talkmagic.co.uk

Hi all,

I'm fascinated by Derren Brown's mindreading. I'm not talking about classic cold reading (from a responsive subject) or suggestion, but where he gets something like a telephone number or a computer password (or gets others to get it, in the case of some of his shows).

All I can come up with is some kind of muscle reading based on involuntary mouth/lip movements (as in the Gathering) or watching the eyes as a number is imaginarily tapped into a PIN pad or similar. And yet in too many of these cases there appears to be nothing to work off. Nor does it explain how he gets third parties to do it.

Anyone any ideas on this?

Ian

DB has been known to do a bit of pre-show work [edited]
Kati

katrielalex wrote:DB has been known to do a bit of pre-show work [edited]
Kati

Lol, really?

He is doing a new thing that I saw the advert for tonight, called Heist but I don't know what it is actually about. I'll check up on it after I finish watching Lost

ian69 wrote:Hi all,

I'm fascinated by Derren Brown's mindreading. I'm not talking about classic cold reading (from a responsive subject) or suggestion, but where he gets something like a telephone number or a computer password (or gets others to get it, in the case of some of his shows).

All I can come up with is some kind of muscle reading based on involuntary mouth/lip movements (as in the Gathering) or watching the eyes as a number is imaginarily tapped into a PIN pad or similar. And yet in too many of these cases there appears to be nothing to work off. Nor does it explain how he gets third parties to do it.

Anyone any ideas on this?

Ian

Here's a thought... RE-READ CORINDA'S 13 STEPS TO MENTALISM and work backwards.

Based on your general description of what impresses you I'm confident that Corinda can give you at least a few dozen approaches as to how to do the same.

I just got through doing a show here in town... nice small group (just the size I enjoy) and it drove them absolutely nuts, the fact that I started off having a few things written down (4th Demensional Telepathy followed by Where & When) then slowly moved into material in which nothing was ever written, said, etc. None of it was Muscle Reading or pre-show and most of it came through the foundations laid in Cordina, Annemann and Nelson.

You have to bear in mind that Mentalism is not the same thing as magic even though they are kindred arts that share a bit of common ground. With mentalism you may just be flying by the seat of your pants here and there, employing some very bold techniques that aren't 100% certain. What we do requires a great deal of control with both, the audience and those we bring up on stage. It also involves personal awareness and being able (and willing) to exploit opportunity and use it to our advantage (or that of the show, as the case may be.)

Well, I don't want to start done the lecture path... but the answers are there if you just do a bit of homework and creative reconstruction within your mind

I think I am going to but that book tomorrow, on my trip to my Magic shop

Thanks

ace of kev wrote:He is doing a new thing that I saw the advert for tonight, called Heist but I don't know what it is actually about. I'll check up on it after I finish watching Lost

On next Wednesday 9pm - 10pm Channel 4. Looks quite interesting, with a moral message of course to it all.

There's some info on the Channel 4 Website.

Ian 59. When you are older in years and in Magic, see if someone will lend you David Berglas's book, 'The Mind & Magic Of David Berglas'. Your eyes will be opened to a lot of what goes on especially in TV Land.
Don't try yet. It'll spoil the feeling of being really mystified. Just wait a while and simply marvel at the presentations and routines. At the same time let your brain and mind work on the feats you witness. But be patience for the real answers.
Allen Tipton.

Allen Tipton wrote::) Ian 59. When you are older in years and in Magic, see if someone will lend you David Berglas's book, 'The Mind & Magic Of David Berglas'. Your eyes will be opened to a lot of what goes on especially in TV Land.
Don't try yet. It'll spoil the feeling of being really mystified. Just wait a while and simply marvel at the presentations and routines. At the same time let your brain and mind work on the feats you witness. But be patience for the real answers.
Allen Tipton.

I agree 110% on that one!

Though I have a very wide range of knowledge in magic & mentalism I've intentionally not studied certain sides to it such as close-up and cards or standard manipulation.

Why?

So I can still experience the "Magick" behind a solid performance... it's fun to let yourself be entertained by someone that knows what they are doing with material you know little to nothing about.

I can still go watch one of the big shows (though I know most of what they are doing) and get pleasure from them. This is very different however, than seeing such demonstrations when you are completely ignorant as to method, etc.

I just got an interesting Christmas present, a copy of Docc Hilford's CELLULAR MITOSIS... it's a very cool bit of business but when I discovered the simplicity behind (the pure genius that's involved) I kicked myself super hard for not seeing the obvious... it's beautiful and it floored me completely... it really was "Magick" and that's the real key behind it all regardless which area we specialize in; being able to create a magickle memory for our patrons!

I am so glad you agree Craig. It's something I learned many years ago when adjudicating Drama. When I went out to the Theatre for a night's enjoyment I found myself dissecting the performance as I had to in an adjudication. Gone was the sheer enjoyment and thrill of a live performance. SO I taught myself to divorce my thoughts from the rights and wrongs and simply enjoy the performance. I was out for an evening's pleasure not business.This I then did with our wonderful magic. As Doug Hernning said, 'We must keep our sense of wonder' and he didn't mean only the lay audience.
Allen Tipton

Thanks a lot for your thoughts. I've learnt quite a bit in the last 6 months (since I posted that) but I confess this one still eludes me! I'll keep thinking about it though.

As this topic is dealing with Derren Brown's mentalism, I have a question on this, of which I don't know whether it deserves a topic of its own or not. So I am just putting it here.

I am familiar with Brown for a relative short period of time (since his tv show has just been broadcasted in the Netherlands), and I really question the proclaimed psychological influence in his tricks.

For instance, Derren sits blindfolded in the middle of a huge room, with numerous items surrounding him, and a volunteer has, it seems to me, free choice in picking an object.
Subsequently, Derren comes up with a scrap of paper on which he has written the exact same object. I watched Derrens movements during this trick and there was no indication that he wrote down the object during the last moments with something hidden in his hand.

To me, the very idea of a trick is to create a type of plot that seems to be impossible according to laws of nature. In this case, there is no way one could know which object the volunteer is going to choose, at least not under the known conditions. If Brown is somehow capable of getting information from the volunteer, or influencing him under the conditions that we are observing on tv, then it would be basically no trick at all. Magic would be reduced to psychological knowledge.
Derren is a magician, so I think that he, in order to stick to his magic roots, manipulates his environment in a way that any magician could do.

What is talkmagic's general opinion on Derren Browns mentalism?

That is what I've thought about some things I've seen but remember Derren doesn't call himself a 'magician' but a psychological illusionist. People don't go to see him on stage to watch him pull rabbits out of hats, they go to marvel at his abilities, or maybe to see if he really is that good; you have to understand that to a lot of people who don't know too much about psychological techniques find these kinds of performances very impressive.

In the example you refer to, one of the reasons why it's so impressive is because he gave them so much choice, and yet there could only be one end result, and there was only one end result: Derren was correct, no matter how unlikely it seemed. People think 'there's NO WAY he could know what he'd go for with all those choices' - and yet he does. That is the magic.

I personally think that Derren is great. I don't really care how he does what he does, he's just so entertaining and incredibly talented. I think that he has done a lot for making the public interested in mentalism. I'm sure that whenever you ask someone if they want to see some mind-reading or whatever they are more interested because this is their chance to see 'Derren-style mind-reading' close-up.

So I say, thumbs up Derren, nice job - keep up the good work!

That is what I've thought about some things I've seen but remember Derren doesn't call himself a 'magician' but a psychological illusionist.

True

I personally think that Derren is great.

I certainly agree with this, as with the rest of your posting. Derren serves his magic so delicately, that it is hard not to be impressed by his performance. Still, the true nature of his magic puzzles me. Recently I have downloaded some books on mentalism, hypnotism and neuro linguistic stuff, and I'm busy scrolling them through to find answers.

Weaver wrote:Recently I have downloaded some books on mentalism, hypnotism and neuro linguistic stuff, and I'm busy scrolling them through to find answers.

It's just a personal opinion, but bear in mind that, though he tells you the tools he uses at the start of his shows, he never says in what proportion they play a part in each effect. A lot of people, for instance, discover NLP and decide it's the way he achieves all of what you see on screen. Because of that, the best place to start, it seems to me, is with his own books rather than someone else's and work outwards back to the underlying principles.