A few comments
Hi guys.
First off I want to say that Eric Strauss (the film maker) did an amazing job. He is a very talented guy and just all around really cool to work and hang out with. Nat Arem, the producer, is also an awesome guy and a friend even before this project. It's also safe to say that Nat is pretty much THE MAN when it comes to anything and everything in online poker so having him a part of this was pretty much vital for it to make it out to any kind of volume of viewers.
As for thepokerfilm itself, I found it to actually be very entertaining. I think it does its best to provide something entertaining for a little bit wider demographic of people than just poker players, or just 2p2ers.
With all that said it is nothing like what I would have wanted it to be like had I been the film maker. Nat makes good points in the pocketfives thread on the film where he explains that the stealthmunk thing was pretty much a last second, out of the blue, situation in which they were able to capture some really good footage so they went ahead and used it and made it the 'focus' of the film.
I believe they had somewhere around 18 hours of footage (which is pretty shocking to me because I felt like the camera was never on, sneaky Eric), and they were forced to edit it down to a 35 minute piece and just made the executive decision to include everything involving stealthmunk in it. Quite frankly I don't really care because I trust their judgment and it wouldn't surprise me at all if most of the other footage was boring or unusable. I mean come on we are online poker players I don't think anyone wants to sit and watch us grind for 4 hours (not that that was even filmed, but you get the point).
Also everyone needs to keep in mind that no one had any clue what they were doing as far as what direction it was going to go. Nat and Eric spent maybe $300 total on the budget (not including sweat equity obviously) and came to Athens, slept on our couches, and just filmed when they saw something that might be entertaining.
All in all I think the biggest disappointment on my side is that because of the focus of the film there really isn't a great idea as to what we are really like as poker players or people. I mean they also caught us on a weekend where we were hosting a party so that consumed a lot of our time that weekend. There are times where we sit around as roommates and argue for hours over variance, MTT strategies, high stakes poker hands, or the ability, or lack thereof, of other poker players in the online poker world. I think it would have been cool to have that kind of stuff in the film. However, stuff like that never really happened that weekend and we weren't going to just force it for the cameras. The word disappointment might be an overstatement really because in actuality I don't really care just thought if I was doing this sort of project that is something I would have definitely wanted in the film. Also we had little to no involvement in the film, other than being the subjects. Nat approached us with the idea and as friends we agreed. We will make maybe $100 each from this and that was never our concern. We had nothing to do with the editing, music, or anything else with the film. Hell, we didn't even get free Cardrunners accounts out of it (wtf?).
I'm not sure what Nat's plans are as far as future endeavors in this sort of type of project, but I'm certain that if he does choose to do this again (either with us or another group of players) he will learn from the first time and make the next one even bigger and better...because that is what makes Nat the man. I personally wouldn't mind being a part of it again so long as we don't have drinking prop bets, but I would also like to see something like this done with other players. I am much more interested in sitting in my room and watching a 35 min video about someone else and flaming them on the forums than sitting and watching a 35 minute video about me and my best friends.
Another thing that I've found pretty common on these forums is this idea that we have to "buy" our friends, and just that we just hang out with groupies. That couldn't be farther from the truth and I think that any of you guys that have hung out with us can understand what I am saying. We certainly do recognize the people that are only around us for a free drink or a free meal but we keep them at arms length as best we can. Maybe this is foolish for me to defend us here but I just felt like saying it.
Okay that is all.
Thanks Nat and Eric, you guys are awesome.
-tdomeski
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