I've gotten the transfers back, and there is good news all around! It took much less than either I or the transfer company had assumed, so the total costs for the project are extremely low compared to what I had planned for.

This leaves us with much more available to continue transfer of other film reels. I plan on sending the next two, “Meet the Mormons” and “You Make the Difference” this evening and they'll get started on them hopefully within the next few weeks.

The transfer process went well enough considering the age and care of the film I obtained. The reel is over a half century old and had not been well preserved. The film was extremely red in color and contained numerous scratches that were minimized as much as possible by the company. I'm sure that other people can go through and perform some manual post work to remove them entirely, but as it is we have a full copy of the movie as contained on the reel of film we started with.

It's quite fun to watch the original next to the 1979 revision. For the vast majority of cuts it's obvious that they were made for time. Most of the montages have been streamlined and this shaves a few minutes off of the total running time.

There are a few obvious choice edits when the 1979 revision was produced, however.

Most obviously, the order of the parade/celebration in St. George for the visit of President Snow and the planting of the fields by the Stake President were swapped so that the Stake President of St. George started planting immediately following the conference. This helps streamline the plot such that we see President McArthur begin planting after his line, “I'm going to plant!” instead of cutting first to the parade.

Another purposeful edit is at the beginning of the film, where the 1979 revision cuts Presidents Snow's line, “I realize, it's true, He [God] hasn't shown the way as of yet, but I know He will.” This is followed by a “Brother Stout” who presents a plan for improving Church funds by soliciting donations from the members along the lines of a $1000 club, a $500 dollar club, a $100 club, all the way down to a dime. This idea is rejected by President Snow. My own opinion is that the scene was cut because it presented the Church leadership as though they were casting around for ideas all over the place instead of just waiting for a divine answer to their problems. The idea that the leadership would press forward with their own ideas when God is silent seems to be one that wouldn't fly very far in the modern LDS Church.

Also cut is a fun little interlude at the telegraph office. It adds nothing to the plot, but the humor of the scene helps to provide some humanity to the somber tone of much of the rest of the film.

Finally in St. George, President Snow discusses how dire the situation had become when the Church had to offer bonds totaling $1 million. The 1979 revision cuts the rest of his dialog such that the bonds had been purchased by Church members themselves. I feel this was to keep the story of the Church's financial difficulties as though they were purely the fault of the US Government, instead of the actual history where the financial problems lay in large part in poor internal business decisions by the Church leadership as well as external pressures such as the official and permanent dissolution of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter0day Saints and seizure of its properties by the US government. The film presents the problems as relating to the newly incorporated organization having to purchase these properties as the main source of funding issues, but in truth the LDS Church was also indebted to its own membership as well as the national banks.

Anyways, that's the status of the project so far. Those who wish to use the uncompressed original digital transfer can find the entire 93 GB file here. Make sure you have room!

This link will also provide access to all of the digitized 16mm films I am hoping to make available over the next few months. I have already sent out “Meet the Mormons” and “You Make the Difference” so we should have those films back soon!

Thank you all for you help. I couldn't have done it without you!

Project Funding

Donations Public and private as of 2 August 2016	$3330.00
Expenses
Payment Services Fees (Paypal, GoFundMe, etc)	-$114.87
Shipping "Windows of Heaven" to CinePost	-$33.90
Film prep	-$50.00
16mm xfer to ProRes 422 HQ/HD	-$590.00
1TB USB3 Hard drive	-$100.00
Return shipping for "Windows of Heaven"	-$34.50
Shipping "Meet the Mormons" and "You Make the Difference" to CinePost	-$44.85
Current Funds
	$2361.88

#HardToFindMormonVideos #Mormon

There isn't as much to say with this update, but regular updates are better than no news.

The film is now in the queue to be scanned by a professional company and the resulting files will be mailed back to me on a USB hard drive within a week or two. At that point I will have a final bill for the process and can update how the funds have been spent. I will also send in some of the other films at that point.

I have also decided to spend my own funds to hire an analyst at the US Copyright Office of the Library of Congress to determine for certain if the film currently being digitized, “Windows of Heaven,” has indeed let its copyright protections slip by not renewing those protections renewed before they expired in 1991. This was not part of the original project and requests for assistance, so it seems right that I should cover the costs myself. I am highly certain that the film has indeed entered the public domain, but by following this process I will be able to back up that assertion with good faith through this attempt.

I'll have more information soon, I hope.

Project Funding

Donations Public and private as of 6 July 2016	$3330.00
Expenses
Payment Services Fees (Paypal, GoFundMe, etc)	-$114.87
Shipping to CinePost	-$33.90
Current Funds
	$3181.23

#HardToFindMormonVideos #Mormon

I've been involved with the “Hard-to-Find Mormon Videos” YouTube channel for a few months now. It's been a lot of fun. From what originally grew out of an attempt to put together get a group of easily-mocked videos á la Mystery Science Theater 3000 has grown a collection of hundreds of films over nearly an entire century of time. The channel get dozens of messages a week from current members, former members, and people who have never been officially associated with Mormonism who thank the channel for finding some old gem they'd nearly forgotten.

So far the videos have all come from a small handful of sources. The largest source is old VHS videocassettes.

Even most of the oldest videos were obtained through VHS tapes produced by the LDS Church using even older materials. It's relatively easy to digitize a videocassette with an old VCR and some specialized S-Video-to-USB hardware. And there are hundreds of old VHS tapes to be found. The majority of the tapes I've personally added to the YouTube channel have come from chapels in my own home stake (sort of a Mormon “diocese” for those unfamiliar with the lingo; a collection of local congregations or “wards”). A ward library often has a few drawers and cabinets that haven't been opened for years if not decades, and you can often find something in them that is interesting.

The other source has been eBay and people who have been generous enough to send me some of their own VHS tapes that they have had access to. Between these two sources (eBay and personal lending) I've been able to find a number of old videos that I had never even heard of before!

Recently I have begun to branch out from converting old VHS tapes, if only because I feel like I'm now scraping the bottom of that particular barrel. I'm sure there's many more tapes yet to find, but the time it will take to find them is just too long. If I am to feed my obsession, I need to turn to other sources of media.

Before the invention of the VCR in the late 1970s, the LDS Church used film, both 16mm projection film (featuring motion pictures) and 35mm filmstrips (single-frame presentations where an audio track would be synced up to the displayed frames with an audible beep).

I already have over a hundred filmstrips on the YouTube channel, but they had all been obtained from existing VHS transfers. However, scanning filmstrips has been my most recent challenge and I've been able to get a number of old presentation submitted to the channel.

The next adventure is 16mm motion picture film.

I have been able to gather six films so far. It's been a lot of fun fun. Here's the list:

• Meet the Mormons (1973)
• You Make the Difference (1973)
• The Three Witnesses (1968)
• Windows of Heaven (1979 Version)
• Families are Forever (with Gordon Jump, 1982)
• Windows of Heaven (1963 Original)

Digitizing these films could have been done with obtaining a projector and filming a projection, but the results would have been grainy and not very good. Besides, the last item I've listed, the original version of “Windows Of Heaven” is historically significant.

So I made a crowdfunding effort that helped me through public and anonymous assistance to fund the digitization of at least the three films that are not available in any other medium than 16mm film!

I decided to start the process due to the exciting feedback I got from the campaign with the original Windows of Heaven.

This is the largest reel of film I have, nearly 2000 feet long! It's also the oldest, as the film was released March 1963.

I have sent the reel off this very evening to a service in Georgia that will transfer it to digital files for me. I will then upload these files to YouTube, the Internet Archive, as well as making the raw files I receive from the service available by request from a simple website I will put together for this. The website will also go into the history of the film and the historical context of why it was made as well as into the historical issues of the story it presents that supposedly took place during the summer of 1899 (the truth being, as usual, more nuanced and less miraculous than the film presents).

So far the only costs incurred for the project have been the shipping to send the reel to the digitization company, for a total of $33.90. It was a bit pricey because I thought a 53-year-old reel of 2000 feet of rolled gelatin-coated plastic tape should be sent with “fragile” handling! This picture is actually the box I received the film in because I forgot to snap a picture at FedEx when shipping it out.

I will next update this blog post series with the results of the digitization as well as any additional information about the process I can get. I anticipate that the service will cost anywhere between $985 and as much as $1800, but we'll see how much it costs in the end.

To all who helped support (and who continue to support as the campaign is still open) you have my heartfelt appreciation! The next blog post should be up sometime next week.

Project Funding

Donations Public and private as of 6 July 2016	$3330.00
Expenses
Payment Services Fees (Paypal, GoFundMe, etc)	-$114.87
Shipping to CinePost	-$33.90
Current Funds
	$3181.23

#HardToFindMormonVideos #Mormon

The TL;DR

Hey guys! I want to digitize a hugely influential Mormon film that has not been easily available for nearly a half-century! The film is now public domain (I think, there might be some issues with the musical soundtrack: copyright is complicated) so the result of this is a film that anyone can use and re-use however they want! However, it's too expensive to accomplish quickly. If you want to help things get done faster please get in touch with me personally or you can also follow the link at the end of this post for other options.

Who I Am

The “Hard-to-Find Mormon Video” YouTube channel has helped to bring to light a lot of videos that have been lost over the years. A video from the channel tends to get shared every week or so around the Internet as someone finds another diamond/coprolite in the rough (which makes me happy every time). The project really has turned into a (wait for it!) labor of love to me! (commence vomiting now for use of that phrase)

So far the project has centered almost entirely around old VHS videocassettes from assorted ward libraries and eBay (a lot of eBay wins). I've recently begun scanning in old filmstrips, but it turns out that a ton of libraries have either films or audio tapes for these presentations but often not both, so that's been slow going as I try to match inventories from various buildings

But that's not the exciting news...

I Have Some Actually Lost Videos!

I now have about 6 reels of 16mm films to be digitized (and more in the future whenever I can find them). Some of them I already have versions on the channel, so I'm not too interested in digitizing them (yet). Still, the fact that 16mm film is very high resolution (it's actually akin to 2K resolution!) might mean that it'd be fun to get better versions of these existing films online (“The Three Witnesses”, “Families are Forever”, and the short version of “Windows of Heaven” re-edited in 1979).

Included in this new collection I've started are:

• Meet the Mormons (1973) – A famous interview collection with worldwide Latter-day Saints, though not really that impressive of a concept in 1973, let alone over forty years later when the Church made another film of the same name and style that everyone seemed think was somehow groundbreaking. There are a lot of people who have been clamoring for me to get this video and I'm happy that I can (hopefully) oblige!
• You Make the Difference (1974) – Some Mormon kids would rather watch X-rated films than study their Seminary coursework. Oh noes!

and then there's the grand item I've called your attention to today:

Windows of Heaven (1963 The Original Version)!

That's right, I have the original version! I go into its significance on the crowdfunding page, but the long and short of it is that this film is famous both for popularizing an enduring-though-fabricated LDS tithing miracle as well as helping in no small part in resolving a budgetary crisis for the LDS Church through increasing tithing awareness and payment. It's something of a big deal, and I can't wait to put it up on the YouTube Channel and elsewhere so it never gets lost again!

Why I Need Your Help

But it turns out that it is way more expensive to do this than I had previously anticipated: painfully expensive.

So I'm reaching out to the wider community for some help. Obviously, I'll just save up on my own budget if this doesn't work, but everyone who helps cuts down the wait time on this as it means that much less for me to wait to amass in my monthly budget.

My aim is high, but that is two-fold: first I'm aiming for the stars and will be satisfied if I hit the moon instead. Two grand will get us nearly the highest quality version of this old and damaged film possible. Less than that will still get us a version, but perhaps without as much post-processing and cleanup. And if I can get even more than that I will be applying that extra cash towards those other film reels I currently have and will continue to get in the future.

I will be 100% open and upfront with how I use any assistance. It will never be spent on anything but further preservation options and I will always post opening both on the YouTube channel and here and elsewhere what I am spending it on.

Anyone can help immensely by sharing the crowdfunding link on Facebook and other places. The more people who see it the easier and faster this will be.

Be Part of Recovering History!

Let's bring this old film back. I'm sure it's a terrible movie so I'm very much looking forward to what is done with it by others. My hope? I want a full MST3K by some group, and I want an expert like Mithryn or Daymon Smith to create a version with voice-overs and short tangents about the history of Lorenzo Snow and tithing and about the rise of Correlation (all subjects that intersect in this film). But human inventiveness and imagination is pretty amazing; who knows how it could be used!

Thank you guys!

#HardToFindMormonVideos #YouTube #WindowsOfHeaven #Fundraiser

https://www.gofundme.com/windowsofheaven