New Book of Mormon videos start hitting YouTube today


NeuroTypical
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3 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Well, and the Egyptians had been responsible for the death of the righteous King Josiah; and of course it was Egypt who had enslaved Israel in the first place.  I think the more devout Yahweh-worshippers would have had misgivings about the desirability of Egypt as an ally all  along; especially when they failed to defend their puppet Jehoiakim and allowed the Babylonians to sack Jerusalem and put Zedekiah on the throne. 

The politics of the time would be an epic in and of themselves . . . 

Excellent point, which perhaps explains why there was any resistance at all to the Egyptian alliance. Egypt was certainly proving itself to be a vacillating and weak ally. As you mention, their hands were hardly free from Jewish blood. I don't know how it actually was, but it might be interesting to present the Egyptian contingent as holding the minority viewpoint, but having the backing of many powerful men. Certainly Zedekiah was convinced to rebel against those who made him king based on the idea that Egypt > Babylon.

As always, politics ends up a mire of scum-suckers. Follow Jeremiah and Lehi. There's a lesson in there somewhere for 21st-century Americans.

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11 minutes ago, Vort said:

Excellent point, which perhaps explains why there was any resistance at all to the Egyptian alliance. Egypt was certainly proving itself to be a vacillating and weak ally. As you mention, their hands were hardly free from Jewish blood. I don't know how it actually was, but it might be interesting to present the Egyptian contingent as holding the minority viewpoint, but having the backing of many powerful men. Certainly Zedekiah was convinced to rebel against those who made him king based on the idea that Egypt > Babylon.

As always, politics ends up a mire of scum-suckers. Follow Jeremiah and Lehi. There's a lesson in there somewhere for 21st-century Americans.

Make Judah Great Again!

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Okay, I watched it, this time all the way through.

My judgment was hasty. It was an admirable effort.

I still dislike the 21st-century western democracy attitudes. I also dislike that Lehi preached to the people by standing in the marketplace and yelling, which I believe to be not how it was done. I suspect Lehi preached to the leaders in council; Lehi was obviously a rich man, and probably influential, so he could have done that. I also think that providing even a little bit of political context would have made things more interesting. The people were not wicked merely because they did wicked things; the wickedness they performed sprang from the root of their hearts, which were turned away from God and depended on the strength of the flesh. And I personally would like to have seen Sariah (who was at least ten years too old, if not twenty)be less supportive of Lehi initially. Nephi's narrative strongly implies that she had a faith crisis that came to a head when the boys went for the brass plates, and I would like to have seen that.

(By the way, Lehi was too old, too.)

But I appreciate the way Laman and Lemuel were portrayed. I don't have much fault to find there. Nephi and Sam were also well done (though all the boys, like their parents, were too old). I very much hope that Nephi grows a beard when he goes through puberty. I know the "beardless Nephi" has become iconic in the Church, but it's an icon worth abandoning.

So I take back the harsh edge of my criticism. I do think certain changes would have been better, but I honor those who created this. I may be good at picking nits, but I don't have the talent to act in, direct, produce, or write such a thing. And the screenwriters do have to be careful not to introduce any (or many) extracanonical ideas, even those that seem obvious or well-fitting (e.g. Nephi was trained as a blacksmith, Lehi was probably a trader who traveled the roads often with a camel caravan and was no stranger to roughing it).

Edited by Vort
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18 hours ago, Fether said:

a huge improvement from all previous church films (except the Bible ones)

I think that's part of the problem, though; if we make Bible videos to a better quality than Book of Mormon videos, then what kind of message does that portray to the public?

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35 minutes ago, person0 said:

I think that's part of the problem, though; if we make Bible videos to a better quality than Book of Mormon videos, then what kind of message does that portray to the public?

I don’t think the lower quality had anything to do with effort, I just think they did a better job with the Bible videos due to better actors and better writing.

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When Nephi breaks his bow, I hope they show the broken upper bow limb rebounding into his face, drawing blood above his eye. Then they keep that scar through the rest of Nephi's life as a sort of memorial or battle wound. It would be small and insignificant, but cool.

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3 hours ago, Fether said:

I don’t think the lower quality had anything to do with effort, I just think they did a better job with the Bible videos due to better actors and better writing.

I haven't actually watched yet (except like 3 seconds of the family sitting around a fire), but I think there is an easy fix to that.  They need to follow the same formula as the Bible videos, as in, only use the actual text of from the scriptures, with almost no filler.

I think the best way to accomplish this would be to have narrators representing the various authors, then to use only the minimal amount of filler text necessary to appropriately depict the scenes.  By limiting the the text to exactly what is written, as a study tool, I believe it becomes much more powerful.

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Next video out. They had an epic Nephi 3:7 scene which I felt would have been more impactful if they hadn’t had music playing in the background and made it such an intense moment. Perhaps having it come more naturally in conversation, it could show that profound revelation doesn’t have to be so bombastic and intense.

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While we're on the subject of YouTube... just wanted to say that I super love the new Church ads running on YouTube of all these missionaries and their experiences.  I usually couldn't wait until the 5 second mark when the Skip Video button becomes available to skip out on ads... But I now find myself watching the entire ad from beginning to end even if it's the 10th time I've seen the same ad on that day.  I've seen probably about 5 versions of the ad, each highlighting a different missionary or companionship.

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On 9/22/2019 at 6:06 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

I guess I’ll be a minority view here:

I don’t like the videos.  I don’t know exactly why.  Can’t articulate it very well.  Something about them just feels “off”, beginning with the narrator’s singsong tone, the overacting by the “wicked people” and the fake-holy-vocal quiver of the “righteous people”; and going downhill from there.  I don’t see them as helping our missionary cause; I see them as making the BoM seem ridiculous and making us look even weirder.  

It just seems like, with the exception of The Lamb of God and one or two others, every movie the Church makes is full of people who know they’re supposed to be in scripture (even when the plot of the movie isn’t actually scriptural)—or at least in an epic story being filmed circa 1957.  Maybe someday the Church’s motion picture studio and the actors who work for it will learn the power of subtlety and understatedness and just . . . acting natural.  But today, apparently, is not that day.  🤷‍♂️

 

I agree with you on this one.

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