It seems unlikely, but is it possible that some sort of laser etching trick could’ve been done on the balls remotely somehow?
But the people for whom it would be even more harmful is Channel 4. What sort of risk assessment exercise could they have undertaken to decide that giving permission to him to interfere with the lottery draw would be a good idea?
The only clever thing about his claim that he might have interfered with the draw is that, as he pointed out, the whole ‘wisdom of the crowds’ business would then have had to be faked. Which doubtless it was. Thereby further confusing those who had fallen for his ‘explanation’.
I really doubt it, simply because there is ample evidence that it was a split-screen. To anyone that doubts it, how do you explain the sudden movement of the left-hand ball just before Brown crossed over to that side of the screen to reveal them?
It would be an amazing coincidence if it wasn’t a simple video effect, and yet so many aspects of the way the trick was performed were seemingly designed to allow it:
- The balls not revealed until more than 30 seconds after the final number was drawn, giving plenty of time for them to be replaced with the correct numbers.
- Throughout the drawing process, Brown stayed on the opposite side of the screen, well away from the podium with the balls.
- There were no moving objects anywhere near the podium; nothing to reveal whether the image was frozen or actually live.
- Despite making a big thing about having two cameras, Brown only used one of them for the whole duration of the actual trick: the other was only used in the preamble. The other cameraman was then not needed again, so he could easily have been the assistant who replaced the balls.
- The “camera shake” - why use it if not to hide any video jerkiness? Also as others have said, it appears to be artifical digitally created shake.
Then on top of that, there is an artefact (the jumping ball) that can be easily explained if video effects were used (replacing a live image with a still one then cutting back to a new live image), but is very hard to explain otherwise.
I would wager a decent amount of money on this trick being done by video effects. Of course, Brown will not likely ever admit it, so we will never know. But his totally bogus “explanation” show on Friday has lost him a lot of fans among people I know.
The fact that a $200 video editor can do the trick legally is precisely the point. Why would someone with his reputation and credibility resort to such petty trickery? Why would he bother to do anything remotely elaborate (as he has done in the past)? With his bank robbery trick, for example, where the guy was hypnotised into doing it, by your logic it was probably just his friend who was in on it, and that no hypnosis was involved, it was all just his friend acting. Where’s the fun in that?
You’ve offered one example of an unexplained trick, and three examples of explained. This is telling in itself. Furthermore, the Russian Roulette stunt was actually explained by Brown. Of course, whether or not you want to believe it is another matter. On Frost he said that when the person who inserted the bullet into the gun counted down from 1-6, he/she gave a subtle and unconscious sign which chamber he/she had loaded, and therefore Brown picked up on this and avoided it. This is surely possible if he took the time to select particularly easy-to-read people. Also, I think it came out that blanks were used. Though at that range, I’m pretty sure it’d still be dangerous.
But anyway, maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps I’m putting too much faith in Derren Brown by thinking he wouldn’t be so dishonest. Hmm…
Occam’s razor.
He’s a magician. He’s dishonest by definition. He can’t really saw someone in half either but he’ll make you think he can.
that gives a 404 error. I’ve not seen any sudden movement watching the video.
However, assuming the movement exists, it could be the result of normal conjuring tricks, an illusion not involving camera tricks.
It was an attempted double bluff. I think he was hoping most people would think like you; that it had to be more than a simple video trick, and actually was an elaborate sleight-of-hand misdirection.
I guess he didn’t account for the cynical tech-savvy internet audience.
I must admit I do have a bit of a problem with him ‘revealing’ his illusions and producing explanations that are equally as bogus as ‘it’s magic’. He’s done that before with the neuro-linguistic programming shtick and the subliminal advertising/influencing thing, and it’s really only promoting a different kind of woo; and yet, he’s got this reputation as being some sort of debunker, when all he really does is saying, it’s not that magic, it’s this magic.
Now, I don’t expect him to explain his illusions at all, but somehow, a fake explanation seems even worse to me than just leaving everybody to their own speculations.
Occam’s razor can’t be applied to magic tricks, because very very often they depend on thinking ‘No WAY would someone have gone to that much trouble…’.
Works fine on my computer, but I may have it cached. Here, I’ll reupload it. It’s definitely not just a video artefact, either, as you can see that the 39 ball really was sitting up a little before he turned it round, whereas in the shots at the start of the trick all the balls were level. On the YouTube video, watch from about 5:39 - the ball gradually rises over a second or so as the image is wiped in. It’s easier to see in full-screen. The animated GIF I linked to shows a hard “jump” because it compares shots from several seconds before and after the wipe.
Anyway, the trailers for the show seemed to be a pretty open admission that he’s happy to use video effects - see this one for instance, where not only was Derren’s right arm replaced by that of a professional juggler, but two extra balls were inserted by CGI! (See this post from the pro juggler who “starred” in it on a juggling forum here.)
I think that he has built his career on the idea that while today’s audiences are not going to fall for corny “magic” explanations any more, they will lap up pseudo-psychology stuff such as NLP and hypnosis, and some of them will believe it. But I’m sure it’s all part of the trick. At least, I don’t believe that the safety of the Russian Roulette trick, for example, was dependent on him noticing a flicker of an eyelid in one of his marks. However the trick worked, it would have been physically impossible for him to actually shoot himself.
That is what was missing with the lottery trick. The the usual “mind control” explanations were half-hearted and ludicrous, so we don’t get the fun of tantalising ourselves with the thought that, just maybe, Derren Brown has some kind of super powers.
I would have thought the biggest giveaway to the fact he wasn’t “Predicting” the lotto numbers was the lack of headlines about how the same bloke had won Lotto several times in the last couple of months.
Or, to put it another way, if someone actually knew how to predict Lotto numbers, the last thing they’d do is tell other people about it…
While I am a huge Derren Brown fan, I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of people who have unfortunately lost some respect for Brown as a result of this stunt. Any fan of Brown’s debunking exploits would instantly have recognised the “wisdom of crowds” explanation as complete nonsense. What’s worse is that he heavily promoted the “fact” that he would explain how he did the trick, but then completely failed to do so.
I’m still a fan of Brown, and I am looking forward to this week’s Event (Brown will (literally) attempt to “glue” viewers to their seats), but here’s hoping it’s all uphill from here.
I think this video is the definitive explanation and is it just my decrepit eyes or is the last ball substituted slightly bigger than the others?
Maybe he had Nick Perry helping him?
Night, so be it, in post 64 you have attributed a quote to me which is actually from Ximenean. That’s an easy and doubtless innocent mistake. But there are rules against that sort of thing around here, which is why it’s always worth taking extra care when quoting.
My mistake, sorry.
But sometimes it can: ‘no WAY could it be that simple’. IOW what GuanoLad said.
Totally seconded.