Justin Lall

Bridge Documentary: Resolution April 23, 2007

Many people have been asking me why the documentary is no longer available at YouTube. Perhaps this excerpt from an e-mail written to me by Andy Pedersen, director of In The Cards, will clarify:

I appreciate your desire to introduce the show — and bridge — to a wider audience, but the YouTube postings will actually limit the show’s potential audience. It’s no secret that television is a commercial business; no American, European or Asian television network will invest in a show and broadcast it to a mass audience if it feels that most of the core audience, bridge players in this case, have already seen the show. The YouTube posting could also damage my chance to make a longer and more bridge-accurate version of the documentary that I would then package on DVD with lots of extras (including a section about the Americans’ very dramatic victory during the ’05 world juniors).

But like I said, I’m afraid it’s all jeopardized by the YouTube postings.

Essentially Andy is worried that overexposure will cause other markets not to want to air the documentary. Fair enough, but one could argue the reverse as well. If there was lots of interest on YouTube the networks may think the market for In The Cards is larger than they realized and it may encourage them to pick it up. Only a small fraction of the market would ever see the YouTube postings anyways, and those that did could create a huge word-of-mouth buzz. You see very similar things happen with free music downloads of relatively unknown artists.

This is not my call though, Andy is the copyright holder and has every right to choose to have the YouTube clips taken down, and that is what he has chosen to do. Hopefully Andy is very successful at selling the documentary to US and foreign networks, and hopefully other film-makers follow suit (no pun intended).

Before the videos were taken down part 1 of the documentary had been viewed about 5,000 times all the way down to part 5 which was viewed about 1,500 times. The small bridge blogosphere gave it a lot of hype including links here, here, here, here, here, and here. There were also posts on rec.games.bridge, the bridgebase forums, and netbridge.dk about it.

I even became a celebrity for a few days when bridgebase linked me on their main page inviting people to view the documentary. My traffic went from about 300 unique hits a day to 3,000.

I sincerely hope that the YouTube postings both exposed the bridge world to a larger audience and helped Mr. Pedersen’s cause rather than hurting it.

Bridge Documentary April 19, 2007

A few years ago there were always cameras following my friend Gavin Wolpert around at bridge tournaments. Eventually I learned that a documentary was going to be made about him and his partner Vince Demuy. That didn’t seem too exciting as I often hear about potential bridge documentaries and movies but the project always seems to fizzle out.

Not this time. On April 7th the documentary aired on CTV. Wait, CTV is Canadian! I was lucky enough to get to see it about a week ago in Gatlinburg when Gavin brought it on DVD. I was very hopeful that it could increase the visibility of bridge and enhance its image if done correctly.

For those of you masochistic enough to be loyal readers, you will remember that my concept of the best way to do something like this is to have almost no bridge content at all. The atmosphere and drama need to be the focus with actual hands playing a very small role so that even non-bridge players can watch and enjoy a movie or documentary on bridge.

In The Cards did not disappoint, the whole story being about a young partnership trying to prove themselves in a world of established professionals. Once they did that and got hired onto a major team they had to perform. All the while they had to maintain their friendship and partnership, a very hard thing to do. There was little talk about bridge. This is perfect because if someone who doesn’t know how to play bridge watches the documentary they’ll think, “That was really interesting, I want to learn bridge and become a part of that world. Bridge seems like a cool game.” There was drama, big money, fierce competition, and highs and lows.

I really think that this documentary is great for the game. The only problem is that all the Americans and Europeans and Asians who don’t have access to CTV may never see it. Because of this Alan Crank has put the documentary on YouTube. Since it’s about a 45 minute documentary and YouTube can’t handle videos that large he has cut it up into separate 9-10 minute segments.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5

So far only the first 2 parts are up, but as he gets more of them up I will update the list. I encourage everyone to watch the documentary and show it to all non bridge players they can, preferably young people. I also encourage all bridge bloggers to add links to the YouTube video. I really think that if bridge is going to try and get the attention of my generation it needs more media coverage of the young stars and their exciting lives. This video is a great start and we need to capitalize on it by giving it a lot of exposure.

Update: Part 3 is now up.

Update 2: Part 4 is up.

Update 3: Part 5 is up. Part 4 is apparently having some technical difficulties, but will be working again shortly. Gavin has also written his thoughts on the documentary. If you enjoyed it, I recommend reading what he has to say. If you have any relatives or non-bridge playing friends please tell them to watch this.