Derren Brown: Archive
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From: The One
Date: Fri Jan 10, 2003 10:54pm
Subject: Re: [Derren Brown] Re: Photoreading
Rob,
In essence then, you are talking about presenting a fantasy, the fantasy a
particular trick sells, that is more up to date. Awe inspiring but at least
believable. Hence the psychological impact on the audience is greatly
increased, even if the trick isn't so different.
If the skill is real, and yet fantastic, all the better.
That's a great way of looking at it. Explains at least to some extent why
after years of being relatively bored by magic on the telly, I watched
Derren, and thought Wow.
Richard
>From: Rob Dobson
>Reply-To:
>To:
>Subject: Re: [Derren Brown] Re: Photoreading
>Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 07:24:39 -0800 (PST)
>
>Sorry if it sounded stroppy. The 'fine, I'm sure...'
>was supposed to be sarcastic. It was a bad morning...
>
>I think in the context of what he's talking about in
>the video, (and I'm quoting from memory again..), he
>seems to be talking about putting mentalism into an
>understandable context. This is again the theme for
>his second book, that is, putting magic (as a broad
>umbrella term for mentalism ,card effects, etc) into a
>context that isn't patronising to the spectator.
>
>I realise this isn't a magic board (which surprised me
>at first I must confess), but bear with me a second.
>
>A lot of magicians present their effects as if they
>have some form of supernatural power. For example, the
>coin vanishes due to my amazing supernatural powers.
>Now any intelligent spectator knows that this is not
>the case, that actually there is some sleight of hand
>going on; in other words, that its a trick.
>
>Mentalism suffers from the same problem. In general
>mentalism demonstrations, there is nothing magical
>happening. For example, imagine that mentalism was a
>real skill, a genuine ability latent within us all.
>There would then be nothing magical about mindreading;
>it would just be the demonstration of an innate
>natural skill. Yeah, you can read my mind. So what?
>
>So take the normal demonstration of a book test. A
>person picks a book, that person picks a page and a
>line, concentrates on a word, and the performer,
>(after holding his hand to his head and closing his
>eyes), announces the word. So far, so tedious. After
>all, this man supposedly can read minds, so whats so
>good about that? Why did the spectator have to use a
>book to choose a word, why not just think of a word?
>It doesn't really make any sense in the real world,
>and spectators have difficulty relating to it. THey
>don't believe in the mindreaders supposed ability,
>there must be a trick to it. To a reasonably
>intelligent audience member, its insulting to their
>intelligence.
>
>Now if you were to take that effect and give to the
>audience a way in which they can see it might be done,
>a genuinely skillful way, then the effect changes.
>You're demonstrating a particular skill in
>photoreading, a particular skill which has no doubt
>either taken you years to develop or you were born
>with an amazing memory. The method could be exactly
>the same, and yet the audience can see, or at least
>think they can see, the process. The effect the
>changes completely in their eyes.
>
>The same applies to the lifting effect, the
>advertising execs effect, the gamblers effect in
>MC1,etc. All traditional 'magic' effects, but
>presented in a way in which the audience believes that
>they can see what is happening; making the magic more
>'real' in the audiences eyes.
>
>Another example to make my point a bit more: say I do
>a card effect where I deal myself 4 aces, or whatever.
>I could present that as the magical transformation of
>the cards into whatever I wanted them to be, however
>that would never be believable to anyone with an ounce
>of common sense. I could instead present it as my
>amazing skill with cards, from when I was 3 sitting at
>my fathers knee in the back rooms of gambling dens
>across the world, watching and learning from the
>gamblers and cheats, to the point where I had such
>uncanny skill with cards that I'd been banned from all
>casinos. The same effect, but the second presentation
>has so much more to offer to the audience. They can
>believe my supposed explanation about what I'm doing,
>and it makes the effect more real.
>
>Having re-read through that I realise it was probably
>more suited to a magic discussion board, so apologies
>if it was tedious to anyone. I hope not. As a
>magician, rather than hypnotist, hypnotherapist,
>NLP'er, etc, I look at these effects perhaps slightly
>differently, but I am learning a lot from those of you
>in these fields, and thank you all for that.
>
>Rob
>
>p.s. Now that isn't to say that there are no effects
>in these programmes that aren't genuinely
>psychologically based in method. There definitely are,
>and as you rightly say, he is exceptionally skilled in
>this.
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