Heart of the Beholder

[trevor]

I recently received a message from one of our affiliates, the Secular Student Alliance, asking groups like ours to watch a movie and spread the word through viral marketing.

The movie, Heart of the Beholder seems quite interesting.  It's based on a true story in which the owners of a video store in St. Louis are harassed by a religious group called the National Federation for Decency (NFD) for renting movies that they deemed obscene.  After refusing to stop renting The Last Temptation of Christ, the NFD blackmailed the prosecuting attorney and through court cases and endless picketing, caused the store owners to go bankrupt, ruining their personal and professional lives.  A full description of the true story can be found here.

Ken Tipton, who owned the St. Louis store with his ex-wife, wrote and directed Heart of the Beholder.  Rather than distribute the movie through the normal channels, the producers decided to make the whole movie (as well as extras like interviews and commentary) available for free on the internet (specifically, through Metacafe).  You can check it out here.

It features some recognizable faces - Michael Dorn (Worf in Start Trek:TNG), for one - and has won numerous awards from film festivals, but reviews have not been uniformly good; from the trailer, it seems like the acting is not great.  A number of reviews on IMDB suggested that it would make a better documentary, and I can't help but agree (of course, I haven't watched the movie yet).

So that's the movie.  The other part is this viral marketing campaign that the SSA and the movie's producers are trying to force.  Some brief info on the partnership is here with more details here.

I don't know if I'm just overly paranoid or whatever, but it seems to me that they are going about this the wrong way.  It seems to me that the movie's producers should be saying "Please watch our movie, then if you thought it was good, here are the ways that you can get the word out."  Instead, the impression I'm getting is "Non-believers normally can't get things done, so get the word out as much as you can to prove them wrong, regardless of the quality of our product."  That screams bullshit to me, even if the movie is good.

So yeah, give the website a quick read, and watch the movie if you have time.  Discuss whether or not the marketing is bullshit; I'll get a feel for the consensus of the group and send a message to the SSA.  I have an exam tomorrow morning, but I will hopefully get time to watch the movie this weekend!

tl;dr version:

• SSA wants us to promote Heart of the Beholder
• Check out the movie for free here
• Is it a good movie?  Is forced viral marketing bullshit?

PS: For those who don't frequent forums way too much, tl;dr stands for "Too long; didn't read."

[brian]

I love the concept of breaking up a movie into 72 parts.  It makes it easy to watch without 71 interruptions... 

[trevor]

Everyone had ADHD nowadays, didn't you know? It has nothing to do with quality, the young'uns will only watch and appreciate something that's in small, easy-to-digest chunks.

[Steven]

Yeah the fact that it's broken up like that makes me want to watch it even less. But I did watch quite a few segments and frankly I don't know if I can get through it...it's like a bad tv movie.

Their story would have been much better served had it been made into a documentary.

If the film were any good then I obviously I'd be in favour of letting people know about it, though I'm not convinced viral marketing is the way to do it. But I just don't think it's very good and I doubt it would have any impact on people who don't know anything about these issues.

But some of the synopses are hilarious: "...But what type of video movies should they carry - Beta or VHS? Mike takes a chance by letting their unborn daughter decide." ......very dramatic

[brian]

I'm sorry, if I hear that little jingle at the beginning of each part again, I am going to have to stab someone.  I don't think I can get through it.  It is a terrible format and I really don't want to watch it.  As far as promoting it, we have already posted it on our forum.  I personally won't be doing any viral marketing but if people here think it is good and can get through the ridiculous format, go ahead.

[Steven]

I'm sorry, if I hear that little jingle at the beginning of each part again, I am going to have to stab someone.  I don't think I can get through it.  It is a terrible format and I really don't want to watch it.  As far as promoting it, we have already posted it on our forum.  I personally won't be doing any viral marketing but if people here think it is good and can get through the ridiculous format, go ahead.

I know! The jingle doesn't even match the movie! Why would they preface each of the 72 parts with it? And who thought it was a good idea to break it up into 2 minute segments?

[DarleneLieblich]

Dear Fellow Freethinkers,

Traffic from your website, UMMASH, shown up on our website tracking so I checked it out.

I'm surprised no one in this forum had heard about HEART of the BEHOLDER since it took us twelve years to make and it was widely talked about on the web in
freethought groups.

I hocked my home and took personal loans from other Freethinkers around the world to make the movie.  I also paid them back before the movie had been sold,
even though I didn't have to.  More on that here - http://www.beholder.com/Testimonials2.aspx

As for info from IMDB, they are useless.  I have submitted all five of our Best Feature Film awards to them but they say they are backed up for over a year in adding info.

In regard to reviews, here's a few others - http://www.beholder.com/Reviews.aspx

Why did we break the movie into short videos?  Because a marketing research firm found that 71% of people that watch videos during the day do it from work.  So we took 100
members from our online fan club who watch videos at work and we tried out various video lengths.  We found that 2 -4 minutes turned out to be the best length so they wouldn't get into trouble at work and they could still follow the story.

I've been an atheist all my life and have been active in many freethought groups, local and national.  I'm also a VP at Fox (The Censor) and every week my Darwin fish is yanked off of my car. When I insinuated on our website that freethinkers are hard to organize, that came from real life experience.

It broke my heart when I would talk to atheist and humanist groups in cities where our movie was going to screen in a film festival, only to find that when the movie did screen, very few freethinkers would show up.  But Reverend Donald Wildmon's followers were always there.  We won Best Feature Film in our first five film festivals and then took second place in our last five festivals because the religious folk would come and give us the lowest vote possible on their ballots.

If anyone would do me the courteous of watching our movie on DVD, just send me an address and I'll mail it out.

All my best,
Darlene Lieblich
Producer@Beholder.com

[trevor]

Darlene,

First of all, I really appreciate you coming here to talk to us directly; your passion for the film is clear, and I apologize for passing judgments before watching the whole movie.

I'm surprised no one in this forum had heard about HEART of the BEHOLDER since it took us twelve years to make and it was widely talked about on the web in freethought groups.

Alas, we are primarily a group of university students (with some exceptions, of course) and many of us have not really participated in freethought groups in the past.  I am somewhat surprised myself that I had not come across the Tiptons' story until now.  It is definitely a story that needed to be told, and I am in agreement that it is partly the responsibility of groups like MASH to spread the word.  My only qualm was the way in which the marketing method was presented.

I've been an atheist all my life and have been active in many freethought groups, local and national.  I'm also a VP at Fox (The Censor) and every week my Darwin fish is yanked off of my car. When I insinuated on our website that freethinkers are hard to organize, that came from real life experience.

Honestly, the remark about freethinkers being hard to organize doesn't bother me much; I wouldn't argue with it either, as my general impression is that non-believers don't join groups for the sake of feeling a sense of community.

My issue with the marketing of the movie (specifically this page) is that it is just a list of instructions that we should follow to promote the movie.  It is assumed that the movie is something that we will want to promote; it seems like we should take it on faith that the movie is worth promoting.  Yet freethought is based on the tenet that we should make decisions on the basis of logic and reason, not emotion or authority.  If the movie has merit enough that we think it's worth telling other people about, won't we do it on our own?  A list of ways we can spread the word is great, but that list shouldn't be presented as mandatory.

If anyone would do me the courteous of watching our movie on DVD, just send me an address and I'll mail it out.

Better than that, would you grant us public performance rights so that we can show Heart of the Beholder at a movie night?  Our last movie night was a great time, and we had a decent turnout; it would be great if everyone in MASH could watch the movie together and discuss it.


Again, thank you Darlene for your reply.  I hope that I've clarified my position a bit.  I look forward to watching the movie, and wish you the best with this and future endeavours!

- Trevor Bekolay

[brian]

I finished watching it last night.  I thought the movie was pretty good and talks about an important issue, although I had problems with the format making it hard to watch.  My main problem was that the jingle and the overlap of the previous scene started to take almost half of each section near the end making it hard to get in to.  I don't think the jingle is even necessary because the description is on the website for those who want to read it and is just distracting for those who want to watch more than a couple scenes in one sitting.  Although I am not an expert or anything, I think it could have been divided into fewer pieces without the jingle and with less overlap.  For example, the entire Chuck Berry scene could have been one video, a bit over five minutes

Also, one little thing I noticed was that on the website the link to part 24 of the movie goes to the commentary instead.

Personally, I'm not a fan of viral marketing but I do think the movie would make a good movie for one of our movie nights.

[DarleneLieblich]

Trevor and Brian,

Thanks for getting back to me and ordering a DVD.  I'll send you two.

Over the past three years since the completion of HOTB, we have donated over 800 copies of our movie to Atheist and Humanist groups around the world to show to others. 

Feel free to also show our movie and if you wish to use it as a fundraiser then please do so and keep any funds raised for your group's efforts.

As for the marketing message you got, it was sent out to members of the SSA by the board of the SSA.  I'm sorry if it didn't feel right.  Perhaps they should send out an informational message first for those you don't know about the movie and followup with a message.

However, this wasn't meant to be a marketing message.  We weren't asking anyone to buy the movie. All we wanted was people to watch it for free. We do get a small portion of the advertising revenue from the company that hosts the videos, but at 1/2 cent per view it isn't very much.  40% of that goes to the SSA who really does need the money. I put in $731,000 from my home equity, my savings, and my 401 retirement fund to make the movie because I truly felt it was a story that needed to be told.

All my best,
Darlene

[wordwan]

I think most groups are collectives of not too bright of people. That's possibly a reason why they JOIN groups--not strong thinkers and seeking the opinions of a 'group' mind, or somesuch. I state this for argument sake. I don't mean all groups are like this.

But the thing to also REMEMBER is that the bright people IN groups, who come to groups, looking for community just like anyone else...

get pissed off by the stupid people and they leave. When you see a group, you are often looking at whoever is left over. The ones who stayed. While the doers or the brighter, more dynamic minds headed for clearer waters.

Or summat. *grin*

So it's not that non-believers, or bright people don't join groups; it's just that the group dynamic, in the main, doesn't always SERVE these people as well as they'd like.

Just a thought here.

As for movies, of a non-fiction or documentary nature shown in real small bites...I have to admit, I think that might ruin the flow, of a movie. What do you all think?

But I think the idea is worth looking at. And I think you should PAY this woman for her film. I mean, come on. Heh.

And if you like a film, simply promote it. You don't have to wait for someone to ask you to do this, so why do it with this film? Although, I understand the order in which this all happened. And can appreciate the filmmaker's comments on how their 'board' created an intent of viral marketing you may not like.

Heather, hitting a very high points.