One of the biggest projects for me in 2011 was to cut ‘Derren Brown: The Experiments – The Guilt Trip’. I even appeared in it, about half a dozen times, mostly near the end. For the next few days after transmission all manner of people would say to me “Didn’t I see you on Channel4 the other night, on Derren Brown?” Fame at last!
My only regret was that I’d been too busy to tell anyone about it. But hey, enough about me.
It was the most ambitious film the Derren Brown team, led by the inimitable Simon Dinsell, have ever attempted. Derren wanted there to be almost no voice over, and I was right with him on that. I believed from the beginning it would be possible to strike the right note with his asides in the OB truck, from which we could monitor the 27 cameras, to take us through the film without feeling as if it was being voiced. It was an interesting time in the viewings. The most memorable phrase I heard was that, with this going out at 9pm on Friday night, “25% of the audience would be playing with their electronic toys, 25% would be engaged in some kind of sexual activity, 25% would be drunk and disorderly, 20% would not be paying enough attention to follow tiny details and 5% would be critically analyzing everything that happened. So basically we were making this for an audience of drunken four year olds.” A truly brilliant pearl of wisdom which I’ll never be able to forget.
I ended up lead editing it, since the volume of material and some post-production troubles crunched the time right down to less than was available. A really fine result.
First TX
Channel 4, 4/11/11, 21:00hrs