They are the ones where he plays the hoax-buster.
There are some where the hoax has not been admitted.
Steven Morris
The Guardian, Wednesday 8 October 2003 02.17 BST
Article history
The publicity material described him as either brave or foolhardy. But Derren Brown, the illusionist who claimed he was playing Russian roulette on television using a live bullet, was revealed yesterday to be neither.
Brown's controversial stunt backfired when police on Jersey, where it was filmed, said he had used blank ammunition.
The illusionist, dubbed Britain's answer to David Blaine, had boasted he was risking his life. In fact it was an elaborate hoax.
A spokesman for Brown last night issued a less than robust defence of the stunt, saying only that if the illusionist had used a blank bullet, as the police alleged, and if it had fired as the gun were pointed at his head, then "he would have died anyway".
Three million people watched the show on Channel 4 on Sunday, despite fierce criticism from police and anti-gun campaigners.
The idea was that a volunteer would load a bullet into one of a gun's six chambers. Channel 4's publicity material clearly stated it would be a "live bullet". Brown would then use his powers to divine which chamber the bullet was in.
Viewers duly saw him fire empty chambers at his head and appear to fire a live bullet at a sandbag, which seemed to have been punctured.
When it emerged that the stunt had taken place on Jersey the police switchboard was bombarded by complaints and the matter was raised in the island's parliament yesterday.
The police say they felt they had to put the record straight. Lenny Harper, deputy chief officer for the States of Jersey police, said the force had given permission for a production and props company to bring 50 rounds of blank ammunition and equipment used to replicate the impact of a bullet on to the island. The programme makers told the police they would be filming at a farmhouse at Grouville on the south-east tip of the island.
Mr Harper said: "There was no live ammunition involved and at no time was anyone at risk."
The programme makers had made much of the fact that they were having to film overseas because of the UK's strict gun laws. But Jersey's laws are just as strict. Mr Harper said: "There is absolutely no way the States of Jersey police would allow anybody to put themselves at risk and shoot themselves dead. This was just an illusion - the question of whether it was in dubious taste is another matter."
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Derren Brown: Hero a Fake?
To cut to the chase, the answer is no.
Hero at 30,000 Feet is the latest TV special by mental illusionist Derren Brown. In the show, Derren took Matt, a fed-up Leeds man lacking in confidence, and
transformed him through a series of set-ups into a courageous, outgoing, risk-taker--the hero of the title. Matt had applied for the programme believing it was a new quiz show, but was unaware that Derren was behind the strange, life-changing series of events he was experiencing.
The events included a fake armed robbery, a night-time encounter with a crocodile and being put in a straitjacket and tied to a railway line as a train approached. The finale was a plane journey where--and this could never happen in real life, due to regulations--a pilot fell ill on a plane, and it was up to Matt to volunteer to land it. Through "hypnosis," Matt was taken from the real plane into a flight simulator, where he successfully overcame his fear of flying and landed the plane. Up to this point, Matt had been the archetypal passive bystander. Earlier, for example, we had watched him sit by saying nothing as smoke started billowing out from under a door, all because he did not want to be the first to take action. But now, Matt the Unconfident was Matt the Hero, Matt the Brave.
For me, it was a strangely intense and emotional experience, perhaps because I identified with Matt's fears and anxieties about taking risks and stepping out in life.
For others, Derren Brown's Hero at 30,000 Feet was just a hoax.
The belief that Hero--and the entire Derren Brown phenomenon--is fake rests on two flawed ideas. The first is that what Derren does is truly "extraordinary." In one sense it is; in another sense, Derren uses psychology that is in fact quite ordinary. We are simply unaware of it. Derren Brown forces us to think about the incredible powers of the human mind that we take for granted every day.
Second, there's the idea that the theatricality of Derren's stunts invalidates them. Actually, Derren has consistently prefaced his shows with the disclaimer that what he does is "a combination of magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship." Derren is a mentalist, a magician.
So, what was it about the show that made people cry "Hoax!"? One was the suggestion that in Derren Brown's Hero at 30,000 Feet, Matt was an actor. I'm not sure of the basis for this, other than that people just can't believe it was all real. Again, it all seems extraordinary, but in fact, Derren is relying on established principles used by hypnotists and mentalists. In general, it is easier than most people think to convince the mind it is in a different reality, and it is possible to convince a suggestible person that anything is true, given the right conditions. Yes, Matt could be an actor, but why would he need to be? There is nothing Derren does in the program that couldn't have been done with a real person.
It's necessary to appreciate that with any reality or documentary show, a lot more goes into production and post-production, including editing, than most viewers realize. Certainly there are huge parts of what Derren accomplished and how he engineered it that are never seen on the screen. Some armchair critics see this as evidence of deception and fakery, but this is just TV production.
Derren explains a lot of it in this article, in which he answers fans' questions about Hero.
Aside from questions of fakery and such, I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the show. The thing I have always appreciated about Derren Brown is that he adds some new dimension to what he does every time he presents a new show or stunt. In The System, for example, he pressed mental illusionism into the service of critical thinking and skepticism. Now, in Hero at 30,000 Feet, Derren applies his psychological techniques to personal development and mental well-being. Derren Brown is an astounding showman, but he strikes me as a man with a mission, too.
Posted by David L Rattigan at 19:50
Labels: Derren Brown, mentalism, TV
ME> (Degraded Being)
I think the mirroring stunt is just a stunt.
Same old same old.........READING SOMEONE'S MIND.
Just a new way of presenting it to a current audience.
Mirroring may show something about people liking or feeling comfortable with each other. That is NLP and maybe agreed on by psychologists. We have heard it before and most of us probably find it quite plausible. Brown establishes that with us first to get our agreement and then adds on the extra bit, that you can read someone else's mind. How amazing! We have always wanted to be able to do that and now we can believe it without appearing flaky because it is an extension of current theory (as far as we know, in psychology, behaviour etc.).
I have seen other vids which are just trickery. There are several which use that NLP stuff about placing words into spoken sentences to make people do things. One was about people getting huge payouts at the dog races by suggestion to the payout clerk that you have a winning ticket when you don't. The clerk is so mesmerised she repeatedly hands out piles of dosh to non-winning tickets. Others too.
If that embedded command thing was true then people would jump up and do all sorts of silly things by connecting spoken words and editing out others whenever people spoke to them.
, This TR in particular aims at rewiring the brain so it follows commands more easily with less resistance.