Example of Subliminal Advertising
youtube.com
youtube.com
What.. my country, the UK? The country where I have to pay an extortionate TV tax/license every year, part of which goes to fund Channel 4? How comes I can view this through a US-based VPN yet not directly in the UK when the content is from a British TV station I'm paying for?
I was staggered at the practicality of many of their ideas. E.g. I now recognise when someone unwittingly is using hypnotic suggestion in a conversation and it doesn't have the effect it may have. I'm able to pretend to be psychic at parties, and can pull of some pretty good cold reading tricks as well now.
It's worth learning how to do memory palaces just for fun (one of Derren's audiobooks has this, which is a good beginner introduction).
If you don't think he's capable of tricks like this without cutscenes, there are some videos floating around of him performing tricks better than this on other top class magicians which couldn't have been faked. I suspect he claims he's doing illusions because it makes it seem less powerful than it really is, and makes us seem more in control than we really are.
If you want some simple tricks to get into it, just get derrens audio books which are quick and powerful.
Instead of working his tricks under the illusion of them being "magic" he pins the workings on pop psychology - he may tell you that he's using subliminal messages posted along the route, and not mention a bunch of coloring books left in the room with similar pictures (for example).
It's a cool video, for sure; but the results are most likely not derived from "subliminal messages".
Deep Impact (May 1998) -> Armageddon (July 1998)
The Illusionist (September 2006) -> The Prestige (October 2006)
Paul Blart: Mall Cop (January 2009) -> Observe and Report (April 2009)
These movies came out too close together for one to copy the other, so either the directors and studios were in it together on these movies (entirely likely I suppose: I don't know much about the movie industry; if anyone does know why this occurs, I'd be very interested), or one studio got wind of what the other was doing and made a "copy" before the original even came out, or else something much more subtle is going on.
In the startup / tech world, I think this happens too, because we all tend to follow the same blogs, news sources, etc – so any subtle (probably unintentional) message that makes one of us think of a new product makes 1000 of us think of a nearly identical product, at the exact same time. To me, that highlights execution is so important, and ideas are a "dime a dozen".
(It still could be coincidence I suppose, but it feels like more than that)
http://www.11points.com/Movies/11_Damn_Near_Identical_Movies...
http://www.filmjunk.com/2007/03/07/when-movies-come-in-pairs...
Vampires and Blade (1998) Mighty Joe Young and some other ape movie. Two horror movies with bats. Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line.
It happens over and over again. A semi-biggish movie and another that gets forgotten.
Some of these scripts (actually, most of them) float around Hollywood for years, even a decade or longer. They get pushed from studio to studio, shopped around, then suddenly a director or star takes interest in it and a project begins to form.
One can definitely infer once the wheels start moving on a picture (OMG Brad Pitt signed on to do Freakonomics:The Movie!) and word spreads that copycats definitely pop up to try and take some of the action.
You can also add [A Bug's Life (Nov 1998) -> Antz (Oct 1998)] to your list. There's some background here: http://www.businessweek.com/1998/47/b3605013.htm
Probably where something like this occurs more is when people who have had experience working together continue working on parallel projects with similar executions even after parting ways.
Or, they sit on similarly produced movies for years until such moment as it is economically "sensible" for them to release it. The entertainment industry has done that with dead people (Bernie Mac, Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson, etc.) for a long time. If they see advanced hype from one movie (in the case of Armageddon), they'll release their not-as-good one (Deep Impact, IMO) as an early-bird special to get people in the theater thinking "hey, it's just as good, whatever".
Now, there are companies (like the Asylum) that make films _directly_ knocking off upcoming movies. They shoot and produce them in months and push it straight-to-disc for the rental/retail market. That's a different thing altogether.
They didn't have a name or a cause for it other than pocket philosophy, but it's a generally accepted truth that can be easily observed in their everyday work.
It's driven me bonkers for the last year but there's a technical term for this (when a combination of external stimuli lead different people to come to similar conclusions and have similar ideas at the same time). I read an interesting Wikipedia article on it a few years back.. yet a good 10 minutes of Googling has failed to bring it back to me.
Update — I tried again and about 20 searches in found what it might have been: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery .. specifically:
A recombinant-DNA-inspired "paradigm of paradigms" has been posited, that describes a mechanism of "recombinant conceptualization." This paradigm predicates that a new concept arises through the crossing of pre-existing concepts and facts
One of the many brilliant aspects of Derren's performance is how he uses the notion of "psychological manipulation" as misdirection. We as spectators naturally look for an explanation for what we see. Magicians have always sought to provide an explanation for the audience, hence the waving of wands and the use of "magic words". Most of these explanations are deeply unsatisfactory, but Derren's is uniquely compelling.
Most magicians think too much about trying to fool their audience, believing that it is sufficient merely to do something that seems impossible. Derren understands that to engage an audience they must want to believe. Imagine if all magicians really did have the powers that they purport to have. There's nothing particularly exciting about someone who can make sponge balls vanish or candles appear out of thin air, but the ability to control minds is thrilling and dangerous. The imagination overflows with possibility. He performs an illusion that is exciting to watch and gives us an explanation for that illusion which is yet more exciting.
One of the things I keep meaning to write when I get round to starting a blog is a discussion of what UX designers can learn from magicians. I think one of the most important aspects of Apple's design culture is their focus on creating wonder and joy and their use of illusion and misdirection. The reason that the iPad will absolutely tear up personal computing is all in Apple's tagline for it - "a magical and revolutionary product". It's not about features, it's about feelings.
a) Guy hires designers to design a logo.
b) Guy feeds designers subliminal messaging on their cab ride to office.
c) Designers build nearly an exact copy of the logos / messaging that the guy implanted.
More about this guy here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown
Definitely worth a look.
Here is a description from Wikipedia:
In June 2005, a clip from the second series was widely circulated on the internet. In this clip, Brown claims to have created a video game he calls "Waking Dead" which "is able to put roughly 1/3 of the people who play it into a catatonic trance". In this episode, he places the video game in a pub to lure a supposedly unsuspecting patron into playing the game. He then "kidnaps" the catatonic "victim" and places him in a real-life recreation of the video game, having him fire an air gun at actors, pretending to be zombies and outfitted with explosive squibs.
I'm just not really sure if something like that is ok to do to a random person -- might cause a serious trauma...
Video games, offer a good immersion in the story, if played long enough (think of the current military training).
Though, the people in the video linked are just actors (and bad ones). Considered the complexity of organization, I was disappointed in the end: just touch the actor head with his hands, and the actor 'magically' (instantly) calm down, and return to the previous state.
Great clip - and I recommend you watch more of Derren Brown. He is by far one of my favorite entertainers because he makes very clear that everything he does is a matter of manipulative psychology and "sleight of hand".
Which makes it all the better because you spend the whole episode trying to figure out how he managed it - and wondering if the solutions (which he often provides) are actually real.
The other great thing about Brown is that he loves debunking pseudo-science and other rubbish. The section in one of his books about Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a fantastically well thought out debunking - he actually tried NLP at one stage in his early career and you can see his fascination with the idea before his final realization it was just pop psychology (his section on religion is equally compelling).
But best of all he pulls some awesome stunts/tricks. Highlights from the past include: playing Russian roulette, live.... (with blanks, but still lethal...) and (my personal favourites) "programming" a group of people to pull off a fake heist and paying for stuff (in the US as it happens) with paper instead of real money.
There can often be large shifts in the strategies that a majority of players are using. They often start with the professional gamer who first developed it and dominated with it, thus popularizing it. People end up getting exposure from watching the pros play, and also from having the strategy used against them. The more someone loses to a given strategy, the higher they will regard it.
I'm curious if this happens with design trends, as you were saying.
For more info on the metagame, see http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Metagame
After it ended, I watched the first few minutes again... and sure enough, I saw the same stuff once I knew what to look for.