Hello gomagicgo listeners I’m Mulkey in Brooklyn NY and I’m reviewing Derren Browns DVD: THE DEVILS PICTURE BOOK. For you American listeners there is a bit of Derren Brown 101 you need to know but to be brief I usually tell magicians that aren’t familiar with Derren Brown that he is the UK version of Criss Angel. By that I mean they both have magic oriented television series. The comparison stops there. I mean it REALLY stops there.
The Devils Picture Book is available from Derren Browns website which is
www.Derrenbrown.com.uk It costs 40 Lbs sterling which is $60-ish American dollars and after shipping and handling tops off to about $70 to $75-ish dollars. Which, is expensive but what do you expect there is an entire OCEAN in the way and in my opinion the price is well worth it.
The 2-disc set instead of being labeled Disc 1 and Disc 2 is divided into a Disc entitled Conjuring and the other called Psychological Effects. The total combined running time of the set tops out at 3 PLUS enjoyable hours divided into performance and explanation segments in the menu so if you want you can show your non- magical friends the performance and not give away the secrets.
The first disc, Conjuring, is devoted to card effects and let me tell you it is very evident that Mr. Brown picked up a deck of cards in his youth and said "Oh, Yes. I remember these from the WOMB." Okay, he doesn't actually SAY that. He credits Lennert Green, Tom Mullica and Dai Vernon as well as others for his inspirations.
He starts off the Conjuring disc with a 3-card routine that is as fluid as it is skillful. It is PURE sleight of hand and incidentally it is described in his book “Pure Effect”. But the reading of “3 Card” routine from “Pure Effect doesn’t do tribute seeing the creator in performance. I’m not going to describe it here because even Mr. Brown calls it a MARATHON card trick. The moves are masterful and not for the beginner and the explanation on the DVD times out at 27 minutes long which may give you an idea of the length of the trick.
The next effect on the DVD is a sleight called “Mikes Move” which I have found useful in my own conjuring. It’s a deceptive card relocation of placing a card in the middle and moving it to the bottom of the pack under the guise of squaring up the deck. It is so simple and logical I sit in that it hasn’t shown up in print decades ago.
The next effects are “Card Under Box” and “Oil and Water” and it is here where we start to realize --and what I’m going to say next is a better reason to buy the DVD more than any others you may read in this review. You start to start to get a sense of his professionally ingrained skill of misdirection and audience management. As he describes the set ups, get readies, sleights and routining, he also includes instructions for how to conduct the audiences attention using verbal as well as physical misdirection and the creating and releasing of tension and focus by the magician and the spectator.
To me this alone makes the DVD worth the price. Many magic DVDs have a magician alone talking to a camera that shows you moves and you copy them. Mr. Brown in the explanation segments teaches the moves to friend and fellow magician Peter Clifford. So as we watch he explains to Mr. Clifford how “You relax here” and “you create tension on this card” etc. As a quick example there is a point in the “Oil and Water” routine where you hold 5 cards in your hand 3 black and 2 red and you are presenting all of them as black dealt to the table one at a time. And 5 black cards are what the audience will see through his crafty misdirection.
The next 2 effects are “Zamiels Rose” and “Smoke” both of which are also in his book “Pure Effect”. “Zamiels Rose” is a small step (more of a toe dip actually) into the waters of bizarre magic in that it is based around a childhood memory. The effect is like WATCHING a poem and you can see he has concerned himself with making it as pretty and elegant as possible. But “Smoke” being the last effect on the Conjuring DVD is where a transition from conjuring to mind reading begins.
In the effect “Smoke” a spectator thinks of a card in a spread of cards. Mr. Brown lights a cigarette and divines the card correctly. He then says the funny thing is you card isn’t even in the deck. He spreads the deck and then coughs a bit and the cigarette is seen as transformed into the spectators mentally selected card. The effect is stunning and powerful. Trying to put this effect together here in America might be a challenge because as part of the set up Mr. Brown uses the box of a 1/2 pack of cigarettes which is a 10 pack available in the UK but not in the US.
So to sum up the CONJURING disc of "The Devils Picture Book"- This is not for the beginner. If you want to purchase it just to see what you can aspire to then get it. But to perform these effects you need a thorough or at least rudimentary knowledge of a card spring, charlier cut, double lift, Elmsley count, lapping, palming, pass, short card, snap change, top change, toppit. The list is a quote from the review of this product by Ken Taylor from the ellusionist product review page.
The material on the 2nd disc "Psychological Effects" is an example of some of the craftiest thinking in magic. Advanced equivoque and psychological forces make Mr. Browns magic appear as if it were real.
The first 3 effects "Out of the World", "Double Think" and "Extreme Mental Effort" use cards in a more or less conventional way to accomplish mental feats but the effects are not conventional. His handling of OOTW is not one the normal pile-making card counting versions you may be familiar with. Older versions of OOTW (In my mind) just seemed to take FOREVER with the spectator chanting "RED, RED, BLACK, RED, BLACK" etc. Mr. Brown’s version allows you to start off with a shuffled deck. The spectator is then allowed to shuffle. Yep. I said it. The spectator shuffles. The cards are then ribbon spread and the spectator makes 2 piles using their intuition. They make one pile of red cards and the other black while looking only at the backs of the cards. When done, the spectator is asked if they would like to change their minds about any of the cards …and they can. And of course it being OOTW the effect is the same and spectator touched ALL the cards themselves and of course their mind is blown. It's a much-streamlined version of a classic of card magic.
"Double Think" is a nice mental effect wherein one of the spectators selects a card and a second spectator merely thinks of one. 2 cards are laid on the table and they are both correct. The sleights are wickedly simple in theory yet will be difficult for beginners and the psychological misdirection applied to the patter is genius.
"Extreme Mental Effort" is of the same vein. Wickedly simple and very deceptive. One spectator chooses a card and it is mixed into the deck. A 2nd spectator starts dealing the cards face down onto the table. Mr. Brown starts reading the mind of the spectator that made the selection and just before he reveals the name of the psychically divined card he tells the spectator that is dealing to stop. He then says the name of the card to the person that made the selection and he is correct he then turns over the card on the table and it is correct. I think I actually said "NO FREAKIN' WAY." when I first saw this in presentation and during the explanation I said, "NO FREAKIN WAY!!” The performance of the magician makes the effect. The working is so simple it becomes bold and the story he tells in the instruction portion is interesting in how he went about achieving the end result.
The next 3 effects "Invisible Deal", "Invisible Deal Force" and "Mental Force" are all mental in nature. They use cards and card imagery as tools but to do these effects you don't actually even need a deck. You could just write the name of the card on a napkin or a business card and reveal them at the end of the effect. The "Invisible Deal" and "Invisible Deal Force" both make use of what I call advanced equivoque. The thinking behind the effects reminds me of some of Kenton Kneppers stuff. It's a very skilful and quietly complex series of verbal instructions that produce a desired effect. In the DVD he either verbally produces the spectators card from an invisible deck (not an Invisible Deck gimmick but one that is really NOT THERE) or he forces the spectator to name a card that has been placed on the table and has been in plain view the entire time. All is done verbally. No sleight of hand.
The mental forces are very specific. In the DVD he forces the J of S, the 3 or 4 of C and the 4 of H. Now, these aren't %100 accurate so there is a good deal of chance to the process but if you hit you hit really, really big. In watching the explanations (especially the mental forces) I couldn't help but wonder about the entire process of trial and error for concocting the proper sentences with the proper gestures to get the instructions across just to get the participant to name the card much less do it subtly enough so as not to be detected that you're telling the spectator what card they should choose. For that is what you are doing -- you are telling them what card they should select mentally. Brilliant is the only word for these effects and the mind that created them.
The video quality while done on the cheap only using one camera is not the highest. However, the single cameraman knows his stuff and you don't miss anything. The location of the recording of the DVD is the interior of Mr. Browns home, which adds a sense of intimacy to the DVD that gives it a warmer feel than most magic instructional DVDs. It also allows us a glimpse of Mr. Browns sense of humor. The end credits are a chuckle and after the credits Mr. Brown has included a little something extra that is very funny. Uhmmm...odd...but very funny.
The final word on the Devils Picture Book- Buy it. You will not be disappointed. The postscript for this review: I am sad. This is all material he will never do again. Ever. Mr. Browns DVD was born out of the fact that he is no longer doing this type of magic any longer. To quote the Genii Magazine interview with Jamy Ian Swiss, Derren Brown says this DVD is “his way of saying goodbye to all of this material”. And as a final note I have culled a quote from “Magicweek online” that states "Thank the Lord for video, or we might have no record of what Derren [Brown] did when he was still 'just' a magician."
My name is Mulkey.
