Derren Brown
Categories: 1971 births | University of Bristol Alumni | Natives of Surrey | British magicians
Other than his main work, Derren is also an artist who paints caricatures of famous people. His work has also been exhibited. His paintings can be viewed via his website.
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Television shows
Mind Control
Since the first broadcast of his Channel 4 television show Derren Brown: Mind Control in 2000 he has become increasingly well known for his "mind-reading" act. Derren Brown says he possesses no psychic ability and achieves his results by making use of psychological insights. Using his knowledge and skill he claims he is able to predict and influence people's thoughts with subtle suggestion, manipulate the decision making process and read the subtle physical signs or body language that indicate what a person is thinking.
He began his television work with three sixty-minute specials over two years which led up to the six part series Mind Control, which incorporated new footage with the best of the hour long shows. Selected highlights from the first series are available on DVD and video entitled Derren Brown - Inside Your Mind.
Russian Roulette
On October 5, 2003, Brown performed his most controversial stunt to date, playing Russian roulette live on Channel 4 (though with a slight delay in case the stunt was not successful). The stunt was performed at an undisclosed location outside Britain, supposedly because of British laws banning the possession of handguns. A volunteer, chosen from 12,000 who applied for the task, and whittled down to five by the day of the stunt, loaded a single shot into a revolver with six numbered chambers, then counted from one to six. Attempting to predict the location of the bullet, Brown pulled the trigger on chambers 3 and 4 with the gun aimed at his head, before appearing to decide on chamber 5 and firing the gun away from him. When that chamber proved to be empty, he paused for several minutes before aiming at his head again for chamber 6, then immediately firing the (supposedly) live round in chamber 1 away from him, striking a sandbag.
The stunt was initially condemned by senior British police officers, apparently fearful of copycat acts. However, when the filming location was revealed to be Jersey, where handguns are also banned, it was suspected that the stunt had been a hoax. This was apparently confirmed several days later when the Jersey police said they had been consulted about the programme in advance, and revealed: "There was no live ammunition involved and at no time was anyone at risk." [1] However, as demonstrated earlier in the programme, firing a blank cartridge at point-blank range can still be extremely dangerous or even fatal, and it is still unknown what safety precautions Brown took.
Brown himself defended the program, saying, "It probably sounds odd. But as a magic-related performer to have that event being asked: Was it real? Was it not real? That lifts it to a level that I'm very comfortable with. What's left is that fact that it was a terrific piece of television."
Séance
Brown's next project was shown on Channel 4 on 31 May 2004. In Derren Brown: Séance he brought 12 members of the public together to re-create a live séance. He placed an advertisement in a magazine inviting students to come along to the event. Claiming that the location (Eltham Hall) had a history of paranormal activity after 12 people killed themselves in a suicide pact in 1974, Brown cleverly demonstrated the methods used by spiritualists.
The show attempted to involve the television audience with interactive activities, the first of which being the directed choice of one of the members of the suicide pact by looking at photographs. The 12 pictures were shown on screen in a set pattern, with half of them in colour and half black and white. The viewer was instructed to choose one of the colour images that they "feel a connection with". Brown then directed the viewers in a movement pattern between the photographs (for example, move left or right to one of the adjacent black and white photographs). The positioning and movement instructions were carefully planned to ensure that no matter which photograph was initially chosen the viewer would finish on the picture of "Jane". Ten of the students also chose Jane. During the following ouija board scene, the "spirit" guided the students to spell the name Jane.
Two of the students, along with the television viewers, were asked to write the name of a city. Both students chose London.
The final scene, the séance itself, saw the group "contact" Jane. One of the students was speaking as if she was Jane and gave some details about her life. These were confirmed to be true in a letter and in a short film.
Brown went on to explain some of the manipulations he had used, including the photograph positioning/instructions and the use of the ideomotor effect during the ouija board. The suicide pact had not taken place and "Jane" was taken to meet the students at the end of the show.
Channel 4 received a record number of complaints, most before it was aired. Viewers who felt "something unusual" were invited to call a phone number, and callers were told that the show was carefully planned and that no paranormal activities were taking place. Brown also warned viewers about the impending ouija board scene, advising those who objected for "religious reasons or otherwise" to stop watching the show.
Messiah
Shown on 7 January 2005, Derren Brown travelled to the United States to try to convince five leading figures that he had powers in their particular field of expertise: Christian evangelism, alien abduction, psychic powers, New Age theories and contacting the dead.
Using a false name each time, he succeeded in convincing four of the five "experts" that he had powers, and they openly endorsed him as a true practioner. The fifth expert, whilst impressed by Derren's performance, asked to meet him again before giving an endorsement. The concept of the show was to highlight the power of suggestion with regard to beliefs and people's abilities, and failure to question them. Brown made it quite clear with each experiment that if any of the subjects accused him of mind control or trickery, he would immediately come clean about the whole thing. His conclusion was that people tend to hear only things that support their own ideas and ignore contradictory beliefs.
Psychic powers
Derren Brown asked a leading figure at a psychic training school to go into another room and draw a number of simple pictures on any topic they wished. After each picture had been completed, he would have his prediction of what the picture was written down by the other members of the training school in the room with him. He was 100% correct. On one occasion when Derren was telling the participant to draw the next picture, he instructed the lady to "let some ideas sail into your mind" and not to go "overboard on detail". She drew a boat in water.
Alien abduction
Derren convinced two leading figures in the field of alien abduction that after being abducted himself, he had the ability to sense people's medical history. The lady on which he demonstrated said that he was "100% correct" in the medical history he had given. The lady expressed keen interest in spreading the word about his skills in medical journals.
New-age theories
Derren Brown instructed a leading new-age theorist to sleep with a machine attached to her pillow for five days. She was told that this machine used crystal technology to record her dreams. In fact it was simply a box with a switch which turned an LED on and off. Derren recalled the dreams correctly, including the fact that some were in black-and-white instead of colour. The participant was so impressed that she invited Derren to appear on her radio show the next day, which he declined.
Christian evangelism
Derren performed instant conversions on a group consisting of members of the public, all of whom were atheists. After the first instant conversion many of the group chose to leave, concerned by what they had just witnessed. Derren then proceeded to convert another individual and then the remainder of the group at once. In each case, he caused the participant(s) to at least accept the possibility that there was a god, when previously they had all refused to do so. At the end of the show, a notice on screen announced that the participants had all been "de-converted" before they left.
Contacting the dead
Derren assembled a group of public volunteers and gave readings for several of them. His readings were very specific and all the participants were convinced that he was genuinely communicating with their dead relatives. The fact that the readings were false was explained to the participants at the end, and they were all happy for their readings to be broadcast.
Trick of the Mind
Trick of the Mind was Derren's second series, which is now in its second year. Unlike Mind Control it is all completely new material. The second series started on E4 on 11 April 2005 and was repeated on Channel 4.
In June 2005, a clip from an episode of this series widely circulated the internet, most commonly on forums dedicated to online gaming. In this clip, Derren claims to have created a video game he calls "Waking Dead" which "is able to put roughly 1/3 of the people who play it into a catatonic trance". In this episode he places the video game in a pub, to lure a (supposedly unsuspecting) patron into playing the game. He then "kidnaps" the catatonic "victim" and places them in a real-life recreation of the video game, having him fire an air gun at "zombie" actors outfitted with explosive squibs. The episode raised considerable controversy. Mick Grierson, credited in the episode as "Zombie Game Designer", put up a website linking to various articles about the episode.
The Gathering
The Gathering was a specially recorded live show with invited guests. It was filmed on 25 May 2005 and broadcast four days later on 29 May. As part of the show Derren recalled streets, page numbers and grid references from the Greater London A-Z map. He addressed the audience and told them that many of them would forget the show when they left. Throughout the show the word "forget" was flashed very quickly on the backdrop, and when guests were interviewed after the show several of them could only vaguely remember the performance.
Other 'Mind' magicians
Whilst Brown must be deemed a great success as a 'psychological magician' by the yardstick of media exposure and television appearances, he is not alone in pioneering or originating this form of entertainment. From the 1990s onwards American psychologist turned entertainer Marc Salem has apeared with his project 'Mind Games' to critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, in the theatre as well as on television. British-Dutch magician David Berglas was a household name in the 1960s and early 1970s with his intense, interactive television shows which drew heavily on his training as a psychotherapist at London's Tavistock Institute. The cult British-based performance artist / conceptual artist aladin likewise has formal training as a psychotherapist which he used to apparently good effect in confounding the queues and VIP Room guests at nightclub The Ministry of Sound in the early 1990s with feats of apparent mind-reading.
But regardless of Brown's adroitness in using the machinery of PR, he has to be seen as a significant figure in the history of 'psychological entertainment' and as a quite exceptional magician.
UK tours
In 2003 he toured theatres in the UK and received a degree of critical acclaim. The show's run was extended into 2004 and spent some time playing in London. Brown was recently on tour again with a new show for the 2005 season, "Something Wicked This Way Comes", which ended its run at the Cambridge Theatre London, on the 2nd July.
Other productions and publications
He has written two books on magic, Absolute Magic and Pure Effect.
Absolute Magic is not so much about magical methodology as about how magicians can make their performances magical; it is written in a variety of styles, sometimes humorous, sometimes serious, but always thought provoking. He warns against an act that conveys the feeling of "Here are some tricks I've bought" and urges magicians to make their performances experiential and memorable by involving the audience. In some respects a lot of what he says is in Darwin Ortiz' Strong Magic but his book expresses it in the context of his experiences, performance style and theories of how performance should be.
Pure Effect is a more traditional book of trickery and technique and offers an insight into the some of the methods that Derren employs, and offers a starting point for development for the reader's own use.
His video, The Devil's Picturebook, contains details of the card effects from earlier in his career.
See also
External links
- Official site
- Official forum
- Daily Telegraph article: "Spectacular Psychology or Silly Psycho-babble?"
- Free CD produced by fans of Derren Brown: "Inside Your Ears: The Derren Brown Fanthology"
- "Derren Brown and Mentalism Resources"
- Derren Brown Info
- "Mentalism Website"