Derren Brown: Seance

[Lex]

Anybody watch it last night?

I enjoyed it, but it was frustrating as well - I thought the ending was a bit of a cop out as I would like to have seen the students' reaction to meeting Jane, I am guessing they weren't too impressed which is why they didn't show it!
Really brings it home how easy it is to manipulate (some) people though... He certainly is good at what he does.

[browsking]

Also sat up late (for me) and watched this. I like DB and some of the tv shows are really good but this was a pile of poo. A poor mix of counjouring and hypnotic suggestion......................

[Logo Hater]

Originally Posted by browsking

Also sat up late (for me) and watched this. I like DB and some of the tv shows are really good but this was a pile of poo. A poor mix of counjouring and hypnotic suggestion......................

It was only ever meant to be an example of how easy it is, and was in the past, to fool enough of the people to convince them of paranormal occurences.

I personally believe in the afterlife, or a continuation of existance in some form or other. I am not however convinced that this is in any way the procedure to contact that part of our life.

Derren Brown is one of the best of his type of entertainers, and he has never claimed to be anything more than a clever entertainer. His understanding of how the human mind works is phenominal. I am sure he could have been a brilliant profiler had he chosen to be.

I saw him on Richard and Judy a couple weeks ago, Richard asked him to repeat a Trick he had performed for them on a previous occasion, this involved Richard placing a £1 coin in one of his hands behind his back. Derren asked Richard, if when he asked him if the coin was in his left hand he would say the word NO , he then asked him to to say NO when he asked if it was in his right hand. The idea was that Richard would give him the answer to which hand it was really in by the way in which he said NO . He asked the questions and seemed totally perplexed that he was unable to say which hand it was in, he floundered for a few moments then said something like, "I cannot understand why I can't say which hand it's in" [He paused for a moment, then added] "Unless of course you haven't got it in either". That of course was what had happened. This was live TV, he couldn't have rehearsed it. Richard had hoped to catch him out, but failed.

He really is that good.

P.S. I was one of the many who had chosen Jane, as he wanted.

[Jules]

Of course you picked Jane.
The pictures were cleverly laid out in such a way that his intructions would always lead you to the same picture... no matter which picture you started at.
(That said, I didn't follow his instructions and still picked Jane... )

It was a clever trick..... used on a bunch of carefully selected people who's collective reaction could be accurately predicted.

[seany]

Could tell right away that the cards were laid out so you would end up picking a certain one. Bit lame how he never explained the cup fallling over and the bell ringing.

I dont believe in life after death...

Miles better then his last stunt

[Garrett]

The card I ended up with Jane and realised since most of the other ended up with here it was a trick, why else would he go through an elaborate set of sequences, A bit like the trick of a number, double it, add ten, half it and take away the number you first thought of and the answer is 5.
I did not see the bell and ball trick but a mate said something like it was in a dark room and someone could have been in a black outfit.

[spidermanalf]

No black suited guys (was in that lovely green night vision) but could have used fishing wire!

[rhoamish]

I enjoyed this show. I really like Derren Brown's tricks: you can see how some of them work, but a lot of them are baffling.

The last show in the series showed how he coerced a chap into taking a particular route around a supermarket, and persuaded him to pick, from the hundreds of items on sale, a bottle of vinegar. I rewound this, and there's some clever bits of suggestion that I didn't notice the first time: he mentions crisps, and says, cheese and onion, salt and...whatever'. Then he says 'you can't quite put your fineger on it'.

OK, they don't sound clever, but it worked! I've always been suspicious of adverts. Can you imagine how much trickery is involved when we go shopping?

[Kazuya Mishima]

The other good thing about the super-market trick is that it was dressed up and presented to the guy, and us, that the route round the supermarket printed on the envelope was the only reason he chose the vinegar. Like you say, it was the suggestion immediately before the trolley-dash that set it up. But still, he got the route correct.....

Hey, what about the woman who got the passer-by in the street to stop walking....how the hell did they do that?

[dfield2000]

I remember seeing this type of thing done before - can't remember what program it was now - but they were showing how easy it is to deceive people in seance type environment.

During the seance, the guy leading it said that he felt a sudden coldness in the room - and everyone around the table agreed. They even said again afterwards when they were being interviewed that it definitely got colder - but in fact they were in an air conditioned room and the temperature was being monitored and kept constant throughout the whole thing.

Just by the power of suggestion the guy had made everyone feel colder.

Lots of times during 'Most Haunted' one person will claim to suddenly feel a cold presence, and everyone else in the room will agree and recount afterwards how the temperate mysteriously dropped. It amazes me just how easy the human mind is to trick and how quick people are to attribute things they don't understand to psychic or ghostly phenomena.

[avanzato]

There was an article in 'New Scientist' and on the local news, I think, about the power of suggestion and how memories can be altered.

People who had never been on a hot air balloon trip were asked about the flight they made. Of course they said they had never been on one. Then the subjects were shown a faked picture of themselves in a Balloon when they were younger.

About a week later a proportion of the people were now convinced the Balloon trip was real and had created a story around it. I don't remember the exact figures but it showed memory is very flexible and unreliable.

[Logo Hater]

Originally Posted by avanzato

But it showed memory is very flexible and unreliable.

How true this is.

Many many years ago, when I was about 35 or so, I returned to some of the places I had grown up in. I had what I considered to be fairly vivid memories of how it used to be. The reality was very different from my recollections. I was quite shocked to discover that my memories were nowhere near how it was. I concluded that whilst we are younger we must have a very different view of things than when we are adult.

[Kevo]

What about the planks who rang in claiming to experience 'strange going ons' whilst watching the show

[dfield2000]

Just read on the BBC news that this program has become the most complained about show ever - with over 700 complaints. BUT - the vast majority of them were made before the show was aired by church groups.

This program was desgined to debunk the myth of seance, so how the hell can they complain when they haven't even seen the program to judge it ?

[Lex]

Originally Posted by dfield2000

Just read on the BBC news that this program has become the most complained about show ever - with over 700 complaints. BUT - the vast majority of them were made before the show was aired by church groups.

This program was desgined to debunk the myth of seance, so how the hell can they complain when they haven't even seen the program to judge it ?

Absolutely pathetic isn't it - complaining in advance when you don't even know what it is about! Talk about a closed mind!


According to Sky News it is actually the third most complained about programme of all time:

1. The Last Temptation of Christ (channel 4)
2. Brass Eye (channel 4)
3. Derren Brown: Seance (channel 4)

Good old channel 4