I read it a couple of months ago and I can still repeat it.

Can't get the hang of the number one though

has anyone seen Derren Brown is going to predict the lottery numbers live this evening! 10:35, all '4' channels apparently!

As predicting the lottery numbers is impossible

has anyone seen Derren Brown is going to predict the lottery numbers live this evening! 10:35, all '4' channels apparently!

So Derren Brown just predicted the lottery numbers correctly.

No he didn't.

i think he had a writing recognition on the board he wrote on, that made them appear on the balls, imagine an awkward version of writing on D.Kawasakis Brain Training on the DS.

Too hard - he'd have just had someone type the numbers in off-screen.
The magic was in the ping-pong balls, for sure. Otherwise he'd have turned them around before the draw started.

I can't see that derren brown thing on iplayer, any clues?

I can't see that derren brown thing on iplayer, any clues?

He's such a marvellous showman, and the idea to do this kind of thing, where he pulls a stunt like this and then shows you how a couple of days later, is marketing GOLD.

Just watched it on youtube.

There's no "studio audience" in his 10 minute show, is there? Not in the clip I saw anyway.

So it's easy - the left side of the screen is genlocked or digitally replaced with a static picture of the stand and ping-pong balls, meanwhile an assistant rushes out and puts the right numbers in the holder, hidden from view. As soon as he's finished and has scarpered, they switch back to the full camera view and Derren reveals it.

Nice trick. There's no way he's going to admit that's how he did it either.

Maybe - the balls would shift when they unlocked the left of the screen though, wouldn't there?

So it's easy - the left side of the screen is genlocked or digitally replaced with a static picture of the stand and ping-pong balls, meanwhile an assistant rushes out and puts the right numbers in the holder, hidden from view. As soon as he's finished and has scarpered, they switch back to the full camera view and Derren reveals it.

You have barely 25 seconds between the last ball being drawn and Derren doing the reveal. That's not a lot of time to get the bloke to write all six numbers down, get himself and selection of numbers clear, and switch feeds.

Maybe - the balls would shift when they unlocked the left of the screen though, wouldn't there?

There's 25 seconds for the chap to write the numbers, but the camera is moving slightly all time, so I don't think that's it.

Anyway, I reject all camera trickery explanations. Brown is too good a showman for Friday night to be any sort of anticlimax; he has to have up his sleeve some insanely clever explanation of how he did this or the Friday show is going to be crap. Assuming he does, why would he then do the actual trick with camera trickery instead of the insane cleverness?

Because there's no way he could have known the numbers in advance. Occams razor. The clever explanation will be clever, but it's not going to be true or repeatable.

If Friday's show doesn't leave every viewer smacking their head and saying "of course! dammit!" then it will have failed, and if it's not repeatable and obviously true it won't do that.

You have barely 25 seconds between the last ball being drawn and Derren doing the reveal. That's not a lot of time to get the bloke to write all six numbers down, get clear, and switch feeds.

Anyway, I reject all camera trickery explanations. Brown is too good a showman for Friday night to be any sort of anticlimax; he has to have up his sleeve some insanely clever explanation of how he did this or the Friday show is going to be crap. Assuming he does, why would he then do the actual trick with camera trickery instead of the insane cleverness?

Did he not say he'd show us so we too would be able to do it?

Or you think that was just patter?

Yes but I meant that the answer wouldn't be freeze framing or green screen as that is not something the general public "can do"

Surely derren brown just used smoke and mirrors to do it.

The balls looked suspect (the printing on them)

But the program wil probably be 30mins telling us what the lottery is.
20mins of him "planning" his trick
30 seconds of him telling us he faked the whole thing.
Audience goes "WTF" and he's proved to be the devil

I reckon that it wasn't a live broadcast and he just did 14 million takes, then they just superimposed the telly footage from the other channel.

Sure, 14 million 8-minute long recordings wouldn't take long to do

Even if you think they top-and-tailed some generic intro footage, you'd still need a couple of minutes recorded uniquely for each set of balls he wanted to predict. And if you consider he only promised to get five of the six numbers, that's still over 56,000 combinations. It's just too much.

The adverts did say he'd spent a year working on it.

Showmanship. Not true. Never believe anything you see on the TV, especially adverts.

I have to say, I really, really like Derren Brown's stuff. He's just a proper, old school, entertaining magician. I know there's probably all sorts of cheap tricks he uses to pull off these stunts, but it's all done with such entertaining panache that I rather enjoy it all.