Re: derren brown miracle

I love most of Derren Brown's work. He is a unique showman and has his heart in the right direction when he attacks and exposes many of the fraudulent charlatans active in the world today.

He does however let me down occasionally with some of his shows, as if he is struggling for new ideas and material and then lapses into bad practice.

The "Miracle" show I have just watched. I am no stranger to magic tricks, I can do plenty myself so most of what he does is simple stuff often just wrapped up in lots of showmanship.

The light bulb was very clearly just sugar glass. It was obvious from looking at it. It is not difficult to form sugar glass into any shape so I found that "trick" somewhat pointless myself. The crunch factor sensationalises it a bit but at no stage could anyone believe either of them were eating actual glass.

This is a key problem with some magic tricks. A BAD trick is one that clearly shows something that is impossible to the extent that it can not be believed in any shape or form. A GOOD trick is one that looks impossible but which has elements of doubt and uncertainty in it leaving people to speculate on how it was done.

The light bulb trick was in the BAD category because plainly, Derren could never be allowed to put a piece of real glass in the mouth of a member of the audience. It was clearly sugar glass. Note that there was absolutely no reason for the apple slices to be there, they formed no real part of the trick. They were there to hide the sugary taste in the contestants mouth. Without the apple the girl would have instantly realised that it was sugar and her entire set of expressions from that point on would have looked relaxed and "knowing". By making her eat apple slices BEFORE the glass and DURING the glass Derren gave her taste buds an excuse for that sweet taste. Overall, a BAD trick.

The other main criticism I have of Derren and many magicians is their claim that they do not use camera trickery when clearly they do. It comes down to definition. I deem it camera trickery when the TV view of what is going on is suddenly interrupted at a crucial moment with say a shot of the audience.

In the "Miracle" this happened with the Consequences balloon trick. Derren tells the girl that there is something inside the balloon. There is, but it is NOT the piece of paper containing the answers. It is just another bit of rubber balloon. So when the balloon is popped, it just looks like a piece of the burst balloon.

The actual piece of paper with the answers on it is in Derren's hand and has been handed to him at some stage during the trick. After he tells the girl to hold the balloon out straight and vertical in her LEFT hand he turn his side to the audience and make some drama of pulling out a large pin from his pocket with his LEFT hand. At the same time he is preparing/palming the answer sheet in his right hand.

When he walks over to the girl to hand her the pin he will have stuck the answer sheet to the back of the balloon.
Unfortunately viewers don't get to see this crucial moment because camera trickery is used to cut away from the action and show a view of the audience for no reason whatsoever other than to conceal the trick. VERY bad practice imo.

The girls pops the balloon and sure enough the paper lightly stuck to the back side of it goes flying across the room as if it had been inside.

Again the problem with the trick is that it is TOO impossible. To correctly match the entire set of words randomly chosen by the audience is impossible. Derren makes a poor attempt to mask it a little by pretending to mistake Dog Bed for Sun Bed, and tries to leave the audience thinking hmmm he got a part of it wrong but how the hell did he get the rest right?

Overall, another BAD trick.

Moving on

The nail in the bag trick.

A VERY old trick, performed by 1000s of magicians the world over. Like many tricks there are many different ways to do it. You can have gimmicked bags, gimmicked blocks of wood and nails, use technology to identify the correct bag and much much more.

Derren does it quite simply and people should really have worked it out quickly. Here's the scoop.

Firstly notice that the bag that initially fell off the table when the girl walked around, did so entirely by itself. She never came into contact with it. That was all part of the set up. That was the only bag that contained a real nail.

If you have a recording of it watch it again.

Note that the nail Derren shows is real and is very bright and shiny.

Now the trick moves on to the part where he manipulates the bags. Derren HAS to do this. He makes the excuse of doing it so the audience can't see which is the bag with the nail but actually what he does is REMOVE THE REAL NAIL from THE bag and replace it with a rubber nail.

Then he gets the girl to mix them up (which is pointless) and off he goes.

At this stage it doesn't matter which bag the girl chooses. Every bag contains a wooden block and rubber nail at this point so every bag is completely harmless.

When only one bag is left, notice that Derren pulls it out using the tip of the nail and notice that what was once a bright shiny nail, is now a dark rubber nail.

Simple.

All the video clips shown before the trick are either fake or real attempts using silly different methods which were not foolproof.


This is bread and butter stuff for me personally because I have a love of magic but crucially this links to a life skill.

If you are able to exercise a healthy sense of scepticism and to NOT take things at face value and then learn to think and enquire you can solve many of life's conundrums.

Busting magic tricks and illusions is fairly easy but it is the foundation on which busting other things is built.

If anyone wants explanations of any other tricks I will happily do my best.

Re: derren brown miracle

True, but some folk are so gullible they don't seem to realise that.

Re: derren brown miracle

Yep but Derren's entire ethos is to snap people out of their gullible Sheeple stupor by demonstrating that he can pull off those seeming miracles using his own mix of skills all the while assuring people that there is no magic going on.

What he does it for the most part, great. He wakes people up from the criminality and fraudulence of evangelical preachers, clairvoyants, homeopathy and the like. He demonstrated the futility of gambling and gave people a sudden sharp taste of what it is like to lose.

At the same time he is very entertaining.

He is a showman with an ethos and imo has his heart in the right place.

Re: derren brown miracle

Thanks realist interesting.

Other questions , how did he make the girl in the audience collapse ?

The guy who flew up on the stage , surely someone would know if they had been hooked up,

Re: derren brown miracle

Realist has confirmed what I said.

I know little of the practical uses of sugar glass, but I see no reason why it cannot be formed into a light bulb shape. This could be then constructed into a working light bulb. To work for any appreciable length of time there must be an inert gas inside and, again, this is perfectly possible to do. For how long sugar glass can withstand the heat of a working tungsten filament, I don't know, but the thing was not lit for very long anyway.

Oh, and the crunching sound of the sugar glass would, I think, sound very similar to real glass.

Re: derren brown miracle

How did get a small number of the audience to write the lines of Camilla holding a small dog sitting on a cucumber etc.... straight out of the Mail on Sunday?

How did he know where the various people were experiencing the pain - the dislocated knee, the heart virus etc..