Merged Derren Brown - predicting lottery numbers

It seems to have been very popular. What's the betting on "Strictly Celebrity Magic" within three months?
 
AndyD said:
Split screen illusions were a pretty neat idea when Patty Duke played identical cousins Patty and Cathy Lane in the 1960's - but in 2009?

Of course, Brown could still "pull a rabbit out of the hat" by releasing footage from the otherwise redundant second camera employed on Lotto night, and show the entire draw from a different angle in such a way as to eliminate split-screen speculation. I, for one, hope he does.
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It only would have been of value had it been shown live.

Same with any mysterious "bus footage" - not worth a damn thing after the drawing.

He could film and manipulate anything like that to suit his desires now.
 
The only way Derren can pull himself out of this is if somehow at the end of series he make some huge reveal that any camera trickery was part of a bigger illusion.

Here's hoping.
 
It only would have been of value had it been shown live.
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Its value is reduced for sure but it would be more closely scrutinised than the original event. It would have to be a hell of a lot more convincing than the original video.

It's interesting considering all this from Australia - we can only watch it all on Youtube. If this is part of some "bigger picture" reveal, then there are a lot of people around the world who will not get to see that bigger picture. We'll be left with "I asked a bunch of people to guess the numbers and what do you know, they got it right!?! You can do it too." (Apparently this will deliver different results for every single lotto draw around the world. Amazing!)

The wisdom of the crowd thing sucks on so many levels it's hard to believe it was offered as an explanation at all. He might just as well have said "I asked Sylvia Browne for the numbers". Some people will believe it. Some people are probably working out ways to market a "Wisdom of the Crowds Lotto System - AS SEEN ON TV" right now.

Few people expected him to give us THE explanation but I'd hoped for a plausibly frustrating one. Hell, trained ants is more plausible! Claiming "deep maths" as the secret is no better than Geller claiming psycho-kinesis.

Perhaps Randi needs to invite Brown to try for the MDC with his deep maths Lotto system.

So, are we all just pawns in a TV marketing campaign? Is the mass-disappointment that's filling comment forums just an anticipated part of some cunning plan?
 
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AndyD said:
Few people expected him to give us THE explanation but I'd hoped for a plausibly frustrating one. Hell, trained ants is more plausible! Claiming "deep maths" as the secret is no better than Geller claiming psycho-kinesis.

Perhaps Randi needs to invite Brown to try for the MDC with his deep maths Lotto system.

So, are we all just pawns in a TV marketing campaign? Is the mass-disappointment that's filling comment forums just an anticipated part of some cunning plan?
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:boggled:

This thread is a one big mess.
 
Why are the lotto numbers in the Event trailer (the one with all the camera effects, played in reverse etc) which are on stickers stuck to the post halfway across the crossing the wrong ones?

Oh hang on, it was a trick, he didn't really know in advance... ;)
 
Here are all the advertisements I remember regarding The Events:

















Video trickery is the theme here, the lottery split- / frozen screen method was "hinted" especially with the juggler and the snowflake.
 
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davidhorman said:
There really isn't any way of making it non-obvious without building a photo-realistic real time 3d model of the studio. DB just did the best he could with current tech, and it was slickly done, I'll give him that (not a DB fan).
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I disagree. Pre-recording footage from a robot that can recreate the same 'jerky' movements should be much more doable I think. Especially if the camera is fairly far from the subject, so that you can make relatively large 'shakes' (robots can move quickly :)).
 
I wonder if anyone who has taken the supposed technique involving the groups of 24 as real will attempt it.

Then those who happen to get a result will be vocal and get reported , those who don't , won't figure in media reports very prominantly, if at all.

"I won using Derren's method!....etc etc"
 
Ambrosia said:
While the lottery result is being determined Derren is strangely quiet, is standing side on to the camera and one hand is hidden from view - also the card chosen for him to write the result on is of sufficient size so as to be able to mask his right arm from the viewer, which would be free to manipulate something hidden behind the TV.
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And what would he do behind the TV that couldn't just as well have been done by an assistant outside of view?

I suppose he might have retrieved the correct balls from a storage behind the TV, but then I have absolutely no idea how he would have put those balls on the stand.
 
Azrael 5 said:
The YouTube lottery effect I linked was not Anthony Owen's version.Not sure if you are saying it was or were referring to Banchek effect previous poster mentioned.
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The routines appear to be identical though. How do you know it was not Owen's version?
 
AndyD said:
The wisdom of the crowd thing sucks on so many levels it's hard to believe it was offered as an explanation at all.
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It was a nice demonstration of the Central Limit Theorem, though (until he started screwing with the range). :)

Linda
 
Southwind17 said:
Regardless, why the rack needed to be such a tight fit still puzzles me.
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Surely if the rack wasn't tight it would could have resulted in the balls moving laterally after being repalced by Brown's assistant? This would have shown up after the split screen was removed.

All the guy had to do was slot them in the tight rack evenly for the balls to match perfectly (a longer rack would have been much harder). Sadly it didn't quite work out like that.
 
Someone asked why the misplaced ball seems to "rise up". That's a result of a mix from the overlay back to the live feed. On-screen, the ball is only a pixel or two above where it was in the overlay, so it appears to rise slowly up.

All the guy had to do was slot them in the tight rack evenly for the balls to match perfectly (a longer rack would have been much harder). Sadly it didn't quite work out like that.
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It could just be that they should have had just a little more tolerance in the width of the rack, and that those particular balls happened to add up to be slightly too wide for the rack.

I like the robot camera idea. Thinking about it, a reasonably convincing parallex-matching job could just have been done live, too, but I don't think either of these options would be anywhere near as reliable as the fake shake for a live broadcast. (By the way, if anyone is interested in a de-shaken version of the show, I can rustle one up.)

Thanks for the link to Penney's Game, Linda - I must have misunderstood what DB was doing in that clip first time around, so it turns out there was at least one genuinely interesting effect on display in that show. I wonder how many times he did it before the loser picked one of the most beatable sequences?

I wonder if Derren Brown is as clever as he thinks he is. I'm certain that he's not as clever as Kuko thinks he is ;)

This reminds me of an episode of The Real Hustle where they revealed a few illusions (of their own design). They did one where they supposedly slid a photo into one side of a video camera's field of view to fool the viewers in another room - that may have been their original intention but it looked to me like they just went for a still grab and wipe in the end.

How about this for an unneccessary complicated way of doing the trick? Balls made of, or painted with, some kind of photosensitive material that can be "printed" by laser from outside of frame. Doable? ;)

David
 
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davidhorman said:
How about this for an unneccessary complicated way of doing the trick? Balls made of, or painted with, some kind of photosensitive material that can be "printed" by laser from outside of frame. Doable? ;)

David
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Sure. Thermo-paper like coating, and a strong enough laser could do that. But there is a high risk in that. Having a laser around that is strong enough to do that over such a distance is strong enough to hurt a person badly. Some slight glitch in the controlling or the setup, the beam bounces of some reflective surface and hits someone. Or hits someone directly.

Another possible way would be to use e-ink "paper". Small digital radio receiver in the ball and outside on the ball a spot with such an electronic paper could do the job as well.

However, these are quite complicated ways to do it, and in addition the laser is risky. Split & freeze sounds far more easy.

Greetings,

Chris
 
Usually, Derren has impressive tricks. This one was not. I wonder how many people actually believed his story about not being able to show the prediction before the lottery was drawn for legal reasons.

As for his "explanation"...... perhaps he's having fun trying to find out how gullible people are. Andy Kaufman used to pull jokes on people for his own amusement.
 
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I enjoyed the prediction and the explination show. I was kind of surprised that he didn't rubbish the wisdom of crowds explination at the end, but I figure the Events are building up to something interesting.

As for exactly how he did it? I don't think it really matters. Its obviously a trick, the split screen thing is most likely, though various other ideas people have come up with would also be plausible. He could have used any of them or a combination of them.

However, I always think its worrth watching what else is going on in the prediction (because Derren is almost always up to more than he lets on and then makes a bigger deal of it later).

It could be my imagination (just looking for things that aren't there) but I'd like a little confirmation, if you look at the shots of him with the prediction revealed, does it remind you of anything? Possibly something in connection with some wording he repeated during the show?
 
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