It makes sense that a person who was pursing an acting career would attempt to get himself on television, especially on a decently large, worldwide viewed, show such as curiosity. That does not mean it was faked. Actors and those interested in the arts tend to be more susceptible to suggestion. Look at Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Isaac Hayes, or any of the other actors\artists who have been seduced by Scientology.

I feel for the guy. There is no way he was acting in this. Just look at the ice bath test. It should be impossibke for any person to submerge themselves in an ice bath like that with no physiological response. Some people could tough it out, but not without their heart rate increasing. There is only one other person I’ve ever heard of who was able to anything similar, and he was on Stan Lee’s Superhumans. His body, even at the cellular level, reacted differently to cold, but he was the only known person to be that way. Even he had physiological reactions to cold, but could endure it better than anyone else. He ran a half marathon, barefoot, in the Arctic circle.

IVAN IS AN ACTOR.

End of story.

Good Lord, are any of the “doctors” and “scientists” real????

The shooting scene was completely staged. Ivan, at the very least, had to be involved in multiple takes. But more likely, he was just part of the con.

1. Watch the shadows. They vary greatly. Some shots were taken mid-day. Some shots were taken when the shadows were much longer, later in the day.

2. Watch were the “dignitary” falls. Lines and grates on the ground are in a different place depending on camera angle.

3. Watch where Ivan takes his shot from. When shot face-on, he is in front of the corner. Overhead shots put him behind the corner. (Actually, a totally different corner.)

These three things are absolute. Not a matter of opinion. Objective observation.

There are a lot of subjective things that don’t “feel” right as well.

1. The way Ivan steps around the triggering producer on the way to the motorcycle is just false. They’re too close to each other to begin with. Then there is a very stilted walk-around.

2. The way Ivan pulls the gun out of the backpack is very awkward. A corrections officer would handle a gun with live ammo much more securely.

2. The gun recoils falsely. Too lightly.

3. As has been noted, onlookers from the background don’t seem overly concerned at witnessing an apparent assassination.

Sucks, because I wanted this to be real. But, they lie.

Many criticisms of such shows fail to account for the fact that hundreds of hours of video need to be edited to make a compelling TV show – and if B roll is used to make up for any issue with the main footage then something like having the stunt man lay down again for another shot can be easily explained.

I was thinking while watching that they had best be filming in an area with no Concealed Carry allowed else some random passerby might step in resulting in some Actuality TV.

Perhaps they should have used a Mythbusters like summary at the end and simply called it Plausible, of course if Ivan was not truly hypnotized but simply acting then even Plausible is tenuous at best. Even if he was not, then perhaps the fault lies with the experts being unable to tell that he was acting – they did comment that some folks seemed to be acting. He did seem relatively calm throughout the process of being debriefed etc, I think most people would be more visible upset by the experience. But again with training as a corrections officer or even any experience with handguns the looking around for example may have been a result of the “brainwashing” known as training for handling a deadly weapon.

The ice test was interesting but could have been cleverly edited – lack of thermal imaging may have been simply due to editing but would have been nice to see if perhaps your body’s autonomic responses really could be modified, though it does see that no matter what your physiology or training that two minutes in an ice bath would produce some effect despite your perception of the experience and after being removed from the tub and waken up I expected to see the shivers and chattering of teeth set in since he must still have been quite cold.