Famous for making people fall asleep on his command, Derren Brown has now succeeded in the first ever mass hypnosis event over live television. Hundreds of thousands of viewers were affected, finding themselves immobilized, stuck to their sofas and unable to stand until he released them. The stunt caused quite a buzz and social media sites like Twitter and YouTube were flooded with personal accounts of the experience.
Of course it didn't work on everyone. Even mild hypnosis like this requires a willing participant, and even before the show aired some skeptics were determined to prove the whole thing a sham by refusing to cooperate. Most people, however, saw an opportunity to use their mind in a new way, and experienced some level of success.
My own experience was that I felt heavy, but not exactly stuck. I felt that I could stand but it would take an uncomfortable effort, and when I attempted to I suddenly felt very tired and decided against it. Allison watched with me, and also seemed stuck for a few moments but thought her way out of it and ended standing. We both had a giggle fit and got a bit emotional.
It was a very entertaining program, a bold experiment, and the purity of the effect was a nice contrast to the puzzling trickery of the lottery prediction. The Events continue tonight with an exploration of the CIA and KGB's psychic spy research of the Cold War Era.
Last Friday evening, with 4.4 million people watching, Derren Brown explained how to predict the lottery. It was an elegantly structured hour of magic tricks and psychological bluffs, all supporting a bold claim about the power of collective consciousness. Unfortunately, that claim was beyond the limits of believability; or as one blogger put it: "What an absolute pile of peanut mincing bogshyte."
It's interesting that Derren Brown is held to such a high standard of believability. Nobody believes that David Copperfield can really fly or make the Statue of Liberty vanish, and that doesn't prevent them from enjoying the illusion. All the magic in the special was brilliant. There was strong theater in each performance, the audience was emotionally invested, and the tricks were baffling. Nothing went wrong, yet still there is a palpable sense of disappointment in the media.
For most magicians, success means nobody knows how the trick was done. For Derren Brown it means that everyone is certain there was no trick. Audiences don't really care what he does, as long as they can believe him. It is testament to the incredible character he has created that people are disappointed when he comes across as merely an amazing magician, and not a genuine wizard.
For those of you who missed the special or live in the US and couldn't track it down, here's the premise:
Derren has allegedly stumbled upon a form of "Deep Maths" that finds predictability in randomness. You can use this idea to cheat at a simple coin flipping game. If there are patterns to be found in a random sequence of numbers, then the human brain's natural capacity for pattern recognition might be able to see those patterns, if properly conditioned.
Invoking the "wisdom of a crowd" principal, Derren gathered together a group of 24 people who were happy to take part in the experiment. After extensive hypnosis and meditation to fully unlock the hidden powers of the subconscious, the group examined a list of recent lotto draws. Each person then took a guess what the next six numbers would be, and for each number they calculated the average of the groups guesses. Those six numbers - 2 11 23 28 35 39 - became the prediction for that week's lotto draw. (No need to bother with the bonus ball; only women and gays care about the bonus ball)
All that was left was the live broadcast. We all watched as the balls dropped and, miraculously, those exact six numbers popped out of the machine ... or maybe it wasn't a miracle, maybe it was deep maths. I think it was just a really good trick.
If you don't believe in miracles or maths, Derren has provided another possible explanation on his blog. Tonight, he promises to hypnotize the television audience, immobilizing millions of people and sticking them to their sofas.
Predicting the future is possibly the most difficult illusion in the entire magic canon. When one of the world's finest and most convincing magicians takes on the task, it can captivate an entire nation. Before Derren Brown gives us his version of the events, I'd like to address what happened on Wednesday night.
If you haven't seen it yet, watch the video of Derren Brown predicting the National Lotto numbers on live television:
The first thing I want to do is address the three most common theories that have been proposed:
1) Every Possible Combination
In his special The System, Derren flips a fair coin and gets 10 heads in a row. The premise of that special is that he contacts a fan and tips them perfectly on 6 horse races in a row. How can he do these things? Well he explains at the end of the special: cover every possibility. If you stand in a studio for days flipping coins, eventually you will get 10 heads in a row. If there are 6 horses in each of 6 races, you only need to contact 46,656 fans to make sure one of them will win all 6 races. This has lead many people to suspect that the same principle is in play with the Lotto Prediction. Simple mathematics easily refutes this possibility, however. The examples in The System are nothing compared to the~14,000,000 possibly lotto outcomes, and it would take Derren dozens of years to film them all.
2) Camera Tricks This theory has been more common than any other, and it's adherents more stubborn. When people see the impossible happen on television, they assume that digital effects or camera tricks are in play. This theory has the added bonus of requiring no thought at all and being impossible to refute. Indetectable, cutting-edge technology is a safety-net explanation for people who can't handle seeing something they can't explain. It's the magic audience's version of saying "God works in mysterious ways."
3)Laser etching; Magnetic E-ink; Projection The theory that does hold some weight (yet still hard to swallow) is that the numbers were put on the balls during the lotto call, either with lasers or some sort of ink that can rearrange itself. Another decent theory is that the numbers were projected onto blank white balls, but the complexity of making that projection look right as the balls are turned and rotated makes it unlikely.
These last theories bring me to the main point I want to get across, which I haven't seen addressed anywhere else: I think that this is Derren wants us to believe, and he has used all of his considerable skills in persuasion and suggestion to get us there. By denying that the balls will be switched through sleight of hand or other means, and painting a picture which leaves switches as an impossibility, he has left millions of people convinced that he performed a switch, arguing about how, and misdirected from the real solution.
Derren Brown must know that predicting the lotto is too impossible to be a decent magic trick. The idea of the magic trick that is too perfect to be effective has been explored in magical texts by many respected magical theorists, most prominently Darwin Ortiz and Juan Tamariz. In The Magic Way, however, Tamariz teaches to overcome this by leading the audiences "down the rainbow path," in essence suggesting a solution to the effect through body language and verbal skills, but then disproving that solution. I think Derren Brown has used this concept to convince us that there is some physical sleight involved in a trick that will ultimately turn out to be quite cerebral in method.
After two days of heavy thought, I do have a theory of how it could have been done, pulling heavily from my background knowledge of how similar effects are performed. I have no reason to believe that Derren came up with the same method I did.
This was the most flawless prediction illusion I have ever seen performed. Derren Brown never fails to be baffling and thought provoking, and when he tackles the classics it's always an amazing moment. As I finish this post The Events is premiering already, but being in the US I won't be able to watch until later tonight. I can't wait to see the "truth" revealed!
The Music of Erich Zann is a short film based on the story by H.P. Lovecraft. Though conditions inside the abandoned Savoy Hotel made this a very challenging project (Sub-freezing temperatures; cramped quarters; enough dust to suffocate Cthulhu himself), I was thrilled with the opportunity to work in such a haunting location, with such a talented and dedicated group of filmmakers.
The film had a screening in early May, where it received a very warm ovation. It is now available online, and I would like to invite you all to watch!
Yesterday morning , I went to visit David Blaine in Wolman Rink. He was approximately 50 hours into his latest stunt, the Dive of Death.
The press releases from his own website and ABC had led me to believe that he would hang, upside-down and 60 feet from the
ground, for 60 hours.
When I arrived, he wasn't quite hanging, and he was closer to 60 inches from the ground.
After nearly 15 minutes he was finally hoisted back up above the rink. He dangled from his electromagnetic boots for nearly 45 seconds until he reached a platform where he stood, right-side-up, for at least another 10 minutes.
I am neither a David Blaine uber-fan nor a David Blaine hater. Ethics of television magic aside, his magic specials are enjoyable and his effects are innovative. He seems genuinely dedicated to advancing the art of the conjurer. I don't hate his 'endurance art', as many magicians do. I loved Drowned Alive. It was well planned, well executed, and aesthetically brilliant. Dive of Death wasn't.
I haven't seen the broadcast yet, and I'm sure it contains some great magic. Unfortunately, David Blaine all but insists that the public define and judge his specials not by the card tricks, but by the endurance stunt he chooses to attach to each one. In that light, I can already call Dive of Death a major disappointment.
Famous for making people fall asleep on his command, Derren Brown has now succeeded in the first ever mass hypnosis event over live television. Hundreds of thousands of viewers were affected, finding themselves immobilized, stuck to their sofas and unable to stand until he released them. The stunt caused quite a buzz and social media sites like Twitter and YouTube were flooded with personal accounts of the experience.
