Voodoo

John

I love how she describes feeling "weird" when perhaps she should have said "foolish and childish". Reminded me of watching all those hypnotists and mediums at work. It's all the power of suggestion on gullible and willing minds. Minds that are willing to accept the whole schmuckery of the paranormal or mind powers at work.
At least Derren Brown is out there showing it at work and then lifting the lid on what is really happening to people.

Since she was not in a position to see him binding the feet of the doll, I expect that means he hypnotised her in advance, and primed her to react in that way. It doesn't invalidate what he is illustrating, but it is rather typical of what he does that not all of the prep work is revealed, and he tries to make it seem more dramatic and spontaneous than it actually is.

He doesn't mind us knowing that hypnotism and suggestion is at work here, that is in fact his point. What he wants us to believe though( or at least doesn't mind us believing), is that he managed to achieve that level of hypnotism during the scenes we see on camera, which I think is extremely unlikely to be the case.

Saw him live last Sunday. If you get the chance then its well worth the ticket price. I'm not going to give away what went on other than to say it was a very very good show and left plenty of questions as to how the heck he produced the effects he did.

There was one instance of hypnotism at least (though he kept reassuring the subject that they were not hypnotised which i thought might actually be part of the induction). It was pretty quick too. From selecting potentials from the audience at large to focusing on one subject to actually controlling the subject was under 5 minutes.

zulumoose wrote:Since she was not in a position to see him binding the feet of the doll, I expect that means he hypnotised her in advance, and primed her to react in that way. It doesn't invalidate what he is illustrating, but it is rather typical of what he does that not all of the prep work is revealed, and he tries to make it seem more dramatic and spontaneous than it actually is.

He doesn't mind us knowing that hypnotism and suggestion is at work here, that is in fact his point. What he wants us to believe though( or at least doesn't mind us believing), is that he managed to achieve that level of hypnotism during the scenes we see on camera, which I think is extremely unlikely to be the case.

What kind of prep work is required to trick someone into believing they are being hypnotised? Since hypnotism is just convincing gullible people to do stuff they already want to do with the excuse that they were "hypnotised", I'm not sure I understand why they would need to be prepped in any way.

You miss my point. How did she know that the instruction was to immobilise her legs? Nothing that he does up to that point identifies the legs specifically, and it looks like she cannot see what he is doing to the doll. He asked her how she felt and she focussed on the legs, why?

I suspect that this gives him away, he had prepped her to respond in this way off camera, perhaps a minor edit, but a significant one.

Ah fair enough, I see what you mean. I haven't seen the video yet as the link was down when I last tried.

I don't know how he does what he does, but I think he is a fantastic showman regardless of how he does it. I recently watched a bunch of episodes spanning a few years that a mate copied for me ages ago. Some of the best entertainment I have ever seen. I'd love to know all his tricks and secrets.

If you really want to know some of his techniques then you can get hold of a book called "Pure Effect". It was written by Brown for magicians and other performers to use to base some of their effects on. Its out of print now but copies turn up here and there occasionally but you will be lucky to get one for under £100 these days.

There is some devastatingly simple stuff in there which relies on simple probabilities which while it won't always work will be very effective when it does.

Jumbo wrote:If you really want to know some of his techniques then you can get hold of a book called "Pure Effect". It was written by Brown for magicians and other performers to use to base some of their effects on. Its out of print now but copies turn up here and there occasionally but you will be lucky to get one for under £100 these days.

There is some devastatingly simple stuff in there which relies on simple probabilities which while it won't always work will be very effective when it does.

Just looked it up on Amazon $200.

zulumoose wrote:You miss my point. How did she know that the instruction was to immobilise her legs? Nothing that he does up to that point identifies the legs specifically, and it looks like she cannot see what he is doing to the doll. He asked her how she felt and she focussed on the legs, why?

I suspect that this gives him away, he had prepped her to respond in this way off camera, perhaps a minor edit, but a significant one.

He told her to "stay". That's the hypnotic suggestion, right?

why does he not tell her that he never removed the ring? that was obvious from the get go.