MasterCyde wrote:To be honest with you. I'm actually leaning towards that. I know it sounds crazy as he uses fake explanations all the time but I don't know of any OOTW method that would work with pictures being shown face up.
The "Living" and "Dead" markings are the real "faces" of the pictures -- that is, the hidden sides that correspond to the faces of playing cards in the standard OOTW. The spectator isn't encouraged to handle them once they've been turned over.
I am told that DB uses a special handling which is discussed in "The Devil's Picturebook" (which I don't yet own, so I don't know the details). If you watch how he takes back the pictures after the undertaker's finished with them, he makes moves, but doesn't seem to do quite the usual sort of thing.
I'm sure a lot of viewers think the undertaker trick was done using subliminals. After all, Derren talks about subliminal messages a lot. And for this trick, he makes a big fuss about the mental influence of the spooky setting, chats with the undertaker about death, and so on. Subliminal communication is an obvious explanation to latch on to.
If you have the DVD, watch this bit with the audio commentary switched on. They have a giggle about his closing remark. "What did you say there?"


