Derren Brown’s Lottery Explanation – The Real Solution
So I’m sure those of you that watched Derren Brown’s prediction of the lottery numbers on Wednesday tuned in on Friday night to be disappointed. For those of you who didn’t watch either – on Wednesday Derren Brown predicted the lottery numbers (well he didn’t, he showed you the same numbers after they came out, which isn’t predicting, it is just regurgitating). Then on Friday he came out with his solution as to how he did it, essentially it was one of two things:
- The power of the group mind or hive mind (b*****ks)
- He bribed someone to do the balls
But to be honest, both seem a little far fetched, and after careful studying by the Bronco team we noticed that one of the ping pong balls was moving on its own and one of our guys theorised that actually it was just a clever camera trick with CGI graphics. Sounds a bit technical right? Well not so, an animator in Brighton posted this possible solution, which is the one we think is the real solution:
Apparently Derren Brown also hinted at this, through his third advert where he is juggling balls with one hand (one pre-recorded, one side him speaking – spliced together) and then his advert after the prediction where he holds up the snow flake, implying there was part of the screen frozen. For a more indepth explanation you can read here.
The most impressive trick I believe Derren has managed to conjure is the amount of search traffic for his name, its ridiculous, just check out the past 7 days in the UK on Google Insights:
Now I’m not sure how much traffic Derren Brown’s site got, but we ranked quite highly for a number of his search terms in our last post and it got a lot of traffic, so I’m sure he got a lot more.
What I’ve also noticed is that Derren Brown is getting a lot better at what he does, and his recent switch to online viral marketing has been a winner, just check out searches for his name since 2004:
As you can see that is a real spike in September 2009, especially compared to the past events he has done.
We’ll be following the rest of Derren Brown’s events from an Internet marketing angle, so stay tuned!
rishil 1344 days ago
http://designer-watches.orgGood point regarding breakout traffic – and although a site/blog may get traffic from breakout searches – would love to hear your thoughts on monetising that traffic…
Chris 1344 days ago
http://www.twitter.com/chrisefrostMonetising traffic… erm… well my initial thoughts would be to advertise the Notaionl Lottery and then look at maybe alternative online gameing sites and finally look at tapping into the magician side of things.
In terms of PR and creating talking points it was a great show on Friday, but a let down if you (like I) hoped to see a better, realistic explanation as to how the illusion was done. Can’t wait to see him in Macrh next year!
Lynne 1344 days ago
http://teachyourchildtoread.netLoved the programme and the faux explanation. I expect it to all come together in the last programme in the series when all of the events will debunk psychic abilities, and stuff. He usually pulls everything together at the end.
Richard Vaughan 1344 days ago
When I saw the “prediction” show I immeadiately thought that the trick would be very possible with some split screen schenanigans. A simple trick in concept made to sound more complicated and wonderous by his own unqiue brand of misdirection.
Gareth James 1344 days ago
http://www.seo-doctor.co.uk/At least this post is back to SEO – My inbox was full of blog comments about his trick from your last post. I love the idea of campaign hijacking as shown by Patrick with Gio Compario and here, but as Rishil says, it needs to be converted somehow.
Francine 1344 days ago
Well Derren has certainly created much controversy surrounding the lottery draw. Personally I believe it was just another very clever illusion by Mr Brown. The BBC news website has shown quotes from mathmeticians. Well mathmeticians, although on most occasions your figures produce unquestionable facts, Im afraid that no matter what you have to say about Mr Brown’s lotto illusion, you’ll never work it out. You dismiss possibility or probability, only seeing what equations tell you to see. Why even bother watching the show, it is inevitable that you would not believe it.
I must say that I was not disappointed by either of the two shows (wednesday or friday). No-one understands what happened except Mr Brown himself, just like every other illusion he has pulled off.
It seems the main problem with everyone is that they want to win the lottery. Their anger comes from misunderstanding your show.
Well done Mr Brown. Once again you have puzzled the nation.
Kean 1344 days ago
http://www.keanrichmond.comAfter friday night I just ended up with a headache. Dubiously going with the group guessing until his bit about rigging the machine, which of course would be illegal. Although no one actually won the draw he ‘predicted’.
What’s really disappointing is that his explaination doesn’t really hold up, if you decide not to believe his explanation you’re left looking for another option like the split screen idea. If this is the case I wasted an hour of my life on Friday night and really I’d rather not know how he did it than some half-arsed explanation of thinking the right numbers.
edso 1343 days ago
Hate to say it but I guessed what was going on only a few seconds into the Wednesday show. This may be due to the fact I once had to make some tripod-shot footage look as though it was hand-held, or it could be the rather symetrical and head on shot that was used. I recognise fake camera shake – but the main giveaway was…. why, with a carefully set up trick, would you shoot it with a hand held camera? Answer – you wouldn’t. I just feel sorry for the poor guy trying his best to stamp on a knife – there never was £500,000 on the table!
Is Derren Brown a skeptic? « God knows what… 1332 days ago
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Turil 1309 days ago
http://blog.thewiseturtle.comNot bribe, hypnotize.
Think about it. This is what he does. This is his best and most unusual skill as a magician, making people do things that they aren’t aware of consciously. This is not just his most impressive technique, but it’s the one that is most challenging to him, and thus the most interesting for him to do.
Plus, he uses misdirection to make you think that what he did do is the LAST thing you think he did…
Admit it, the last thing most people think he did was hypnotize someone into sneaking weighted balls into the machine (taking pictures of themselves doing it) and then sneaking them out again right afterward.
He went out of his way to use misdirection to make you think he was using a split screen. But that would be the last thing he’d do, given his fascination with messing with people’s minds.
Keiron 1288 days ago
I watched this for the first time last night, the Mathematical explanations were nonsense, but gave the proceedings a faux pseudo-science edge, for me the key was that he did the sums himself with his 24 strong “crowd”, but crucially didnt then tell them what the prediction actually was. The trick was as some have pointed out, to get the correct numbers on the prediction balls between the draw and the “reveal”. The group of 24 then believed that they had guessed the numbers, which they of course couldnt have. If they were that sure, they would have all tried again for the following draw (which would presumably have been a roll-over with a high expectation of winning. When they did not win, DB would have told them that the greed factor clouded the technique. Clever. Derren is a clever entertainer, and I am more impressed by the street magic mis-directions he does than the “spectaculars”!
Caue Rego 1281 days ago
http://www.cregox.infoI actually believe there must be a way to predict lottery. but there are several ways to look at this logically and find out what he admitted in the end himself, and I quote:
“it was just a trick”
1. let’s just assume all he said is true. so let’s gather 240 guesses from the internet, 10x more than what’s supposed needed, on how he did the trick by numbering the options from 1 to 3. so, just 1 in 3 chances, rather than 140 million. none of those peeps are looking for gold. now do the math and you get yourself a paradox: that’s right, people guessed it was a camera trick, thus making this very argument invalid.
2. where’s someone being able to copy it? it shouldn’t be too hard gather enough people to try and reproduce the experiment just to being able to proof it’s possible, thus, without looking for profit. after all, this would be a hell of a scientific discovery.
bottom line, doesn’t really matter how he did it, it was just a trick, no prediction was made. try to separate illusions from your mind and enjoy the show. this is his purpose after all.
Dom 1164 days ago
I imagined he might have made use of the fact that live shows are not so “live” …
The event happened and he had a direct link to the lottery show studio… so he could somehow fit it in. In horseracing the radio commentary lags behind by up to 30s but you cant make use of that to make money!!!
Derren Brown: How did Derren Brown predict the lottery? - Quora 387 days ago
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