Very clever. I wonder how he did it...won't bother guessing though. Half the fun of these tricks is not knowing.

Lame.. looks like his assistant screwed up and he will forever be the lame digital video trickster.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2519/3906836328_caa457c441_o.gif

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqAt2akPHJ8

What is the .gif trying to show?

The gif shows the difference in the ball placement just before Derren crosses from the right to the left of the screen and after.

This is how he did it (it's really rather simple despite sounding elaborate):

1. Derren records an intro sequence where he's standing outside and walks into the studio to the television. He waves at a second camera, and there is a cut to it (the only cut in the entire sequence) that shows he is being filmed by a handheld camera. He then waves his hands in the air in an exagerrated gesture.

2. Derren moves out of the way and they then place a completely stationary tripod camera in front of the studio set up and record the whole thing for 10 minutes with no action.

3. When it's almost time to go live Derren stands next to the television with his hands in the air while being broadcast by the stationary tripod camera, watching the monitor for it to cut to him live.

4. A post process shake is applied to the entire live stream to give the illusion that Derren is being filmed by the handheld camera. It's important to remember that he's not, it is the static camera on a tripod.

5. The intro sequence cuts to Derren on the static camera; Derren sees this on the monitor and lowers his arms. Derren is now live.

6. Derren talks for a bit then walks over to the television. At this point, the left half of the prerecorded actionless segment is overlayed over the left half of the screen.

7. Derren turns on the television and watches the numbers being drawn and does his usual showmanship. When the numbers are drawn he then takes a moment start writing them down on a piece of card.

8. An assistant now places stickers of the numbers in order on the balls. You cannot see the assistant because of the overlay. The balls are tightly packed into the perspex tray to ensure there is no movement that will be spotted when the overlay is faded out.

Unfortunately, the tight packing and touching of the balls makes one of them (the 39 ball on the left) push up a bit so that it's no longer resting on the bottom of the tray.

9. The assistant leaves shot left and the overlay has a 1 second fadeout (around 5:06 on this video but the quality is very low to see the difference on the 39 ball).

10. The post process shaking is then stopped (5:09) and a cameraman takes control of the tripod. Derren begins walking over to the left, hesitating for a moment as he seems unsure if the timing is right (if the overlay is still there it'll obviously be disastrous when he disappears behind it). He then reveals the balls and is hailed as our new psychic overlord.

I was hoping for something better from the explanation show, it bordered on the pathetic.

Lost a lot of respect for Derren.

*fail

Adding video to channels (Fail) - requested by ElJardinero.

I prefer it if people don't give away how a magic trick is done, whether or not that is really how it worked.  It ruins the illusion.  It's like telling somebody the ending of a movie that they haven't seen yet, or the answer to a riddle they haven't solved.

I respect magicians for inventing tricks in the first place, as well as the art they bring to the performance.

Magicians pretend to be real, and that's a problem because magical thinking is a big problem for humans.

Even if the audience says they know magic doesn't exist, it's still like watching WWE and letting yourself believe it's not a fairy tale. Don't cloud your intelligence.

I was disappointed by the explanation too.

Having been a long term watcher of Derren's stuff I've always respected that he gives no illusion to his work being anything other than illusion.

Often he shows how he does things, and his shows are more about the interest of how things can be done. The amazement comes from his skill of his craft. Other times he shows 'and here's the other takes where it didn't actually work'.

In addition, he's done shows that focus on criticizing people who genuinely try to pass off illusion as fact, such as psychics and fortune tellers; particularly because of their negative moral impact.

This is the first time I've seen him give a solution to one of his tricks that is not grounded in logic and reality and instead invokes the use of the paranormal. It comes off as both cheap and hyprocritical; especially when many people had already called the explanation before the show.

Two other things are a dead give away. The odd motion of the handi-cam... it is clearly robotic as no human could continue to move so linearly in these odd random lines. It really bothered me watching the video before I even knew what it was about.. I'm like something is up with purposeful weird motion.

Also, there are two moments when the shot goes completely steady. In the begining and then after he writes down the last number and pauses.

I think perhaps they shot it twice, once with a robot moving through a pre-done scripted movement and a second time live on the same robotic rig, but it allow video screening to hide the left half.

I think another way to pull this off is with a laser that etches in the numbers. Or you could also take an ink jet printer rig and put it on the bottom of the plastic box, even the far side.. and have it wired to squirt a numeral on command.

>> ^rychan:
What is the .gif trying to show?


That some images are more compressed than others.

The explanation video he does a long segment on the wisdom of crowds http://www.videosift.com/video/Wisdom-of-Crowds-Derren-Brown and tries to pretend 24 people guessed the lottery numbers by averaging 24 guesses.

This is the most retarded thing ever and really makes me lose all respect for the guy.
Imagine the lottery is one number from 1 to 10. If you took 24 guesses then the ONLY way a group could pick 1 is if nearly everyone picked 1.. or low numbers (ie. 10 people picked 2, 14 picked 1) In average the group picks numbers in the middle. It is a gaussian distribution when you average 24 randomly chosen numbers... (kind of like craps odds)

However, the lottery draw has equal chances of picking ANY number. So it would be impossible to pick lottery numbers this way, even if crowds COULD guess the correct number when averaged... This method could never work. It might work with candy in a jar, where people can guess over and under, but never a lottery number.

-----

He then goes on to suggest he rigged the lottery with weighted balls so they would be lighter and his numbers were pre-chosen months ahead as an insider snuck in these balls, and then removed them after the lottery. Of course this is stupid because someone would have played those numbers, and it's dumb to suggest rigged lottery, as obviously people would have tried it before and gotten rich.

Disappointingly lowbrow and unsophisticated for Derren Brown. What a shame.

He did this by freezing the left side of the screen.

I completely agree with the sentiments here.

His explanation show bordered on the farcical and actually made me angry as i watched the program. Here's how it played out:

1. He began by making a guess based on a year's worth of lottery numbers, which came up bad, non correct (iirc)
2. "Wisdom of crowds" introduced. Some hocum about an average of many person's guesses will be more accurate. As explained before, this is only even realistic when something can be deduced, not random. Furthermore, an average will always be balanced towards the middle of the range rather than either end of the range.
3. He got 24 other people to make a guess based on a year's worth of lottery numbers and averaged the results, 1 ball correct.
4. He decided that "the desire to win" or "the anticipation of winning" was affecting their guesses.
5. He got 24 other people to make a guess based on a year's worth of lottery numbers, averaged the result but did NOT show them the guesses/results until after the lottery finished "thereby removing any hope of winning." This is blatantly bullshit - declaring the result 5 minutes later than the result does not affect their desire to get it right. 3 balls correct.
6. He introduces "unconscious writing" where people try to write without thinking, as though some energy will channel through them and write something through their hand.
7. Same thing only add in unconscious writing to the mix.

And basically that's it, the method he used to get 6. There is of course a large collection of piles of bullshit with this theory.

Very annoying and i did lose respect for derren over this show

He says he can't legally show the numbers until after the drawing, by why not show us two or three then? That would have at least made it impressive.

Of course he can "legally" show his GUESS at the numbers before the drawing. For one thing, they probably stop selling tickets at the top of the hour.. like 11pm, and the drawing is in the middle / end of the news, like 11:20pm for example.

So, there are no tickets being sold and no reason not to show his guess.

To be even more stupid, why didn't he just BUY A LOTTERY TICKET and then flip the paper around and show that he WON THE LOTTERY. Then when it is really in the news the next day, psychic wins lottery, he can tour every talk show and explain his bullshit "method" he used to win.

Finally this 24 person average bullshit is so insane. Think about it.. ONE OF THE NUMBERS WAS 2. Freaking the number TWO. In order for the random scribble method or whatever to work, that means ALL 24 people would have had to have guessed like 1, 2, or 3. If One person guessed a number over 20.. it is almost impossible. So you would need like 14 people to guess the number would be 1 or 2. And then the sum of the next ten guesses would have to add up to less then like 30.

It's nearly impossible.

Like if you had 24 people guess a number from 1 to 10...
For everyone to guess an average of 2 or less.. is like 0.2% or less. And the lottery is like up to 47 (?)

Why didn't he buy a fucking ticket, you nerds?! It would have cost a fucking pittance if he was even reasonably hopeful he would get them right. And don't give me that "legalities" excuse; the BBC would scoff at such an accusation that their lotto was corruptible. Why didn't he have the lotto numbers recorded on actual ticket that was in plain sight, but unreadable? The answer to this question is so obvious it makes giving a shit about how he did it moot.

Why the hell is digital video trickery considered "magic" nowadays?

Everything Derren Brown does is a weak sham. Everybody that's disappointed is just now buying into the fact that he's just a trickster? Most of his tricks involve people...an a LOT of them actors...KNOWN actors.

...just because he's not as fruity and stupid as Chris Angel, this guy has gotten away with way more crap that Chris got crucified for.

I think this is the point were Derren Brown jumped the shark.

I really don't understand all of the negativity around this trick.  I haven't seen the explanation video, and by all accounts it was a disappointment, but this is quite a well-crafted trick.  Just because some people figured out how it was done does not make it bad — if you want, you can find explanations to every magic trick in existence.  The art is in the design and performance of the magic.

>> ^arvana:
I really don't understand all of the negativity around this trick.  I haven't seen the explanation video, and by all accounts it was a disappointment, but this is quite a well-crafted trick.  Just because some people figured out how it was done does not make it bad — if you want, you can find explanations to every magic trick in existence.  The art is in the design and performance of the magic.


I think the objection is that in this day and age trick photography just isn't considered 'magic'. Post the exact video, with the exact same quality, on youtube with anybody else in Derren's place and the few that bother to notice will simply yell fake.

Excuse me, Rotty, it's Chirss Angel. The exrtra s is for sultry.

*dead

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