Derren Brown: Archive
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From: sin_taxi
Date: Mon Nov 4, 2002 6:37pm
Subject: Re: methodology
Yes I agree. I think that Derren is the king of bulls**t. He is a
magician the same as David Blaine or the Great Soprendo. The only
difference is, his "psychological" angle makes people think they
know how it works and they then credit him with a lot more ability.
On E4 he was shuffling playing cards with one hand and doing fancy
cuts. He also has a couple of videos and a book containing plenty of
sleight of hand card tricks!! Sorry, but nobody other than a
magician is going to sit and learn how to do those things with
cards. Also, if you can shuffle with one hand, you can probably also
invisibly switch a card in your top pocket (like the thing at Oxford
Students Union). Derren attends (and speaks at) magicians
conferences, gets reviewed on magicians websites and a friend of
mine tells me that when he saw Derren perform a few short years ago
he was doing the cigarette through pound coin trick that you can buy
online for about £30! When Mind Control 1 came out I remember
reading that Derren was an ex-magician. Not so! He is still a
magician and always will be. He can't photoread and the thing about
how he memorises cards is just complete piffle.
Not that being a magician is a bad thing, its just funny that people
don't see that his TV shows are magic shows. A colleague at work
thought that the Mind Control specials were factual documentaries.
--- In a previous message Susan Lawly wrote:
> As usual, the techniques that Derren describes in his intros,
although
> interesting and useful to many people, have very little to do with
the
> method actually used in what are quite simple tricks. They are
merely very
> clever smokescreens and server as misdirection - they also succeed
in
> elevating his seeming 'abilities', for example, that he has a
prodigious
> memory or that is very skilled in memorising, or that he's an
expert in NLP
> and so forth. If you don't know that the casino work is based on
card magic,
> then presumably it must mean he really has the amazing memory
skills he's
> talked about, right? If you don't know the trick, he must be
guessing the
> coin in the hand through an amazing ability to interpret non-verbal
> communication? Wrong. Also, remember these are very careful TV
edits on a
> big budget, we don't see the failed attempts, and more often than
not, the
> effects by themselves are relatively easily achieved.
>
> However, whereas the methodology is very simple, Derren has a
unique
> braggadocio that coupled with a superb presentation that is very
> accomplished indeed, makes him the amazing performer that he
undoubtedly is. --- In a previous message cowenpa wrote:
> > Well much of it was the same but we learn also that Derren has a
> > master memory. He uses an old roman trick called loci whereby
for
> > remembering cards he has a card room with 52 objects. To
remember
>
> YESSSS!! That's it!! I knew I had studied the technique that derren
> was using, but I forgot the name!! Well, apparently a record
breaker
> used this technique to remember 6 packs of cards order. Seemed
> impossible for me to contemplate at the time, but now, it doesn't.
> Usually though, it's not a room that items are mnumonically linked,
> it's usually on 'long walks'. But anyhow, same result!!
| Replies | Author | Yahoo! ID | Date | Size |
| 3549: Re: methodology | mikebrown422000 | mikebrown422000 | Thu 20/03/2003 | 3 KB |
