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Geek Culture / Derren Brown is going to control us all through our televisions

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Tom J
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Posted: 5th Sep 2009 00:58
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apparently - for the 2nd episode his tv series on Channel 4, of which I have only recently come aware.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/6128688/Derren-Brown--will-incapacitate-viewers.html

I think all of the shows are supposed to have some kind of big stunt in, although this idea, if he does intend to this; pretty crazy If you're in the UK, you may have seen the adverts for it where he walks backwards across a road.
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lazerus
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Posted: 5th Sep 2009 01:33
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yeah, though each advert changes, words, text, voice, what you can hear , see

I will watch this ^^

"Good never just happens, fate feels pity and grants a calm before the storm...
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Tom J
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Posted: 10th Sep 2009 00:55
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bumped, because Derren just 'broke the lottery'. Anyone catch those predictions?

I shall tune in to see what the trick was on friday.
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Fallout
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Posted: 11th Sep 2009 23:42
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I am watching the trick show now. It's actually nausiating how much rubbish he is talking. This show is clearly aimed at the logically and mathematically more simple of us. I actually think it's slightly wrong to broadcast it, since it might give poor fools false hope that they can win the lottery by some sort of statistical mumbo jumbo they don't understand.

It's not even entertaining! Are all those people actors/stooges, or just gullible fools?

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Monk
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Posted: 12th Sep 2009 01:06
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I thought it was fairly interesting if it was true.

It was the first of any of his stuff I've seen and I think I'm gonna follow it a bit closer now...

Monk

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spooky
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Posted: 12th Sep 2009 01:19
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Personally I can't stand Derren, find him really annoying.

I watched him 'predict' the lottery on Wednesday and then watched that complete pile of tripe on tv tonight where he tried to persuade us he used a group of people to come up with the lottery numbers.

Was quite obvious the whole show was made up and anyone who believes any of it was real must be really gullible.

Lots of talk on forums about split screens, lasers, lcd balls, forced perspective, mirrors, camera tricks, etc, and I'm sure it was one of them, but I have to admit it did look quite convincing on Wednesday and I'd love to know how it was really done.

Boo!
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Fallout
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Posted: 12th Sep 2009 02:19
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I think simple split screen camera trick. The evidence points to it.

So he goes from a moving camera to a completely static camera. Now, they try and fool you into thinking it's not static, and it may look like it's moving, but take a closer look. I'd wager its faked camera movement. The panning and movement is fake looking, eratic, and completely unnatural. There is pointless minute zoom, and non "hand held" camera sway. That's post filming effects camera movement, if you ask me.

So despite what you see, the filmed image is completely static making it very easy to split the screen, and have someone putting the right balls onto the stand. Then cut back to the full shot after.

The other key bit of evidence is, if you watch it in hi-def, you'll see one of the balls is slightly raised soon after all the numbers come out on the broadcast. This is evidence that the guy who puts the balls into the rack off camera didn't quite get one of them in snuggly.

But I'm glad you're on the same page as me Spooky! Some of Derren Browns stuff has had some merrit in the past, but this is nothing more than a simple camera trick show, followed by an hour of self indulgent lying. What a clown he is.

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Drew Cameron
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Posted: 12th Sep 2009 03:05
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Quote: "What a clown he is. "


But you gotta admit, he pulled off one hell of an illusion - maybe one of the biggest of all time!

Split screen was my bet too.

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Fallout
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Posted: 12th Sep 2009 13:19
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Yes. True. Had the ball not mysteriously levitated, we would never have known for sure it was split screen. When you see it in normal definition and not HD, you can't see a thing. Very convincing!

Here's a chap demonstrating how to do it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqAt2akPHJ8

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Insert Name Here
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Posted: 12th Sep 2009 13:27
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I like Derren Brown. ~700 years ago, if someone did something magic, people would go 'Magic! Cool!'. Where as today people will go 'How did you do that?'. Brown's tricks are just that - tricks, and he makes a point of that fact. I think the intrigue of what he does is not what he has done, but thinking about how he did it afterwards.
Because of this, he has the most difficult job of all - not doing a magic trick, but doing a magic trick where you can't understand how it works, even after thinking about it for a long time.

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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 12th Sep 2009 13:30
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We all know that Darren Brown's explanation was a big lie, but here's some proof that it was a lie...

1/ The timeline.....

24 people first got 1 ball right, when does Darren Brown contact Channel 4 to tell them that he will predict the Lottery live. Is it when they get 3 balls right? Now that would be a big leap of faith to believe that with 3 balls correct he can contact Channel 4 to tell them that he can predict the Lottery. Did he contact Channel 4 when they got 4 balls right?......

4 Balls correct is still a leap of faith. however, you could say that 1, 3, 4 is a progressive advancement, and worth the risk. But Darren Brown also said that after 4 balls were correct they had no time left to do any more tests because they would be on TV Live on Wednesday. This lack of time means that Darren Brown must have contacted Channel 4 already. There were about 2 weeks of his advert walking backwards. What sort of timeline leaves no time left for any more testing? Only if Darren Brown had contacted Channel 4 very early into the tests is it possible to run out of time. So this means that Darren Brown contacted Channel 4 before he had really done any testing at all.

2/ The mathematical breakdown / 24. There are 24 people in the room. They all pick a first number from 1 to 49, and it is divided by 24. It is impossible for this number to be 63. In his program his first attempt started with 63. Even if all 24 people picked number 49 the result would end up as 49. The paper visible to us on the screen however had quite low numbers on it.

3/ Darren Brown didn't show his final results to the participating 24 people.

4/ And the mathematics and magic to get 4 numbers right would be to switch one of the papers for one of his own papers, which alters the final division so that 4 numbers are correct.

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Monk
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Posted: 12th Sep 2009 21:08
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Quote: "2/ The mathematical breakdown / 24. There are 24 people in the room. They all pick a first number from 1 to 49, and it is divided by 24. It is impossible for this number to be 63. In his program his first attempt started with 63. Even if all 24 people picked number 49 the result would end up as 49. The paper visible to us on the screen however had quite low numbers on it."


The first time the results were within 1 - 49, the second time, with the automatic writing and any numbers allowed including negatives, he got the wider range of numbers and 63.

Its easy to see where you're coming from and say its a trick but I'd like to believe its true.

Monk

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Insert Name Here
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Posted: 12th Sep 2009 21:14
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Or he fixed the machine

I'd like to believe that.

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Fallout
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Posted: 12th Sep 2009 22:22
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For anyone who thinks it could be true, you only need to ask yourself one question ...

If you could predict the lottery numbers correctly, would you (a) make a TV programme about it, or (b) buy a lottery ticket?

If you answered 'a', then I wager you are a Derren Brown believer, and you wore a cap with a D on it when you were at school.

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Michael P
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Posted: 12th Sep 2009 23:26
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I cant believe that crap was allowed on channel 4. The coin thing was the worst... Deep maths?

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Insert Name Here
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Posted: 12th Sep 2009 23:30 Edited at: 13th Sep 2009 00:11
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Quote: "The coin thing was the worst... Deep maths?"

Edit2: Bugger, I can't count.
Edit: Anyone who hasn't seen some of Brown's other stuff should probably go to the Channel 4 Website and see it now, even if you thought this one was crap. I guarantee it will blow your mind.

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Michael P
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Posted: 13th Sep 2009 00:01
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Quote: "It works. It's complicated, but because it's three chances, the one you choose after you do the moving around and stuff is statistically more likely to come up."

Derren is that you?

Basic maths (not deep maths ) proves that every combination of 3 coin tosses in a row has the exact same probability of occurring! See the attached picture of a probability diagram (and my thumb).


On the topic of predicting the lottery; am I the only person who thinks its weird that only Derren knew what his prediction was, before he announced it AFTER the real lottery result had already been announced? How can 24 people who are randomly guessing guess the correct answers, since you can't predict randomness.

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Insert Name Here
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Posted: 13th Sep 2009 00:06
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Quote: "Derren is that you?"

My secret is revealed!
Bother.

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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 13th Sep 2009 04:00
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Quote: "On the topic of predicting the lottery; am I the only person who thinks its weird that only Derren knew what his prediction was, before he announced it AFTER the real lottery result had already been announced? How can 24 people who are randomly guessing guess the correct answers, since you can't predict randomness."


Have you read any of the posts about the split screen? That's how it was done, Darren Brown had no idea what the numbers would be, he never used the 24 divided system.

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Libervurto
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Posted: 13th Sep 2009 17:39
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I laugh when I hear people say he's a fake or he's trying to con people. He's an ILLUSIONIST! The clue is in the title.
I find him very entertaining but I'm not sure I'd want to hang around with him, he can be a bit annoying.

TGC Forum - converting error messages into sarcasm since 2002.
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BatVink
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Posted: 13th Sep 2009 18:26
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He admits he's a con-artist at the beginning of every program, it's no secret.

He's damn good at what he does. And if you know how any of his more mainstream performances work, you'd appreciate him still more, realising just how well he does it.

The lottery thing - disappointing as he explained how he'd done it on the Friday show. He shouldn't have done that, the impression he gave was that he was mocking the audience, not his usual style.

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Grandma
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Posted: 13th Sep 2009 18:33 Edited at: 13th Sep 2009 18:35
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Quote: "I laugh when I hear people say he's a fake or he's trying to con people. He's an ILLUSIONIST! The clue is in the title."

Tell me about it. I got curious about this guy after seeing this thread so I youtubed him and saw several videos saying what he did was a "trick". *gasp*

That's right, people have uploaded videos saying all he did/does was a trick and it wasn't magic or anything supernatural.
I got so disappointed. I thought I had finally discovered a genuine magican for once.

This message was brought to you by Grandma industries.

Making yesterdays games, today!
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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 13th Sep 2009 18:55
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Yes of course he's a con-artist, like every other magician and psychic...you'd be pretty dull to think that Criss Angel was really crushed by a steam roller or David Blaine can levitate. Likewise for the stuff Derren Brown does. Derren Brown knows his psychology very well and that's how he manages to appear to be a mind reader quite well and perhaps why he'll may be able to 'control' people through the TV, despite appearing psychic, he denies being one.

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djmaster
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Posted: 13th Sep 2009 19:00
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Someone should ask him what letter are you thinking off,then think of pie and screw him over,then we will see how magic he is.

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Insert Name Here
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Posted: 13th Sep 2009 19:53
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Quote: "Someone should ask him what letter are you thinking off,then think of pie and screw him over,then we will see how magic he is.
"

Not magic at all. Which is exactly the point.
Read four or five posts up.

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Fallout
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Posted: 13th Sep 2009 22:28
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I'm not upset that he used a camera trick. As all you guys said, he is an illusionist, so we all know it's fake! I'm only upset that he made me watch an hour of drivel, which he obviously intented us to believe. I don't mind if his explanation is bull (infact, I half expected that), so long as it's clever, and there is a sense that the illusion was clever. He usually sows a seed of uncertainty. But what he did was a cheap camera trick, and then an hour long programme of self indulgent blatent lies that anyone with a maths GCSE could see though (admittedly, this is only about 0.5% of the british population )

As BatVink said, he gaves the audience no credit. He basically said "My understanding of maths is crap, but I can still come up with a fake maths explanation that will convince you dumb fools". To that, Mr Brown, I offer you my middle finger, and I revoke all urine privileges if you ever catch fire.

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Insert Name Here
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Posted: 13th Sep 2009 23:05 Edited at: 13th Sep 2009 23:06
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Quote: "I'm only upset that he made me watch an hour of drivel, which he obviously intented us to believe."

I don't think he wants us to believe it. The whole point of the very last thing he had said seemed to be that you can't trust him.
Edit: You want him to burn to death? You're a creepy person.

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Tom J
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Posted: 13th Sep 2009 23:39
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Well I don't think anyone here was expecting him to give us more than a trick. So in a sense this was always going to be an anticlimax.

After the trick I was thinking technology too, which given that it is the most likely route, is a shame because he doesn't really have to know jack about doing double screen things to do it, and it doesn't give his obvious talents in this stuff justice. I was, for friday, hoping it wouldn't be something that simple since it would be dull. Obviously he figured so too with that mostly irrelevant 1 hour story

The journey was more enjoyable that the outcome really, because as mathematically irrelevant as the knife and crowds thing were, it was still fairly interesting to watch as individual tricks.
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Mnemonix
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Posted: 13th Sep 2009 23:55
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I think his tricks are entertaining and interesting at the same time, isn't that what you want out of a magician?

To be honest, if anybody thought that he was going to reveal how to predict the lottery numbers, then those people are quite gullible anyway. The whole thing was a trick played on everybody, and you don't quite realise it until somebody points it out to you.

I'm interested to see if he can keep me in my chair next Friday. Its sheer curiosity

Mnemonix
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Posted: 14th Sep 2009 00:20
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I was pushed over when he did that in one show, so I'm interested to see what he does for this next one.

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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 14th Sep 2009 02:20
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Channel 4 should pay him to glue us in our chair, and not be able to pick up the remote. channel 4 24/7!!!

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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 14th Sep 2009 13:56
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Good thing hardly anybody watches Channel 4.

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Trowbee
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Posted: 20th Sep 2009 21:43
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Mum was asking me about the program today, so I ended up talking her through a lot of what happened and how it was done.

Regarding the coin flips, statistically I realised how it works. Its very cunning, but it works.
I don't have time just this second, but I can explain later on (if people want me to?)
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Tom J
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Posted: 20th Sep 2009 21:51
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My friend was explaining the maths thing the other week since Derren wasn't a bit too specific on his deep maths.

Since there is a new Derren Brown thread now, lets keep all the stuff on this to the other thread
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dark coder
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 06:45
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Quote: "Basic maths (not deep maths ) proves that every combination of 3 coin tosses in a row has the exact same probability of occurring! See the attached picture of a probability diagram (and my thumb)."


But the game isn't run with just 3 coin tosses only, it's the first occurrence of one person's combination of 3 from a series of them. Thus, as long as you know what your opponent has picked and you pick after them, then you can greatly stack the odds in your favour no matter what they pick(as long as you don't mess up).

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Michael P
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 13:53
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Quote: "
But the game isn't run with just 3 coin tosses only, it's the first occurrence of one person's combination of 3 from a series of them. Thus, as long as you know what your opponent has picked and you pick after them, then you can greatly stack the odds in your favour no matter what they pick(as long as you don't mess up)."


Yes, but each combination has exactly the same chance of occurring. My probability diagram proves that every combination has an identical chance of coming up. How can one combination be more likely to occur?

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BiggAdd
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 13:56 Edited at: 21st Sep 2009 14:00
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I think DC was saying that they didn't toss three coins, then wipe the slate clean. They did something like:

THHTTHTHTTHTHHTHTH

and picked out the first occurrence. Which will probably give different odds than

THH
TTH
THT
THT
THH
THT

I'm sure one of you with the coding prowess could write a program to find a sequence in a row of coin tosses. And by using his method of switching the first sequence, see if that comes up with more

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 14:17 Edited at: 21st Sep 2009 14:17
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You could probably do it with a Javascript link. Do they work on here?

[href=javascript:alert('wai hallo thar');]test[/href]

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BiggAdd
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 14:28 Edited at: 21st Sep 2009 14:31
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Actually just did it with php:
http://atomicwaffle.com/db/?s=HHH

His method obviously only works when the guessers first two tosses are the same:

HHH
TTT

Although interestingly it doesn't work on this:
TTH
HHT

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dark coder
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 14:52
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Quote: "Although interestingly it doesn't work on this:"


Works fine for me(when you take the average), remember that the odds aren't the same for every combination pair some some may be less obvious, like TTH/HHT.

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Dazzag
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Posted: 22nd Sep 2009 10:53
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What is more funny is the amount of people who, in the next few lottery draws, are going to be getting groups of people (is 24 the magic number, or is more people even more accurate???) together to beat the system. Love it. But of course because it's illegal to do so (hahahahahahahaha, almost wet myself there ) then it will all be secret. I wonder if the people who run the lottery paid him to say such things? Hmmm, possible answer there. Lottery bosses rigged it to get him the answer (once) for massive future profits Heheheh, if he really did have the numbers though you would think he would show them one minute before the real draw, not afterwards.

Heh, you gotta laugh though, I mean the week after *loads* of people must be trying the same thing. Have they not thought that if it actually worked it would then basically be worthless? eg. if a million people win the lottery then they no longer win millions. More like a tenner.

No, the more I think about it, the more I think it was a brilliant idea. One really easy illusion spread out over a couple of hours, some laughable excuse of an explanation, and everyone is talking about it. Genius.

I still think how he scared those people a few years ago with the seance was pretty class

Cheers

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