Potty Page

September 10, 2009

Prediction about the prediction

Maybe you watched Derren Brown 'predict' the lottery numbers last night. Maybe you didn't. Meh. Whatever. Speculation is rife about how he could have done it.

Here's my theory.

The first shot isn't live. It's pre-recorded. As is the shot where they show the camera man and him from behind. When it cuts back to the first camera, it's not really a man with a handheld camera, it's a fixed, floor mounted camera (and we're now live).

The image taken by the camera is bigger than the image they actually broadcast (say 10% bigger). This could be achieved by digitally zooming the image or cropping it or whatever. The means that a smaller window can be moved around the actual image - giving the impression that the static feed is actually a handheld camera as it's moving a bit.

As it zooms in loads at the end of the program, I can only assume that they 'unfix' the camera and use it as normal, or it's got a high resolution and they zoom in digitally rather than optically.

As the camera is fixed, you can now have the left of the screen (where the balls are) showing a still shot of the balls, with a perfect edge to the dynamic right video. As you can move the window around the full image, it looks like the camera is moving, thus making it look like it's 'impossible' to stitch the two images together.

As the balls are drawn the balls are replaced in the holder by some other dude. The time this takes is counted for by Derren writing out the numbers and what have you. So long as the balls just fit into the trough, they'll be in the same position in each shot.

Then, all you do is cut to the live feed on both sides of the image before he walks across and tada.

Of course, after tomorrow when he's shown how his prediction was made, I could well just change this to show what he said, and look like a genius :)

Posted by Ed at September 10, 2009 7:19 PM | Ramble |