Waking Dead - Derren Brown

[miker]

The cinema does (or can) use subtext, that's the nearest equivilent I can think of to subliminally manipulating your audience. I don''t think that's illegal, not in a democracy anyhow. Setting a mood in a movie is pretty easy if you can get all the pieces to together. A movie can be designed at that level just as any of Brown's illusions or tricks would have to be designed to mislead you or put you in a certain frame of mind.

[jb_617]

You obviously don't have much of a grasp of the concept of cinema or its history.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You guys obviously have no grasp of how the brain interprits images and sound. Or how hypnosis actually works. Or the laws governing subliminal advertising. Or non-verbal suggestion. Or the Millgram experiments. Or just about anything else that could in some way be related to this thread.

What I was railing against was the fact that the discussion (once again) had swerved off the point like a drunk driver on black ice.


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But I guess you missed that.

[MatJimMood]

Yes i did surprisingly - Your blunt manner leaves room for ambiguity.

If you have something to contribute to the discussion - such as those references you made - why don't you. It would be appreciated a lot more than your obtuse comments.

[Chance1234]

the Freudds back in the early days of advertising investigated and developed a lot of techniques with pyschology, which no doubt are very much part of the whole aspect of manipulating people , with what they see and what they hear.

As For Mr. Derren Brown , there are two books he wrote on magic and performance ages ago , yonks before he was on the television, which if you can get your hands on are well worth a read (probably the best place is international magic off of grays in road in london) The books mainly go on about the act of performance , rather than being "how to's" but they give a good insight.

I Know how most of Derren browns stuff works, and lke the man says at the begining of his show, a mixture of magic, psychology and misdirection.

One thing that was bothering me for a while on Mr.Brown is his execution , which i think is down a lot to the way the show is edited, but dont know if anyone saw the other week where he was making people hand over there wallets and mobile phones ? anwyay what he is doing with the whole bottle switching between the hands before he asks for the wallet etc, is quite a complex mislead, but for interest sake.

Go up to someone and ask them for their wallet and you'll probably be met by no.

however...

Go to a toy shop, buy a cheap magic trick.Go up to someone Do the magic trick and then ask them for their wallet and 9/10 they'll hand over their wallet. No questions asked.

There are some really good mentalist routines out there based on pyschology, but before you can get them to work you need to find out How open to suggestion the subject is or lay anchors to build up to it, so you start of with a trick that is guaranteed to work such as forced selection and build up to it. Another good thing is as well about building up a trick is say you do three of four tricks in a row which are forced selction adn always going to work, you then try your big routine. Even if the big routine doesnt work, you come away with your integrity in tack as most likely the subject will be going "AH ... well you got me three out of four times..." instead of going "huh" if you just try and do your big routine from fresh and it doesnt work. Thats good showmanship.

Moving back to the relevance of film, in my mind anyway film is all about illusion, and i think understanding a bit about magic and hwo tricks work in general is a good bit advice for filmmakers, for the record i am coming into this from the reverse, i used to be really into magic before i got into film.

As For pyschology side of things again, as film is a communicaiton medium theres no denying the links there. Again fact you can use pyschology to manipulate people and no reason you cant use film / pyschology together, Just take some of the propaganda films throughout history. More relevant you can use pyschology to scare the bejeezles out of people as well. best example for hand i can think of is that car one that pops up on this board quite a few times, where you are presented with the peaceful rolling road , nice medolic music and BANG!

Chance,


Ps. site which i havent updated in ages www.howtobespooky.co.uk bit light hearted but relevant.
pss. Eddie drop me a e-mail !!!!

[jb_617]

The whole point of making a film is to influence the audience. We consider films "bad" because they do not suspend our disbelief. Going into the theatre we know that the film isn't real but we put ourselves into a state of mind where we are willing to believe that it is.

A good writer coupled with a good director will be able to make you think in a certain way while the film is showing. This is the fundamental principle of entertainment. It evaporates quite quickly after you leave the cinema.

But, it only works if you want to get into that state of mind. Any psychiatrist will tell you that you cannot hypnotise a subject that doesn't want to be hypnotised. The same think applies to those frauds in the street. It's not "magic" it's just known psychology. To come back to something I mentioned earlier, Stanley Millgram showed quite conclusively that a person will do almost anything you ask of them if you show yourself to be in a position of authority over them. Chance touched on this in his post. It's not the little trick that you do that makes a person hand over their wallet, it's the subjects desire for information and protection. You have shown that you have knowledge (the ability to make the trick work) that the subject doesn't have. So they will automatically defer to the person with the knowledge quite easily. This is because human beings are, and always have been, pack animals. It's not the trick that gets you the wallet, it's the impression of power. If you tried the same thing on someone who already knew how the trick worked then the chances are that they would tell you to get bent (not always though because some people walking around out there are terminal idiots).

I was going to post one my degree essays on this subject and discuss how a lot of films, particularly crime thrillers like Se7en use this technique all the time. It discusses how the perception of power can be used in the abstract (such as the narrative to a story) or in the exact (me v. you). I also wrote about how, if you analyse some films such as Se7en and look for the authority figures, they will almost always be acting in the best interests of "The State" or our concept of normality. It's quite interesting reading.

However, since I've been flamed before for putting overlong posts up here and seem to be considered both "obtuse" <u>and</u> "blunt" (a stunning contradiction in anyone's book), I'm not going to. I doubt anyone would understand or accept it anyway.

Enjoy your brainwashings, fools.


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Knowledge is not power, it is freedom.

[MatJimMood]

Chance do you have any idea of the basic theory behind the use of subliminal images / flashes to affect an audience and how they can be used to manipulate?

The recent live show on TVs probably the best to go by where he made a third of the audience completely forget what they'd seen. Can this be done simply by a few structured flashing words, big bangs, flashing lights etc, like it seemed?


jb. - get a dictionary or something.

[jb_617]

I was kind of making the point that obtuse and blunt mean the same thing. So to be called <u>both</u> seems, perhaps not a contradiction (i'll give you that), but maybe an unneccessary double adjective use. Refering to the noun (me in this case) as both obtuse and blunt is rather like saying that the sky is blue and cobalt. This of course refering to the fact that these word pairs are synonymous.


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Take an English class.

[MatJimMood]

I obviously have.

Re-read the post your refering to

[Chance1234]

MatJimMood ,

Not only is Derren Brown , tricking the subject but he is also tricking the audience.

Firstly the whole flashing light / images / special designed program thing in this case is faux,

I've jsut been watching the clip again before reading your post and clocked it.

Not wanting to spoil it as what he is doing is using a very old stage trick,only thing i will say is

Pay attention at around 46 seconds.,
2 minutes 10
and 3 minutes 40 ish

[jb_617]

I have. When a writer sets out an idea, in this case my blunt manner, it is misleading to the reader to then change the adjective used for the remainder of the topic. To parse correctly, your post should have read:

"Yes i did surprisingly - Your blunt manner leaves room for ambiguity.
If you have something to contribute to the discussion - such as those references you made - why don't you. It would be appreciated a lot more than your <u>blunt commentary</u>."

For another example of where some idiot committed this crime against good English, check out one of my earlier posts on this thread where I used the words "Cinema" and "Theatre" interchangeably over the course of two paragraphs.

Remember your Fowler:

Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched.
Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.

They did teach you that during your English course, right?

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I humbly apologise for that one.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ June 16, 2005 07:54 AM: Message edited by: jb. ]</font>