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Hello everybody;

I've recently seen Derren Browns Svengali, now i don't want to say what he did, even though when he brought that elephant on stage and made it do hand stands shortly after reading its mind and finding out it was really a tiger in disguise it made me wonder what is he actually doing? after watching constant youtube clips of his performances (enigma 10x, Evening of wonders 5x 1131minutes in total) I can't decide if his acts are primarily psychologically based where he actually puts the idea into your head using suggestion or just mentalism using gimmicks to create the effects.


Just ontop of this i thought i would ask a quick question aswell, There is a certain trick out there used by some influential mentalism acts such as the Medallion - Al Koran where by the audience give out random numbers and on the other side of this medallion the numbers appear, but the one im interested which is familuar is where an envelope is secured in the audience, numbers are then randomly given, them numbers appear to be inside the envelope, what is this trick actually called or ones simular to it.

Thank you Kie

As you probably know by now, we don't give out secrets, especially those owned by others. Hang around a while and I'm sure you'll get some usefuls tips and hints about which books etc to buy which will help you achieve the same effect.

Kie-Wii wrote:Hello everybody;

I've recently seen Derren Browns Svengali, now i don't want to say what he did, even though when he brought that elephant on stage and made it do hand stands shortly after reading its mind and finding out it was really a tiger in disguise it made me wonder what is he actually doing? after watching constant youtube clips of his performances (enigma 10x, Evening of wonders 5x 1131minutes in total) I can't decide if his acts are primarily psychologically based where he actually puts the idea into your head using suggestion or just mentalism using gimmicks to create the effects.


Just ontop of this i thought i would ask a quick question aswell, There is a certain trick out there used by some influential mentalism acts such as the Medallion - Al Koran where by the audience give out random numbers and on the other side of this medallion the numbers appear, but the one im interested which is familuar is where an envelope is secured in the audience, numbers are then randomly given, them numbers appear to be inside the envelope, what is this trick actually called or ones simular to it.

Thank you Kie

Hi Kie. Good point there by Mandrake, I was lucky enough to be in my local magic shop in London in 2010, when no other than Derren brown walked into the shop, at the time there was just me and the owner present, so I decided to question him on one of his shows that I saw on the telly a few months before were he managed to throw a deck of cards into the river and reveal the chosen card that managed to end up face up, but the rest ended face down!!! The point to this story is never ask how things are done? Sadly that never occured with me at the time. Well he never told me nothing.

Thanks for the replies, I'm so eager to learn how half of Derrens acts are created, he is a true credit to the art!

And i am jealous of you meeting him! When i went to see his Svengali show in blackpool he seemed so witty and fast he is my biggest idol for starting magic!

Yes apart from not giving away any of his secrets, the 5 mins I spoke to him he did came across as a nice guy.

Derren doesn't use psychology or mentalism. He has real powers and plays it down.

Lord Freddie wrote:Derren doesn't use psychology or mentalism. He has real powers and plays it down.

And pixies of course. Why everybody forgets the pixies?

Kie-Wii wrote:I can't decide if his acts are primarily psychologically based where he actually puts the idea into your head using suggestion or just mentalism using gimmicks to create the effects.

Short answer, it's the second option.

As Freddie says, Derren has fine tuned the techniques he uses so well now that he has actually developed unworldly powers.

Trouble is, he still believes that he is just using techniques.

Poor bloke!

Derren Brown is a genius... I don't need to know his methods - all i have to know is that the results are amazing!
He has created a completly new kind of magic...

I'd say its sort of mentalism, (as opposed to him making you think of a boat because he says "let an idea float into your mind" or whatever) but bare in mind what he says in his TV shows ... MAGIC, MISDIRECTION and SHOWMANSHIP. The 3rd is KEY to his live shows, its why I think he can play so big and has won several awards for his shows; he is a SHOWMAN and can literally have you eating out of the palm of his hand

What did you think of Svengali btw? (pm me if you wanna discuss it without worries of revealing stuff - I've seen it twice hahaha)

Dan