On The Baby War: Defenders and Defectors Post Production

So, the goal all along had been to finish TBW:D&D by October 15th in order to submit the film to the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival. We had finished everything and were just attempting to transcode and burn DVD's the week before the deadline, but the it took Adobe Encore around 36 hours to transcode. This is on a very high end production machine. We made a few tweaks after the first transcoding, and then the second 36 hour round finished on Saturday morning the 13th. 

Knowing that we would not have enough time to transcode it again, I watched the DVD with great despair because the quality of the DVD was so poor. The images were blurry and the many images of text were so fuzzy that some of them were practically unreadable. 

But, I knew that we didn't have time to do it again, so I gathered up my pathetic DVD's, went to the Post Office on Monday the 15th to get the film submitted by the 15th postmark deadline. 

Jenette and I went to Springfield and came home later that day, where I found  an email from the Film Festival that said that the deadline had been extended to October 31st. 

So, I just knew there had to be a way to get better quality. Through a very late night of internet research I learned that Adobe Encore was known for producing poor DVD quality because of it's encoder. This is really frustrating, because you would think that such a quality package of software as Adobe Production CS5.5 would be able to produce quality DVD's.

There is a possibility that some of my video card settings are not playing nice with the Adobe Media Encoder, so maybe it's not all Adobe's fault, but still, I would like to blame someone. 

One of the great wonders and benefits of the internet is that if you are having any kind of technical problem, someone else has experienced that same problem and has complained about it on the internet, and usually someone else has helped find a solution. 

Well, that's exactly what happened. Through some very helpful technical tutorial videos and other articles, I was able to download and run free open source software that transcoded the film video file to AVI and then encoded it to MPEG2-DVD in a fraction of the time it took Encore, and at a stunning quality difference, with a lower file size. Did I say stunning? What I meant was a stupendously crazy wonderful quality difference. 

So, bottom line is, don't ever give up on making things better quality. I seriously thought about not trying to distribute DVD's of this film because our initial attempts were so horrible. Now, I am pleased to be able to put this on DVD. 

If you are using Adobe Encore to make DVD's, I highly suggest going through this challenging, multi-step process to make your quality better. 

I will do another blog where I will describe the process in detail, not because I think anyone would be interested, but because I want to document the process well so I can know how to do it again. 

So, Jonathan did more post work to redo the chapter headings and burn the new DVD's and I am going to be very glad to send the revised DVD submissions to the film festival this week. 

Furthermore, I had some more thoughts about the content of this film. I am nervous making this public because I know that many people we know and love will think this film is too "out there." This film doesn't just challenge the mainstream ideas of the world, this film challenges the mainstream ideas of Godly, conservative people. 

We were very careful in this film to present everything in an historical light, and show the results of that history. Most of the clips in this film show facts: facts of history, facts of current events, and facts of Christian culture. We removed nearly all of the "snarkiness" from the script. We have attempted to leave a lot of room for viewers to come to their own conclusions. 

There is a section in the film where we highlight three different clips of sermons regarding sex and marriage from American pastors whose sermons are available publicly on the internet. When we first wrote the script, we called these sermons, "the good, the bad, and the ugly." But as our family sat and poured over every word of the script, we felt that we weren't leaving the viewers enough room to determine for themselves whether what these pastors was saying was "good, bad, or ugly," so that part of the script was chopped. 

Inevitably, someone is going to say that this film is too "judgmental." Here's my response to that:

1. Being "judgmental" implies self-righteousness. You will find no self-righteousness in this film. 
2. The film judges no person, but judges ideas. 
3. Ideas are to be brought kicking and screaming to the judgment seat of Christ through his written word. 
4. The evangelical church (as a whole) has, through it's silence on the priority of procreation in marriage, has not been judgmental enough of these ideas.  

This film is controversial because, apart from a few writers, no one is talking about this matter in the church, at least until this year. It's interesting that the HHS contraceptive mandate has put the issue in the forefront, and church leaders of many flavors are talking about contraceptives for the first time in half a century. 

Someone will also say, "So what are you saying, that we should stop using birth control? - Uh, that means that we would have more kids, and that's pretty freaky and would change my life dramatically!" The film never says this. What we hope each person will take away from this documentary is this: 

1. The Christian defense of procreative marriage is a fact of history
2. The defection from that belief has led to all kinds of horrible consequences.
3. It is time for Christians to once again defend the basic Biblical definition of marriage.  

If watching this film causes some Christian married couple to re-evaluate their personal use of birth control in the light of Biblical interpretive history, that is a good thing, but it is not the primary goal of the film.

The film is about the historical Christian definition of marriage and that certainly involves having children. Each couple should consider God's Word first about their decisions in this matter; not what some family expert or what Dr. So & So says.  Our family struggled though this "Baby War" - our ideas vs. God's ideas about babies, and we ended up with nine children. However, other couples have trusted God for the number and spacing of children and only had one or two children. Either we believe God's promise that children are an unqualified blessing (Psalm 127 & 128) or we don't.

One of the real problems with this film is that it is only part of what needs to be said. The Baby War:Defenders & Defectors looks at the issue from an historical lens. The follow up film that we want to make called The Baby War:A Conflict of Fears will look at the issue through a Biblical lens. 

The opening lines of the film say it well: "Proceed with caution. This film might challenge you to think different thoughts and to lead different lives."