Commentary

Derren Brown and his amazing balls

By September 10, 2009September 13th, 2009One Comment

Derren Brown - The Events - LotteryDerren Brown manages to get everyone talking – people either find him amazing, deceptive or downright annoying. I’m pleased to say I’m in the “amazing” camp – he entertains, he’s plainly very clever, and I enjoy the whole psychology of it all. And tonight, so the marketing crescendo informed us earlier, he managed to predict the National Lottery results. Well, “predict”.

First things first – he CANNOT predict the numbers. That’s not even worth considering. The real intrigue with Derren is not what’s happened, but how he managed to create the illusion. He readily admits that he is not a magician. He enjoys creating illusions; we enjoy trying to work it out.

So, debate is raging about tonight’s lottery prediction – this thread over at DigitalSpy has some laughily funny theories, along with a melting pot of naysayers, obsessed fans and people who smugly think they know it all immediately and can never be fooled. The arguments that rage at DigitalSpy are infamously hilarious.

Seems to be a solution forming though – watch the video of it below, and scoot to 5:07 mins. At that moment, while he’s saying the number “28”, the picture on the left freezes. The left hand ball suddenly appears slightly higher than the others (seen more easily in the closeup later on, and an image is included below the video here), and the shadow changes on the base of the ball holder. So, fully appreciating the irony of offering my own theory while neatly teasing the DigitalSpy throng, I present my view of it. The beginning of the show is live, it switches to a recorded left-hand side (where the balls are) at some point before the numbers are announced, the balls are replaced – and then it switches back to full left hand side live feed at 5:07.

I’ll hold this theory until Friday, when I will doubtless be proved wrong.

High Quality:

Close up of left hand ball moving:

One Comment

Leave a Reply