The key to any documentary is the people participating and if there personality does not draw an audience to them then the documentary will not work. For this documentary I wanted different styles of poker players with a maths based player and a more feel player (a player who observes emotions and betting tells to make decisions). The other key element was a gambler who has lost everything and still cannot resist betting. The general idea is to have a good guy and a bad guy character, even if that meant slightly orchestrating scenes to fit the story.
A good example of this is Pumping Iron (1976) which may seem a strange choice but the focus of the documentary is the body building world championship and specifically Arnold Schwarzenegger attempting to win the prize for the sixth time and Lou Ferreno trying to take the crown away from him. In the documentart Arnold could be perceived as the bad guy but charismatic we see him attempting to annoy competitors and is quite arrogant about how he will win. In an interview years later with Arnold he reveals that originally Lou Ferrigno was originally meant to be perceived as the bad guy as the new york tough guy muscling in on Arnold but unfortunately he didn't have the personality to pull it off so Arnold became the bad guy always trying to annoy competitors and evening pretending to give his best friend bad advice when in the final against Arnold so he could win, which arnold later in an interview reveals was all for the camera.
One significant point of Pumping Iron is after a competitor loses and is backstage he can't find his shirt and is slightly annoyed which is probably because he has just lost, he finds the shirt shortly after the camera stops rolling. In the final edit, the competitor is looking for his shirt before going on stage not after and is getting agitated, there is a cut scene to his rival playing football and saying he might hide his shirt to aggravate him. This football scene was filmed months after the competition and added to make it look like some elaborate plan to win the competition.
The point is that even though this may seem like a manipulation of the truth what it really does is stick to the truth regarding the important points as in the competition it is not manipulated or faked Arnold really won on his own merit. A documentary of men lifting weights and then the expected winner winning is not going to make for great viewing.
The reason for this in depth look at Pumping Iron is that my documentary may focus on the worst events of the gamblers life as this makes for interesting viewing and also provides a loser image to oppose the skilled poker player. There is a happy ending with the knowledge that the gambler turned his life around (maybe).
