery is what makes it fresh and interesting to me as a magician and to audiences that are not aware of the methods, he has turned magic into 'woo'... that's perhaps not a good thing, but you can't blame him for other people's beliefs.

Humphreys said:
There is a lot more to good magic than showmanship. You use showmanship to make a good trick great, it doesn't work with crap tricks. You might as well just go to a pantomime and watch Peter Pan get whisked accross the room on string.
Click to expand...
Yes there is a lot more to it than good showmanship, but I would disagree about making a good trick great... most magic is based upon the simplest of methods. But seeing Billy McComb make a show out of them was probably the best show I ever saw. Magic is the art of making the impossible look easy. Watch an amateur club magician perform an ambitious card routine and then watch Darryl do it... Same simple moves... whole world of difference... the magician's performance makes the trick crap or great accordingly.
 
To Chillzero: Don't know why the link is showing as unavailable to you. It works for me.

It's a seven minute presentation involving a sort of mock lottery. Derren "divines" the lottery numbers, along with which participant chose which one, but also demonstrates that he predicted which of the participants was the winner and where each would end up standing.

It's impressive in the component parts, though more experienced magicians than I can probably figure it out, but it's presentational thing of beauty. That's the genius of Derren Brown.
 
At Humphreys and Emperor G:

No worries if it's not your thing, but it is apparent from your comments that you simply haven't a real idea regarding what is (apparently) possible in magic and mentalism.

I don't know how Derren Brown is going to present this feat, but I can make a guess, and if it's like effects that I have seen then it will be impressive indeed.

Imagine this:

Performer stands on stage and throws a soft ball (or stuffed toy or what have you) into the audience, asking the person who catches it to toss it randomly to someone else. The second person names a number 1-52 then tosses the ball again. That person also names a number, and so on until there are six numbers named by random audience members. And, yes, they truly are random audience members who picked the number they wanted.

Performer shows a lottery ticket that he had in his pocket. Not a piece of paper, not something he wrote on, but an actual, printed lottery ticket.

That ticket has the six numbers named by the 6 audience members. Volunteers can come up to verify it.

That trick is out there now. Magicians today perform it.

So why don't they actually go win the lottery? Easy: they can't. It's a trick. And yet the effect is still impressive.
 
Humphreys said:
I know who Derren Brown is, I just don't see any way this trick can be done other than getting the numbers moments before they have been broadcast, in which case it's a simply awful trick and barely worth doing.
Click to expand...

Humphreys said:
Either way, there no way he's rigging the lottery, so he must announce them after they have been drawn, there is no other way!
Click to expand...
I learned when I went to see Penn & Teller at the Rio that a failure of the imagination is no reason to dismiss a trick. Penn did a trick with a nail gun that appeared to involve the memorisation of a very long apparently random binary sequence - board, hand, board, board, hand, board, hand, board, hand, hand, board... I was fully prepared to believe that Penn had actually memorised the sequence, but a group of us discussed the trick in the bus on the way back to South Point and I realised that there were ways of doing the trick that had never occurred to me - ways that were a lot easier than memorising such a long binary sequence.

Of course it's going to be a trick. A lot of tricks are incredibly lame when you know how it's done. Check out the Balducci Levitation - astoundingly lame! Quite possibly one of the lamest tricks I've ever seen. But still effective when presented properly. I spent days teaching myself the French Drop, which is another pretty lame trick, so as to make it appear not lame.

I'll bet that the lottery numbers gig is another lame trick. But the best part of it will be that we won't know how lame it is.
 
Southwind17 said:
At best I reckon this part:

could be interpreted thus:

"Sadly, Derren will be filmed at a secret location as he reveals the numbers of the balls that have, moments before, but before being broadcast, tumbled out of the National Lottery machine, such secret location conveniently housing the technology necessary to convey the information to him, and which, were it a public place, would reveal how blatantly obvious and simple the apparent deception is."
Click to expand...

Not that I'm guessing at methods or anything, but he may have been able to convince the television people to delay the draw for a few seconds...

Watch Jonathan Creek to see how that's done... (On a small scale)
 
Hey, I can predict lotto numbers too.

I predict... 27 will be drawn. (But I won't tell you which lotto draw I'm referring to. You'll just have to wait until 27 comes up to find out. :) )

I challenge Derren Brown do do a lamer prediction routine than this one!
 
Humphreys said:
No matter how well presented, if everyone with half a brain knows precisely how the trick is going to work before it has started, it's just a poor and pointless trick.
Click to expand...

I think that depends entirely upon the trick. I appreciate two things abouta trick. The first is wondering how it was done. Once I know, that mystery is gone. The second is the execution - things like misdirection and sleight of hand. If the trick is simply a mechanical one that any of us could do with a little practice, that's boring. But when I know what's gonna happen and still can't see it happen, that's enjoyable to me. It's like watching the highlight reels for sporting events. I know the guy is gonna make a diving, one-handed catch, but it's still great to watch.
 
The publicity blurb I have seen says that he will predict the numbers several minutes before they are drawn. The drawing is being shown live on BBC1, while Derren's show is on.
 
UncaYimmy said:
I think that depends entirely upon the trick. I appreciate two things abouta trick. The first is wondering how it was done. Once I know, that mystery is gone. The second is the execution - things like misdirection and sleight of hand. If the trick is simply a mechanical one that any of us could do with a little practice, that's boring. But when I know what's gonna happen and still can't see it happen, that's enjoyable to me. It's like watching the highlight reels for sporting events. I know the guy is gonna make a diving, one-handed catch, but it's still great to watch.
Click to expand...
Like Penn & Teller's cup and ball routine - done with clear plastic cups. You can see exactly what's going on the whole time, but it's so fast and fluid that you also kinda can't see what's going on. You have to admire the artistry involved in doing a trick like that.
 
Stray Cat said:
...snip...

I've seen him do lots of 'old school' magic tricks using 'old school' methods. His delivery is what makes it fresh and interesting to me as a magician and to audiences that are not aware of the methods, he has turned magic into 'woo'... that's perhaps not a good thing, but you can't blame him for other people's beliefs.

...snip...
Click to expand...

You've put your finger on what I think on what has annoyed more than a few Members here over the years regarding his act. He uses a lot of the currently popular pseudoscientific trappings favoured by many con-artists.
 
I have no reason to doubt it will be something that I enjoy, well, the Russian Roulette episode was a bit too tacky for me. Other than that, I've enjoyed everything else by him (seen them all). Should be interesting. Definitely waiting to see what happens.

He is an outspoken sceptic, I would not be surprised if he takes another dig at all kinds of psychics and mediums in this episode.
 
Kuko 4000 said:
He is an outspoken sceptic, I would not be surprised if he takes another dig at all kinds of psychics and mediums in this episode.
Click to expand...

I think this part is something that definitely separates Derren from so many others in his field. Someone earlier mentioned the horse race-episode, 'The System'. Even though the trick itself was as simple as can be (though presented in such an enjoyable way), I think the best part of the show had to do with how he used all his effort to convey the fact that we're inclined to take reality as we experience it, as the 'only' reality. And how some critical thinking skills would benefit us all in this regard. Remember his analogue with homeopathy on that episode? This kind of stuff, along with his book, is what I think the guy's really all about. And that, to me, puts him way ahead of other performers like him...

It's a fabulous and inspiring thing to see a great magician and showman at work, but if they on top of this use their hard learned skills as a consciousness lifting tool for the whole world...now, that's something I admire from the bottom of my heart.
 
666 said:
It's a UK copyright thing. I can't see it either.
Click to expand...
Sorry. I forget sometimes that I ain't in the States right now. Let me summarize:

Derren Brown gets some people in and does some really cool stuff.

No way you can figure it out.

It's wicked awesome.

Duzzat help?
 
Slightly off the main topic but consistent with some side comments:

As a magician, I frequently enjoy it more when I know how it's done, but usually when how it's done is very simple.

The single most impressive magic trick I ever saw performed was a version of "Chameleon Coins" (you can buy it fairly cheaply). The magician gussied up the commercial version by changing the handling. He made it simpler, but in making it simpler he also made it far more brazen and put the secret right there in front of the spectators' eyes. It was only through skillful audience management that he got away with it.

Similarly with Derren Brown and other 'greats' of mentalism. Rick Maue has an effect in which he, with 100% accuracy can tell you which of five cups you put an item under. There are no secrets, no gimmicks, no stooges, no electronics, no nothing but the performer and his skill. Mechanically the trick is as simple as any trick in the world gets (and I'm not exaggerating), but very few magicians can pull it off. Why? It takes chutzpah (which he gives away in the title of the effect which is why I'm not listing it) and audience management and confidence and timing and all those skills that really aren't a magician's skills but a presenter's skills.

Dunninger's method for working his Question and Answer sessions were unbelievably impressive. His method was similarly unbelievably simple.

Outside Derren Brown's more advanced card tricks (he is a very accomplished finger-flinger), his methods are usually quite simple (at least the ones I know, and I don't know them all by a long shot), but his presentation is usually marvelous.

That's what I enjoy when I watch magic or mentalism.
 
laca said:
What always baffles me is the intricate setup of these "demonstrations", when it could be so simple:

1. Derren announces he's going to win the lottery
2. Derren buys a single ticket
3. Derren wins the lottery

Now that would be something.

This will be just a show. Hopefully a good one.
Click to expand...

I follow Derren Brown on twitter and he has been complaining that C4 won't allow him to buy a ticket. I guess having some relative or acquaintance buy the ticket for him wouldn't be good enough. Or maybe he means they won't let him buy a ticket a few seconds before the broadcast.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom