The Derren Brown Thread

[donbenni]

Has anyone been watching this (UK) on CH4 on Friday nights? Been quite a funny + cool show so far. I was a little taken back by what he did tonight though.

Basically he enlisted the help of a load of computer techies to create an arcade game based on shooting zombies with a connected light gun. The arcade unit was placed in a pub. The game was quite simple in design, basically where the gamer walks around a hospital shooting zombies etc. The game was controlled by a guy with a laptop sitting in one of the backrooms. The arcade unit was specially created to include a strobe light that could be flashed on cue by the guy controlling the game.

Ok well basically some guy walks into the pub with two friends and starts playing the game. On Derren's cue the controller flashes the strobe. After a short time the guy playing lulled into a state of some kind where he stayed standing but his body was lifeless and he was unconcious. (The gamer had just entered a large room and shot a female zombie.) Derren came out of the back room and spoke quickly with the guy's two friends to explain sorta what was going on and then loaded the gamer onto a hospital bed and took him off down the road.

Just a few doors down the road was the hospital that the programmers had put into the game. Derren wheeled this guy in and took him through the building until he reached the room that the guy had just got to in the game. Just like in the game, there is a dead female zombie to his right. Derren picked the unconcious guy up onto his feet and stuck some kind of paintball gun into this guy's hand.

Derren took the guy's two friends through to a control room and sounded a claxon to wake the unconcious guy up. The guy totally freaked out, looked around in amazement, threw the gun on the floor and started screaming at the zombie woman lying near him. She was totally lifeless (naturally).

So this guy's freaking out and from the other end of the room people dressed as zombies start coming through the door. He doesn't know what to do so stands looking at them telling them to stay back. They're continously advancing on him so he makes a move for the gun and starts shooting. There's zombies flying everywhere and the guy is screaming his head off like a psycho.

After a short spurt of zombie bashing he turns back to the woman on the floor and starts asking her what's going on. She's still lifeless.

The zombies start getting up again, and more zombies are beginning to enter from other sides of the room. The woman then starts to get up. The guys shoots the woman numerous times and then takes to shooting all the zombies again. He's screaming again.

He makes his way over to an exit area where he blocks himself in. Derren decides enough is enough and come out of the control room, crosses the room telling the zombie people to lie down and approaches the guy in the exit. Derren takes a good few shots in the chest from the gun (can't be firing that powerfully) and does his thing to put the guy to sleep again (pressure points or something).

The guy gets loaded onto the hospital bed and wheeled him back to the pub with his friends in tow. They propped the guy up in front of the arcade machine again and his friends stood next to him as they were. Derren moves back to the pub control room again and sounds the claxon again.

The guy wakes up, looks at the machine, looks round at his friends (they're like "what?").

Derren walks out with his controller saying they created the game and wanted to know what the guy thought. He was all like "it's insane, yeah really immersive etc.".

Derren then explains what happened and shows the guy the footage of him zombie bashing. Obviously the guy is pretty taken back, but seems to think it's pretty cool.

--------- END ---------

Ok well that's the story. Sorry it's long.

Firstly assume that this all actually happened and the guy wasn't just acting.
Now whilst i was watching this, his mates looked very dubious. Some guy comes out of a pub backroom and loads your unconcious friend onto a hospital trolley bed, you would be.
Just seems the whole thing was very unethical to the guy who was subjected to the situation and to his friends. What do you think?

Also the guy is going to be haunted by those memories forever surely?

Unethical or not?

 

[F1GTR]

Well he did laugh when he saw the video of himself at the end

 

[Emohawk]

Probably unethical, yes. Hilarious though.
What's this show called?

 

[donbenni]

I think it's called Derren Brown - Trick of The Mind. Usually it's packed with street style magic, but he does play some cool mind games on people, like he had Simon Pegg on and persuaded him that he wanted a BMX bike as present by saying things like "You could get a BMW or an Xbox or something". Cool show.

 

[Ruffest]

I wish I watched it now... it does sound funny! Although, obviously, better to watch it on tv than to have it done to you.

 

[Mike Rotch]

I have seen the first series of DB - freaking amazing.

Like the time he convinced cashiers to pay out winnings on lost dog races, despite getting them to recognise the ticket was a losing one. That was incredible.

 

[Flerbizky]

I have seen the first series of DB - freaking amazing.

Like the time he convinced cashiers to pay out winnings on lost dog races, despite getting them to recognise the ticket was a losing one. That was incredible.

I was gonna say the very same thing.. Darren Brown is friggin' amazing... I'm not sure, _at all_, if it's staged or not.. It just looks too random to be staged...

I'll be on the lookout for this episode !...

 

[Touring Mars]

Did anyone see Derren Brown's 'Messiah'...?? It was superb and I can't recommend it highly enough...

In this film, he sets out to demonstrate to a variety of professional psychics, mediums and the like, that he is geniune. As 'experts' in their own fields, they all have no hesitation in accepting him as 'the real thing'... the only problem is, as Derren Brown is at pains to point out to us, he isn't... the fact that these psychics, mediums and even religious leaders believe that he has paranormal ability speaks volumes....

I particularly liked the bit where he speaks to a crowd of random people, picked off the street, and does a 'John Edward'-like session, where he 'speaks' to the dead... the only difference is, Brown does NOT claim to be actually speaking to the dead... he single-handedly blows wide open the myth of charlatans the world over... that is not to say his abilities are not remarkable... they most certainly are... but it is so refreshing to see someone use their skills in a way as not to deceive the public, unlike most psychics...

He always explained to his subjects how he does what he does, and never left them wondering how or what happened to them...

Derren Brown is a genius 👍

 

[donbenni]

That Messiah sounds great + v. interesting, wouldn't mind seeing that. I like the way that DB is pretty funny and lighthearted about what he does. He's seems only serious as part of his showmanship.

 

[Touring Mars]

I like the way that DB is pretty funny and lighthearted about what he does. He's seems only serious as part of his showmanship.

You hit the nail right on the head there...I read an interview with DB in the Guardian newspaper recently, and he pretty much says that the only reason he is able to do most of what he does is because people believe that he can do these things. He makes people believe he is a magician by adopting the persona you see when he does his tricks, that of a serious, straight-talking guy, who has extraordinary mental powers... but actually, he doesn't. Anyone could do what he does, but they can't... it's a bit like saying that anyone could do a lap of Catalunya in 1'15.100, which is also true, but only an F1 driver actually can... His stage persona has to be that way for his tricks to work, but he has blended it brilliantly with his own easy-going manner... atleast he has the decency and honesty to tell people that what he does is not 'magical', but merely brilliant tricks... in my book, that makes him head and shoulders above other magicians who still subscribe to the old-fashioned 'maybe it really is magic??' school...

 

[Famine]

Derren Brown - The System...

Caught this last Friday. Derren convinced a woman that he had a foolproof way of betting on horse races, having anonymously sent her tips over a series of weeks, through which she'd won 4 races out of 4, for gradually increasing stakes. On the strength of a fifth tip she placed an even higher bet and won a fifth race.

So convinced was she, that when they met up and he gave her his 6th and final tip, she borrowed money off friends, family and a loan company, getting £4,000 in total. Derren went and placed the bet, gave her the ticket and then explained to her how his system works...


It doesn't

It only seems to work from her point of view...

He'd contacted 7,776 people initially, anonymously giving them 1 of 6 horses to bet on in a 6 horse race, so that there were 1,296 people betting on each horse. The 1,296 people who won went through to the next tip - where he gave them each 1 of 6 horses to bet on in a 6 horse race, so that there were 216 people betting on each horse. And so on, and so on until he was left with one woman from the 7,776 people who had won every one of the 5 races she'd bet on - he'd filmed each of the final 6 at the 5th race, none of them knowing that there were any other people involved, and naturally 5 of them had lost...

So here she was, waiting for a race she'd put £4k she couldn't afford on because she believed in a guaranteed system to beat the bookies, with the realisation that her winning the previous 5 races was a statistical certainty (ONE person must have won 5/5 in this system, but 7,775 couldn't have) and no way of knowing if she'd ever see her money again.


And her horse promptly lost by 7 lengths.