Ah, a video demonstration!

Youtube user mutatedmonty posted a video showing some of the technical tricks Derren Brown used to pull off his lottery prediction. Shows how low-tech it was!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqAt2akPHJ8

If you want the whole explanation, I posted it two posts back. Now all we need is for some enterprising individual with a little time on their hands to recreate his whole video. I hope they use a fake beard, for that authentic touch. Let me know and I'll post a link.

Another way of watching a youtube video

If your connection is a bit dodgy like mine, you might want to download a copy of the Derren Brown video from the last post.

I suggest you use KeepVid for this; it seems to work very well, and gives you the option of .flv or .mp4 videos, where available.

The URL for the Brown video is below:

http://keepvid.com/?url=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DQG-5qebwflA

How Derren Brown predicted the lottery

On 9 September 2009, Derren Brown predicted the results of the UK national lottery live on air. You can see the broadcast here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG-5qebwflA

If you understand the basic rule of magic - misdirection - and you know anything about making TV, it's not too hard to see how it was done. Below is my explanation, originally posted on facebook on 10 September. I've put it here so that it's easier to read. In the first paragraph I predicted that Brown would not admit to how the trick was done, and, sure enough, he didn't. I'll debunk his fake explanation in a future post.

Okay, I've worked it out. I will make one prediction though: this is not what Derren Brown will admit to on Friday, unless he's changed his MO. He often pretends to give his secrets away, but remember that this guy is an illusionist, and often the supposed 'secret' is actually part of the illusion. (This is actually the cleverest part of his act, making the explanation part of the illusion. Real postmodern magic.)

The trick is basically a split screen trick - someone is changing the balls on the left of the screen while Derren is making notes next to the TV on the right. We don't see this, of course, because the left hand side of the screen as we see it is actually a pre-recorded picture. There is some clever misdirection here, though, with camera shake, but I'll come onto that later.

Let me explain the illusion here. The illusion is that Derren Brown is in a studio with only two cameras, one of which is handheld and a bit wobbly, and the other of which is a long way away. The broadcast is live, as we can see because the lottery numbers are coming up live on the feed from the BBC, which we can confirm by changing channel. The balls on which Derren's prediction has previously been written are in plain view throughout the live broadcast, proving that there is no swapping going on. There is no audience in the studio because they might be able to profit from the prediction; the prediction cannot be announced before the results because announcement of the numbers is copyright. (This last point is very weak; it would have been better to say that Channel 4 wouldn't allow them to announce the numbers following legal advice as they feel they could be implicated in gambling fraud. If you need any plausible misdirection in future, Derren, I'll always be happy to oblige.)

The numbers are announced, and Derren writes them on a bit of card, then turns off the TV feed and walks over to the balls, turns them around and - lo! - his prediction was magically correct. Now watch his TV show on Friday!

How it is done:

There are five shots in the broadcast, the first four of which are pre-recorded. In the first shot, on steadicam, Derren Brown states the exact date and time of the broadcast, as if that part is indeed live - misdirection 1 - then is followed into the studio by the cameraman. The second shot is a long shot from the second camera showing the two enter the studio; it only lasts one second but sets up the idea that the studio is empty apart from Derren and the two cameras, to be later confirmed as misdirection 2.

Shot 3 is back to the steadicam, as Derren is followed across to the place where he is to watch the lottery draw. Here he points out that there are only two cameras and to make the point we are shown shot 4, a long shot where we can see both Derren and the steadicam operator. This proves to the audience that there are only two cameras in the studio - misdirection 3. Derren waves to the long camera and is still waving when we come back to shot 5.

This is all pre-recorded, but because he is still waving in shot 5, the action looks continuous - misdirection 4. Furthermore, shot 5 is from the same position as shot 3, so it looks like we're back to the steadicam. This impression is enhanced by the rather wobbly camerawork - misdirection 5.

Shot 5 is not from a steadicam; it is from a locked down studio camera which is not moving at all. The left half of the picture has been prerecorded and can be faded in when Derren goes to stand next to the television; as the audience think that they can see the balls at all times, they think that it is impossible that someone is changing them to match the numbers as they come off the BBC. If the picture did not move, however, the audience would suspect a split screen straight away, so some clever TV trickery is used, taking the rock steady picture from the locked down camera / locked down camera and pre-recorded picture on the left and adding shake and wobble to it digitally by basically moving the picture around on the screen. This is not at all difficult to do, as anyone who has used Final Cut will tell you (though it's only fairly recently that it could be done to a real time signal).

When the numbers have been announced on the BBC, there are two ways in which the ball changing accomplice is given time to make the balls neat and get out of the way. First, Derren talks about how the bonus ball doesn't matter (why? are seven predictions one too many?) and then he writes all the numbers on his bit of card before switching off the TV and walking towards the balls. At this point the locked down camera is unlocked and instead pans to the balls and zooms in on them, showing the correct prediction, and proving that the camera is not locked down (which it isn't, any more).

Of course, if you do a trick like this, there are bound to be tiny little errors that give the game away. Here are the tells:

1. Shots 2 and 4 (the long shots) serve no purpose but to convince the audience at home that the rest of the broadcast is on only one camera. This is mighty fishy, suggesting it is misdirection.

2. Shot 4 is very long, which makes it very hard indeed to spot any continuity errors between shots 4 and 5; we assume continuity because he is waving his hands in the air. I suspect the audio swaps to live just after he shouts "Hello".

3. Despite shots 3 and 5 ostensibly coming from the same camera, and despite us seeing no movement from the cameraman whatsoever in shot 4, those two shots are from slightly different angles. Hence they are not from the same camera at the same time.

4. Shot 5 moves left to right and up and down a lot (and maybe has a bit of subtle zoom), but doesn't ever roll (or bank or twist, if you like). Compare that with shots 1 and 3; real steadicam shots always have a small amount of roll in them. Hence this is not a real steadicam shot.

5. Notice when shot 5 shakes from side to side, there seems to be no parallax, but there is when the real pan happens (about 5:46 in the youtube video). This is quite subtle, but also implies that the shake has been added on afterwards.

6. The 'steadicam' zooms in to read the numbers on the balls; it zooms in a lot. But the shake doesn't get bigger, as it would if you zoom in. This, again, implies that the shake is fake. But the fact that the operator does a big zoom rather than just walking towards the balls implies that it is not a steadicam at all. That's a joy of steadicam - you can move wherever you want.

7. The left hand ball seems to be higher after the lottery numbers are announced than before. You can just about see it jump up after he says "23" at 5:39, but it's hard to tell because of the superimposed camera shake (which becomes prominent at this moment).

There you go. I hope I've enlightened you.

Footnote: After I had posted this on facebook, a friend pointed out that there seems to be an extra thumb to the right of the card at 5:50. I think this is actually Derren Brown's thumb - he has freakishly long thumbs!

What this blog is about: Derren Brown's MO

Derren Brown is a wonderful showman. His act combines illusion with hypnotic suggestion to great effect. But the cleverest part of his act is when he 'explains' how he did a trick. As anyone who has tried to replicate hit tricks afterward will tell you, these explanations usually don't work, thus showing that he is much more skilled than the rest of us.

Of course, the real reasons his explanations don't work is that they are hokum. Derren Brown cannot predict the future or control other people any better than the CIA (whose mind control experiments went notoriously badly). Instead, the explanation is part of his illusion. He has, along with David Blaine, brought the wonder back to magic, making it seem truly 'magical'.

While I admire Brown a great deal, I dislike the false explanations. Modern magic - illusion, if you will - was more or less invented by Harry Houdini; indeed, he created the majority of the standard stage illusions used today.

But Houdini spent most of his life debunking mystics who claimed to have special powers. Brown comes dangerously close to that state, as does Blaine; both claim to have abilities beyond that of a normal person. Frighteningly, quite a few people believe them.

So in this blog I will try to explain Brown's illusions, where I can, and debunk his explanations, so that people might come to better understand the art of illusion. It won't always be possible; too often his tricks are edited so that the TV audience cannot possibly work out how they are done. But if I can work out a trick I will explain it, and then debunk his explanation.

I am not a magician myself. (I can do one close-up trick really well, but it becomes less impressive if you've seen me do it thirty or forty times!) I am instead a magic fan. But that is different from being a believer.