Derren Brown

Derren Brown
File:Derren brown sanc.jpg
Born	27 February 1971 Croydon, London, England
Nationality	British
Occupation	psychological illusionist\mentalist
Website	derrenbrown.co.uk

Derren Victor Brown (born February 27 1971) is an English psychological illusionist and skeptic of paranormal phenomena. He was born in Croydon, South London, where he attended Whitgift School, where his father was the swimming teacher. While studying Law and German at the University of Bristol he attended a show by the hypnotist Martin S. Taylor, which inspired him to turn to illusion and hypnosis as a career. Around 1994, he worked as a conjurer, practising the traditional skills of close-up 'magic'. In 1996, he started performing stage hypnosis shows at the University of Bristol under his then stage name of Darren V. Brown.

Later Brown became interested in mind-reading through Ian Rowland. Shortly after, he was commissioned to do a pilot for his Channel 4 television series, Mind Control. Brown's psychological illusions are skilfully performed and are enhanced by his personality and showman's flair to influence and misdirect.

Aside from his main work, he is an artist who paints caricatures. His paintings can be viewed via his website. Brown is also interested in taxidermy, as he states in episode 1 of his Mind Control series.

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 states at the beginning of his Trick of the Mind programmes that he achieves his results using a combination of "magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship". Using his knowledge and skill he appears to be 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. The entire series is also available for free in the UK on Virgin Media's On Demand service.

Russian Roulette

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TV Screenshot of Russian Roulette, 5 October 2003

On October 5, 2003, Brown performed Russian roulette live on Channel 4 (though with a slight delay in case of accidents). The stunt was ostensibly performed at an undisclosed location outside mainland Britain, in Jersey, supposedly because of British laws banning the possession of handguns. A volunteer, James, 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, after Brown had said "choose one of those numbers, keep them to yourself, choose one, it doesn't matter which one it is, settle on a number, are you thinking of one now", James 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 himself. When that chamber proved to be empty, he paused for over one minute before aiming at his head again for chamber 6, then immediately firing the round in chamber 1 away from him, striking a sandbag.

The programme was initially condemned by senior British police officers, apparently fearful of copycat acts. However, when the filming location was revealed to be Jersey, many accused Brown of perpetrating a hoax. Several days later 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."On the other hand, as demonstrated earlier in the programme, firing a blank cartridge at point-blank range can still be extremely dangerous or even fatal.

Brown himself defended the programme, saying, "It probably sounds odd. But as a magic-related performer to have that even 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 the 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 students from Roehampton University together to re-create a live séance. He invited students to come along to the event at Eltham Hall, claiming that the location had a history of paranormal activity after 12 people killed themselves in a suicide pact in 1974, Brown 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. In his book, "Tricks of the Mind", Brown reveals that contrary to what was claimed when the show was aired, Séance didn't even go out live, but it was necessary to make people believe that it did at the time.

Channel 4 received 700 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 practitioner. The fifth expert, the Christian evangelist Curt Nordheilm, whilst impressed by Brown'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 trickery he would immediately come clean about the whole thing, a rule similar to one of the self-imposed rules of the perpetrators of the Project Alpha hoax. His conclusion was that people tend to hear only things that support their own ideas and ignore contradictory evidence.

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 she wished. After each picture had been completed, Brown 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 Brown 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 on water.

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. Brown 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 Brown to appear on her radio show the next day, which he declined.

Christian Evangelism

Brown performed instant conversions on a group consisting of members of the public, the vast majority of whom were atheists. After the first instant conversion many of the group reportedly chose to leave, concerned by what they had just witnessed. Brown then attempted to convert another individual and then the remainder of the group at once. After this, each participant declared a belief in the Christian god, or at least stated that its existence was possible - something many had previously refused to do. At the end of the show, a notice on screen announced that the participants had all been "de-converted" before they left. Brown did not gain an endorsement from the Christian Pastor overseeing the session, Brown saying "to his credit, he wanted to meet again before he'd offer a full, public endorsement".

Contacting the Dead

Brown believes that all successful mediums use a technique called cold reading. To illustrate this he arranges a clairvoyant demonstration with "fairly skeptical New Yorkers". During the séance Brown tricks three women into believing that he is in contact with deceased loved ones and many tears are shed. Afterwards it was explained to the participants that it was a trick, and those appearing agreed to broadcasting the event.

Trick Of The Mind

Trick of the Mind was Derren's second series, which is now in its third 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. The third series started on 26 March 2006.

Waking Dead

In June 2005, a clip from the second series was widely circulated on the internet. 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 him in a real-life recreation of the video game, having him fire an air gun at actors, pretending to be zombies and 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 as-live show at a secret location (hidden from the audience) with an invited audience of students from Roehampton University, celebrities, psychologists, psychics, taxi-drivers and magicians. It was filmed on 18 May 2005 and broadcast later on 29 May. As part of the show Derren recalled streets, page numbers and grid references from the Greater London A-Z map. Also pseudo-psychic "mind reading" and "remote viewing" activities were recreated. During the show, Brown hypnotised the audience as a group and convinced them that for approximately half an hour after leaving the room, they would have no memory of the events. Furthermore, the word "forget" was intermittently flashed very briefly on the backdrop throughout the performance. A variety of audience members were interviewed afterwards; some of them couldn't recollect anything (but were nevertheless very impressed); brief clips of these interviews were shown. One of the most memorable stunts was getting a London taxi driver to choose a street in London and then choose and mentally drive a random route. This was achieved by drawing a line on a map of London made of stuck together A-Z pages. He started in Buckingham Palace and ended up in Shepherd's Bush Green, the street in which the secret performance took place.

The Heist

The Heist was shown on 4 January 2006 at 21:00, on Channel 4. In the show, Derren Brown used his skills on selected participants who answered an ad. "Under the guise of a motivational seminar" (where they would allegedly learn Derren Brown's skills) Brown eventually got participants to rob a security van - in what was ultimately an elaborate set up. The robbery involved holding up a security van and guard (played by an actor) with a realistic-looking toy pistol that Brown had given them earlier, and taking a case filled with real money from him. Four people were selected to carry out the robbery from an initial field of thirteen, with three of them actually carrying out the "robbery". The idea was that after the conditioning they received, they would voluntarily rob the van of their own accord. There was no mention of the 'crime' to the participants, and they were not (directly) instructed to do it. The three that did it did so as a result of the conditioning and their own choice, not instructions from any third party including Derren.

Brown associated colour, music and phrases to build the participants into a highly-motivated state, converging all of those psychological empowerment tools into a single set up. The seminar subliminally anchored freedom, childhood, opportunity and romance into various criminal acts. After having previously been convinced to steal sweets from a shop based in Codicote High Street in Hertfordshire (for real), they were shown the euphoria that could be gained from criminal acts.

This programme also contained a reenactment of the Milgram experiment carried out by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s in the aim of selecting four of the most motivated of the group. The majority of subjects in this experiment were willing to administer lethal electric shocks to another person on the instruction of an authoritative figure (unbeknown to the subjects, the electric shocks were not actually real); these were the same results as Milgram himself found.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Brown's live stage show, Something Wicked This Way Comes, toured around the UK following its success in the West End. The tour started in March at the Cambridge Theatre and finished in May at the Hammersmith Apollo. The show won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Entertainment Show 2006. The show was co-written and directed by his long time collaborator Andy Nyman.

The show was performed and filmed for a final time at The Old Vic Theatre at the end of the tour in mid-June 2006. A 90 minute edit of this show was broadcast on December 29 2006 and June 10 2007, on Channel 4.

Trick or Treat

Trick or Treat started on Channel 4 on 13 April 2007. The focus of the show is on one volunteer that either receives a good experience or a bad experience. The experience the volunteer receives is decided by which card they choose. If they choose the card that says 'Trick' they receive a bad experience and if they choose the card that says 'Treat' they receive a good experience.

The cards which Brown uses on this show are deceptive as they are rotational ambigrams (created by John Langdon), and can read both 'Trick' and 'Treat' depending on which way up Brown chooses to hold the cards, and thus the card chosen by the participant is irrelevant, in terms of the following events. An example can be found in the second episode, where Brown, when showing the cards to the volunteer to demonstrate the options, flips the cards around the horizontal axis, but once the volunteer picked his card, revealed the card to the audience by flipping the card around the vertical axis, so that it would read "Trick" rather than "Treat". In a later episode, a card is rotated in full view and the 'trick' becomes apparent. In another episode, he rotates both cards, so no matter what, they read 'trick'.

Episodes of Trick or Treat are not preceded by Brown's usual claim that no actors or stooges were used in the filming of the shows. Indeed, some participants (such as the ambulance crew in the last episode) are declared to be actors.

Episode list

None of the episodes have on-screen titles.

1. Trick: Waking up in foreign country. The subject is put into a trance in a photo booth in London, and is transported to Marrakesh, Morocco. He wakes up in a photo booth in the back of a cafe near the main square.
2. Trick: Ventriloquist's dummy. The subject participates in a ventriloquism show where he becomes bound to the dummy. When the dummy is put in its trunk, the subject finds he cannot see.
3. Treat: Poker. The subject, an elderly lady, is taught how to read bluffs and play poker. She takes part in a tournament and is beaten only by a fluked final hand.
4. Treat: Piano recital at Wigmore Hall, London. The subject is taught to play the piano and gives a professional standard recital within weeks. Later it transpires that the subject was a pianist, but Brown persuaded her to forget this, so that she could rediscover her lost joy of playing.
5. Trick: Becomes a street madman.
6. Trick: Witnesses own death in a staged out-of-body experience. The subject is put into a trance and wakes up at the scene of a staged road traffic accident in which she sees herself dead in her car. She is unable to move and the 'rescue personnel' do not respond to her presence.

Mind Reader

Brown's 2007 tour around the United Kingdom, "Derren Brown, Mind Reader - An Evening of Wonders", started April 29th in Blackpool and ended June 17th in Bristol. The last shows in the tour were scheduled to be filmed, possibly for a later television special.

Criticism

In a Daily Telegraph article published in 2003 Simon Singh criticised Brown's early TV appearances, arguing that he presented standard magic and mentalism effects as genuine psychological manipulation . On Brown's television and live shows he often appears to show the audience how a particular effect was used - often by placing words or pictures into a subject's mind with subliminal gestures or language. Singh's suggestion is that it is these explanations which are at the very heart of Brown's misdirection, that, by making the audience feel it knows how the trick is being achieved, he is able to hide the true methods by which the magical effects are created. Brown's later shows begin with a disclaimer that says he uses "magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship".

Brown is careful to claim that no actors or stooges are used in filming, but many still remain skeptical , since Brown works in the medium of television, where things can easily be set up to look real when they really are not. During stage performances, Brown attempts to defuse detractors' claims of using stooges by throwing objects to the audience and having the audience pass it around; whoever ends up with the object joins him on stage.

In Brown's latest book Tricks of the Mind, he writes 'I am often dishonest in my techniques, but always honest about my dishonesty. As I say in each show, "I mix magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship". I happily admit cheating, as it's all part of the game. I hope some of the fun for the viewer comes from not knowing what's real and what isn't. I am an entertainer first and foremost, and I am careful not to cross any moral line that would take me into manipulating people's real-life decisions or belief systems'.

Also, in response to the accusation that he unfairly claims to be using NLP whenever he performs, Brown writes "The truth is I have never mentioned it".

Derren has commented that if he used actors, he would have to pay them and would be more trouble than he would like.

Other productions and publications

He has written three books on magic, Absolute Magic, Pure Effect, and Tricks of the Mind.

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. 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's Strong Magic but his book expresses it in the context of his experiences, performance style and theories of how performance should be. (Out of print)

Pure Effect is a more traditional book of trickery and technique and offers an insight into some of the methods that Derren employs, and offers a starting point for development for the reader's own use. (Out of print)

Tricks of the Mind is a wide ranging book in which Brown reveals some of the techniques he uses in his performances, delves into the structure and psychology of magic and discusses hypnosis. He also applies his insight to the paranormal industry - looking at the structure of beliefs and how psychology can explain why people become 'true believers' . He also offers autobiographical stories about his own experiences as a Christian, and makes his skepticism about religion, mediums and sundry other belief systems plain.

The Devil's Picturebook is a near 3 hour home-made video split into two halves. The first half explains in detail some classic card routines of his from his earlier career as a conjurer; all of which rely on sleight of hand. The second half looks at psychological card routines as opposed to sleights and shows a distinct move towards mentalism, for which he is now known. It is an instructional video for aspiring magicians and not an entertainment piece. For this reason it is only available through his website.

Future

Beginning on July 26, 2007, the US based Sci Fi Channel will show six one hour episodes of a series titled Mind Control with Derren Brown. Andrew O'Connor and Michael Vine will serve as executive producers for Objective Productions. Journalists in New York at the press announcement were shown preview clips of Brown "manipulating human behavior" and given the promise of more surprises to come. Sci Fi's press release describes the show as an "original US produced version", and early previews show a mix of new segments and older clips shown in earlier UK TV shows. The current first showing release schedule is listed as:

Episode 1 "Shopping Mall" July 26 at 10 PM EST - In the largest mall in New York State, Derren turns over 300 befuddled shoppers into his puppets by using seemingly innocuous shopping announcements made over the public address system. Also, Derren decides to go shopping himself...but he's forgotten to bring any money.
Episode 2 "Lying Car Salesman" August 2 at 10 PM EST - Derren outsmarts a group of used-car salesmen and demonstrates his mind skills to an astonished Kung Fu Master.
Episode 3 "Exotic Dancers" August 9 at 10 PM EST
Episode 4 "Assault Course" August 16 at 10 PM EST
Episode 5 "Dreamscape" August 23 at 10 PM EST
Episode 6 "Disappearing Sun" August 30 at 10 PM EST - Derren fools a man into thinking that he vanished the sun.

Pre-production has begun on Derren's all new 2008 series for the UK.

External links

• Official site
• Channel 4's Mind Control page
• Derren Brown at IMDb
• Simon Singh's Daily Telegraph article: "Spectacular Psychology or Silly Psycho-babble?"
• Extended interview with Brown from Genii magazine, including responses about Singh's article
• Derren Brown Interview
• Derren Brown Info
• SCI FI Channel's official Derren Brown show site
• Derren Brown Plays Russian Roulette Live article at SCIFIpedia