Derren Brown

[TEAK36]

Derren Brown did a 'trick' on his show last week where he began by writing a word on a piece of paper.In front of him was a well known author and all of the books this author had written.Derren asked the author to randomly discard books until there was only one left.He then asked the author to pick any page in the last book, and then to read any passage from that page.Derren then asked the author to pick one word from that passage, and you,ve guessed it, he picked exactly the same word that Derren had written on his piece of paper.I thnk the word was 'pop'.With many 'tricks' you can usually put down to sleight of hand, or illusion, but I am completely stumped as to how this was done.Does anyone have any ideas?

[toonmilo]

Its all to do with power of suggestion. He, in effect is making him choose that exact book, that exact page, that exact paragraph and exact word!

The only way i can think that he does it, is that he's obviously chosen a word from a certain book himself beforehand. Then he lays out all the authors books on the table and forces him to choose a particular row of books and then choose a single book, he does this by the clever words he uses to point him in the right direction, almost Hypnotic. You may have noticed that the word 'pop' ended up being right in the centre of the book and before the author picked up the book to flick through it, Derren broke the spine of the book, because it was new,  once you do that, the book falls open at the middle making the book dictate to the author where to stop! As for picking the word 'Pop' you may have noticed that Derren held onto the authors arm whilst he said 'PICK ANY WORD FROM THAT PAGE THAT GRABS YOU, YOU KNOW PICK ANY WORD THAT POPS OUT TO YOU'!!!.

 

Hope this helps? I may be talking rubbish, he is a very clever man!!

[tonymclark]

toonmilo, I think you are spot-on.

[Dom Tuk]

I haqve a different view on this. If it is as claimed above that tDerren Brown guides the author to the word he wants he is likely to be unsuccesssful  afew times. Which means he will have to record many sessions with the same author or with different authors and that can be expensive. Powers of suggestion may work only a few times and cannot be guaranteed to have 100 % success, especially if the recipient of that suggestion is keen to try and avoid all such traps. So he uses a trick, the oldest in the book where he uses a technique called the bi phasal subterrenian and aerial substrate utiliser. In this technique the recipient is carefully chosen so that it has both a sub terrenian phase and an aerial phase and is designed to obtain information, succour and life building qualities from both phases. If you are still confused he uses PLANTS. In the past he has used Mo Mowlam, Stephen Fry, a chess grandmaster etc...any number of people who are willing to be paid to act like they are surprised at the end result. The trick is to use people that the viewing public will never think could be bought off but beileve me they can.

[Dom Tuk]

remember the trick where he predicted the time on a stop watch. Well did they show you the stop watch being started. You heard a beep but did that beep come from the same stop watch. At the end he asked for the watch to be stopped and it was within 1 sec of the correct time. so what. maybe the watch was stopped at that time before the filming began and was just shown to the camera. he then had this clockmaker keeping time for 2 hrs. The clockmaker made a big show of reading a book about timepieces. yeah right...in a studio with a magician you can concentrate on reading a book! No you cant. so he makes a big show of reading the book and at the end of 2 hrs the magician says this was the word you were reading when the clock struck 2 hrs. Do you ever stop reading at a word and remember which word you stopped at. Especially in a studio. Its ridiculous. the man has run out of ideas so even his plants seem silly now.

[toonmilo]

I take your point, but i guess its all down to that old phrase "Seeing is believing"!! You never know if there are plants in the show or not. Personally i'd love for him to do a simliar trick on me to see if he's the real deal or not. I've been trying to get tickets to see his live show, but they are like gold dust and he's only doing a couple of shows. Have tried ebay for Bristol this sunday, but its my daughters b'day so will be difficult. Be interesting to hear from people on the street who've had something done to them by him.

This may start a separate thread but i think he's way better than David Blaine, probably cos Blaine is an absolute idiot!!

[Dom Tuk]

Toon Milo you said it perfect. You and I will never know if they are plants. And you and I will never be on the hot seat where the trick is played on us. Come on if he can do this for real then there is one million dollars which is his for the taking as he would have proved to that white haired American (forgotten his name) that the para normal exists. he thrives on the adage that you stated 'seeing is believing'. But fair play to him...he is a master at it and he thinks of new ways of using his plants. But let us not go overboard and give him special powers that he does not have. personally i think those who use sleight of hand have much more talent. it takes years of practise to master that.

[Dom Tuk]

Toon Milo you mentioned  that it would be interesting to hear from people on the street who have had this trick played. yes there are a few. He gave a pack of cards to a crowd of people and each took one card out of it. He filtered out those with the black cards. in the end he picked out a young chap with a straw hat (that tells derren that he is the plant out of 52 people). he predicts the card that he had in his pocket. So he has handed out only 51 cards and his plant had the 52nd card in his pocket all the time. The giveaway was when the plant said to the camera...'wow...we must be on the same wavelength'...a phrase used by someone else in another programme. so you have 51 lay persons who think a genuine trick was played on them.

[beale]

But Dom Tuk, the whole deal with Derren Brown is that he's trying trying to prove that the paranormal doesn't exist and that magic is a sham and more about suggestion than anything otherworldly. Fair play to him for it as well I reckon.

[Lillabet]

I think toonmilo's initial answer is the most likely to be right. Magicians can force cards on people so why not books. Then breaking the spine at the page he wanted Iain Banks to select and guiding him to the paragraph. The suggestion of the word pop in the way he spoke to him was an example of neuro linguistic programming. He seems very skilled at this.

As for all of the 'they're all plants' posts I don't think that is true. I'm not ruling out his using plants ever but fundamentally he's a magician. They tend to use a variety of techniques. I recently (6th May I think) saw his stage show in Reading. One of my friends was called up on stage and he did the guessing her mobile no thing that was in the show the other Friday. Dom Tuk I can guarantee you that Sarah had not ever met or spoken to Derren Brown before. She's rubbish at keeping secrets. She would have told us. That is 100% guaranteed. It was an entertaining evening and judging by the conversations of the people in the bar afterwards Sarah certainkly wasn't the only non plant. There were lots of bemused individuals who'd been on stage.

I also agree with the last post. His whole show is based on acting as though he is connected to the paranormal - all that gothic dress and scenery - whilst stating that no such thing exists...

[toonmilo]

Did anyone ever see the episode (last series i think?) where he took a bloke to the dog track and got paid on a losing ticket. He took the ticket up to the cashier and slammed his hand on the booth and said "THIS IS THE WINNING TICKET!!" and she paid out the money to him!

She did look a bit scared mind you!

 

I particularly liked the one he did this series with Simon Pegg (shaun of the dead) he had a present wrapped behind Simon and got him to say what his ideal xmas present would be. Derren Wittled away for a couple of minutes about how he should think of what his ideal present should be, he put loads of  words into his head without him realising. He said " maybe your ideal present would be a car? Maybe a Beamer? or an Xbox?"

After Derren had finished, Simon said he wanted a BMX!! and lo and behold there was a BMX wrapped up behind him!!

Beamer (BM) or an Xbox (X). He showed how he did it afterwards. Very clever, Simple and Effective!!

[Stevee]

Didn't see this but I belive I have the answer I don't knopw what its called but it works like this.

I want you to pick a number between 1 and 9

I want you to pick No 2 so I say odd or even if you say Odd I discard the odd no's if you say even I keep the even No's

This works all the way along its covered by words and hocus pocus but using this and always selecting what you want to take you can make it look random.

[toonmilo]

Good point Stevee. My dad taught me a card trick when i was younger along the same lines.

You get a pack of cards and shuffle them until you see a picture card or an ace on the bottom of the pile, in this case i will try and make the suspect choose the JACK OF HEARTS. Then put the whole pack of cards in your back pocket (knowing exactly where the Jack of hearts is!)

You then ask the suspect, "What are your 2 favourite suits?" He/she says Clubs and Diamonds, you then say "Ok , so that leaves Hearts and Spades" You then say "Ok, whats your favourite out of Hearts and Spades? The suspect says "Hearts" You say "Ok, thats fine, now whats your 2 favourite cards out of the Jack, Queen, King and Ace of Hearts, and so on etc etc. You are easily conning the person into picking the Jack of Hearts. You then say at the end "How many cards do you want me to pull out of my pocket before i reach the 'Jack of Hearts'"?? They say 6 for example, you take 5 cards from your pocket from the top of the pile and show them to the suspect and then amaze everyone as the 6th card that you pull out is the Jack of Hearts!!