Last night, Derren Brown predicted all six lottery numbers, which you can watch here.
On Friday, he may or may not (the press releases are a bit vague) reveal exactly how he did it. Personally, I suspect Friday will also be part of the act, rather than an actual reveal.
To me, it looks like a camera trick. The ‘pre-printed’ balls are on the left side of the screen, he stands on the right side of the screen during the draw. The camera work is wobbly up until the point 2 minutes and 5 seconds into the youtube clip, which I suspect is part of the trick. You’re supposed to think, ‘Well, it can’t be split screen because you’d need the camera to stay steady,’ but surely these days it’s possible to put a camera on a device that moves it in a pre-recorded way?
Yes it did - the lottery draw is always shown live by the BBC, there are all sorts of restrictions on it that were alluded to by Derren Brown last night. He encouraged people to flick over to the BBC to check that the picture was the same: I did, it seemed to be.
I’m really looking forward to the show tomorrow whatever level of explanation we get. I hope it isn’t split screen camera, but hey ho… I’m a huge fan of his in any case, so I always watch his stuff. I’m the sort of person that actually doesn’t need to have the explanation for everything he does, but I’m always interested in an ‘oooh, that’s clever’ kind of way. I think the way he uses misdirection and psychology is brilliant.
There were a couple of things he stressed last night which I suspect will have been important for the trick to work, even if I never find out why. For instance, he made a big deal of the broadcast restrictions I mention above - he wouldn’t show the numbers he had chosen before the draw, although the balls were (theoretically) visible all through the draw, just not the numbers written on them. He said that this was because the lottery licensing means the BBC has to be the first to reveal the numbers.
His encouraging viewers to switch between channels was interesting, plus he also said that he had only managed to get permission to broadcast a couple of minutes of the draw itself, and that was through filming a tv showing the BBC feed. Again, it seemed far too convoluted to be insignificant.
As to the OP - not a clue, but I’m looking forward to finding out.
What you said, sandra_nz is exactly what I thought of. That camera you mentioned is used in a lot of stuff now. How do you think they pull off the shaky cam stuff with CGI in it?
If we are right, that means that Brown will not be showing us how the trick really worked, as he claims that it easy to do at home.
I’m assuming he didn’t actually predict the results at all. He just got the numbers on the balls after the fact. Laser, LED numbers or something similar I reckon.
Definitely a split screen as far as I am concerned, using a motion-control camera rig to give the appearance of “random” camera movement.
Notice how after the preamble, Brown stayed on the right-hand side of the screen, by the TV. At some point, a prerecorded shot of the stationary podium was overlayed over the left-hand side of the screen, with the motion-control camera replicating the “random” movements of the right-hand side. Then, while Brown procrastinated, writing the numbers down on the board after they were announced, his assistant was busy replacing the blank balls in the podium with the correct numbered ones. Just before he walked over to the podium, the feed was swapped back to the live shot of the podium with the new balls.
Unfortunately for Brown, the assistant messed up slightly and put one of the numbered balls (the left hand one, or right one when “revealed”) in incorrectly, so it sat higher. If you watch the YouTube video, you can see the left-hand ball “jump” slightly as they swap back to the live feed at about 6:06.
Someone on another forum made this animated GIF that clearly shows the “before and after” positions of the ball.
A bit of a cheap trick really. I much prefer real sleight-of-hand illusions to those relying on technology.
Edit: in fact, the GIF seems to show that the left-hand ball is actually slightly larger than the rest. I wonder if Brown did this deliberately as a “giveaway” that he could highlight in the explanation show, so you can see when the feeds were swapped?
Actually, ignore that last edit. You can see during the close-up after the “reveal” that the ball is the same size, just sitting higher. So I vote for plain goof rather than whistle-blow!
I haven’t been able to identify exactly when the feed was swapped for the first time, from live to recorded, but I suspect it is at about 1:58 in the YouTube link I gave. The camera shake seems to freeze for a split second.
Incidentally, I wouldn’t mind betting that on Friday’s show he will claim that the numbers were hidden in the TV commercials ahead of his show… the commercials seem to have ooh, about 49 hidden numbers in them!
However he did it, I hope it’s not done by camera trickery. That would be a bit…cheap. He’s better than that. I do want to go ‘Oooh’ we he reveals how he did it. And I hope he does reveal it because if he doesn’t, I think most people will just assume that it was down to fancy camera work. I want to be impressed, damnit!
I don’t think a motion-controlled camera is required. It’s a (firmly) fixed camera, and the camera motion is an effect. Run the live feed and the recorded through the same effect to synchronise the camera shake. Some guy on YouTube has already posted a nice little demo, which I guess backs up Brown’s claim that “you can do this at home, folks.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes up with some pseudoscience bullshit explanation, rather than admitting the camera trick. His “explanations” are as much part of the trick as the illusion itself, sometimes. Like the one about planting subliminal images around London to suggest ideas to the advertising creatives. Yeah, right.
I did enjoy watching the repeats of his live stuff before and after “The Event”
The guy is the best I’ve ever seen in terms of what he does and also how he does it. A showman at the very top of his field. There really si no better in the world IMO.
You’re right, of course. Motion-control is a bit too over-the-top.
Still I don’t think there’s much doubt that it was simply a split-screen effect using a recorded video feed. Barring the split-screen thing, Keanu managed something similar 15 years ago.
It’s at the start, when they cut to the other camerman, then ostensibly back to the first. In fact, the whole preamble is recorded, then when they cut back they are live on the fixed camera (with the recorded overlay of the left-hand side of the screen), using the camera shake effect to make it look like it’s still the handheld that the first cameraman was using.
[edit] actually, that’s not right, because Brown walks around the numbers stand a bit, doesn’t he? But I do think they use the second cameraman to transition from the recorded handheld camera to the live, fixed camera that they use for the effect.
Deren is a skilled illusionist, who uses misdirection and showmanship etc.
In this case, he’s not predicting the lottery numbers. He’s waiting for them to be announced, then quickly copying them onto the hidden side of some balls (or simply switching in the required balls).
I don’t know how he did it, but presumably on Friday he’ll reveal the switch.
I had the pleasure of being on his chess show, where he played a bunch of top English players simultaneously.
On that show his main effort was playing ‘mirror chess’, where he had to remember precisely about 300 chess moves in batches of 5. This isn’t too difficult for an experienced player, but is a real memory feat otherwise (and from my personal knowledge Derren knows little about chess).
He also made an ‘impossible’ prediction, which he achieved by doing an envelope switch on me. :eek:
It’s a real pleasure to watch skilled people like Derren and Penn / Teller.
As you say, there has to be a transition, because Brown walks behind the podium during the “single” camera shot.
I think the second cameraman is just the assistnt who puts the balls in place. IIRC this second camera isn’t used at all after the intro, as the whole lot is filmed from the fixed camera at the back of the studio.
I really am intrigued to see how Derren Brown will spin this tonight. The split-screen/fake camera shake explanation seems virtually proven to me, but I do know what people mean when they suggest that it is too pedestrian for DB. But even some ludicrous explanation involving, I don’t know, fanciful number theory or something, would seem too pat for him. His presentation is more interesting than that, even if the illusions are standard conjuring tricks dressed up as something else. This time, it’s like a standard conjuring trick, not dressed up at all. Not his style, as others have said.
Amid all the wild and impractical theories circulating on other forums, there is one school of thought that appeals to me – that this is all part of some meta-trick, and even that Brown deliberately made the basic lottery trick a bit obvious. So those of us who are patting ourselves on the back for working out the split-screen technique are, while not incorrect, still in for some kind of surprise. Maybe I’m just falling for the DB mystique a bit too much. Repeat to myself: he’s just Paul Daniels with cool patter.
Well written, and I agree. I too suspect that what we saw is just a meta-trick. I am anticipating that Brown will appear on Friday and say something like…
“But if that is how I did it (use of split screen)… then how did I manage to sneak those numbers on to page 7 of Wednesday’s Daily Mail?”… or some such.
I’ve watched this several times, and I don’t think the far-left ball actually “flicks” up (in between him saying “twenty-three” and “twenty-eight”. It seems to rise slightly over several frames. I think it’s more likely something mechanical rather than camera trickery.
