Stephen Eyer and Daneen
Akers have been hard a work engaging their fans and mobilizing them
into funders for Seventh-Gay Adventists.
They've raised over $8,000 of their $10,000 goal, with which
they've funded their entire first round of production and research
through their IndieGoGo contributions.
Seventh-Gay Adventists is fiscally sponsored by San Francisco Film
Society. Through our partnership - all SFFS projects can offer tax
deductions to their contributors on IndieGoGo. Exciting stuff!
Check out Stephen and Daneen's 6Q below to learn their DIWO story.
Q1: Tell us about Seventh-Gay Adventists. What was your inspiration for the project?
SE: Seventh-Gay Adventists is a
documentary about gay and lesbian members of the Seventh-day Adventist church,
a conservative worldwide denomination. At its heart the film is about our need
for belonging and community and the challenges of having two core identities in
conflict.
The log
line is, “A film about love, sex, and eternal life”, and, although it’s
obviously a bit irreverent, I do think that it really sums up the challenge.
How does someone reconcile who they are with what they were raised to believe
God requires? How much bigger a conflict can you get?
DA: Most people know that being a gay
Christian isn’t easy, but being a gay Adventist is especially difficult because
Adventism, to most, is more than a belief system; it’s also a close-knit
community with unique cultural habits. Besides worshipping on Saturdays instead
of Sundays, most Adventists are also vegetarian and abstain from alcohol,
tobacco, and often even caffeine and jewelry. For someone who grew up
immersed in the church, the culture and DNA of Adventism is almost like an
ethnicity.
For all its
apparent peculiarities, Adventism does not deviate from the Christian
mainstream in its condemnation of homosexuality. Like almost every other
Protestant denomination, the Adventist church teaches that the only way for
gays to live within God’s will is to abstain from any intimate relationship.
The approach taught is, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”
SE: LGBT Adventists face a gut-wrenching
decision. They must choose between the church they were raised to believe is
God's true church and their innate desire for an intimate, loving relationship.
We wanted to explore how people were trying to work through these really big
questions.
DA: We got interested in this project for
two reasons. First, we were both raised Adventist and come from a long line of
Adventist teachers and preachers. When we started this project, I was pregnant
with our first child (our now 1-year-old daughter, Lily). We’d realized that we
had no idea how we were going to raise her from a spiritual and religious
perspective. What we’d been raised with wasn’t all bad. But it wasn’t all good
either!
This was
also when California was in the midst of the Prop 8 fight over same-sex
marriage. At the time we’d been living in San Francisco for five years and had
starting going to a progressive, accepting church (www.secondwindsf.org)
where we’d become close friends with several same-sex couples. We helped start
a group that reached out to conservative religious voters to try to get them to
consider voting “no” on Prop 8. When Prop 8 passed, we were deeply disappointed
but motivated to do more. Since we’d already produced and directed one feature
(about my mom’s struggle with a chronic pain condition, www.LivingwithFM.com),
it seemed like a film was the logical next step.
Q2: What
are your goals for the film? What impact do you want it to make?
SE: You mean besides radical and
revolutionary change?
DA: We hope this film can help create
more empathy and compassion. We’re deep believers in the power of story to
change hearts and minds. We were deeply disappointed when Prop 8 passed and we
saw our friends get stripped of their rights. Our daughter was born a month
later, and we just really felt like there was so much more to be done so that
she would be raised in a world that was more fair and just. We also felt like
religion had been the white elephant in the room that nobody really wanted to
talk about at the No on 8 phone banks and such. It’s going to have to become a
part of the conversation for lasting change to happen.
SE: We felt like a film could do so much
more to achieve the sort of lasting change that happens when you engage in
someone else’s story, even briefly. When you spend time listening, really
listening to someone’s story, you can’t go back. You have entered into someone
else’s life for a brief while, and it changes you.
DA: There’s also needed empathy from
those who don’t know or understand the conservative Christian mindset. I understand
there are some fundamentalists who deserve the criticism and derision (Exhibit
A: Uganda and the Evangelical right-wing that is exporting hate), but most of
the conservative Adventists that we know, including many of our family members,
don’t deserve the stereotype. Many people want to be loving. And I think they
want to know that they can support gay rights without turning their backs on
their faith. Of course this has happened in the past with the anti-slavery
movement, women’s suffrage, and civil rights, to name a few, and I think this
is slowly happening with gay rights as our cultural norms change.
SE: If our film could be a small part of
that change, we’d be completely satisfied.
Q3: Who
needs to see this film and who do you want to see this film? How are you
identifying, reaching and building your audiences?
DA: We want to reach an audience both
within the Adventist church and beyond who is willing to engage in a meaningful
conversation about religion and homosexuality. This topic has become extremely
contentious recently, and the Adventist church makes an interesting case study
for the broader political and cultural conflict between religion and sexuality.
SE: We’re really in the beginning stages
of this project still, but we’ve turned to a few resources so far to start
identifying our audiences. One group that has been extremely helpful is SDA
Kinship, a support group for current and former Adventists who are also gay,
lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. It’s through them that we’ve met the
majority of our subjects. We set up a story booth at their annual convention
this past summer and started meeting potential film subjects (and supporters)
there. We knew after the convention that
we needed to get out and talk to more people about this issue.
DA: We actually just returned from a
three-month, 11,000 mile production road trip around the U.S. for the film. We
spent the entire fall on the road pulling a small travel trailer behind our car
visiting major Adventist population centers and setting up more story booths.
We did this with our nine-month-old daughter, Lily, along for the fun. I was
pretty nervous at first about going on the road for three months with a baby--I
had no idea how she would do, and we didn’t have money to bring along a
babysitter. But the timing was right (we were in-between apartments, so we could
go on the road without paying rent), and we just really felt like we needed to
get momentum going on the project.
SE: Whenever Daneen started to worry
about what someone would think about us showing up with a camera and a baby,
I’d remind her that nobody else was signing up to tell this story! And Lily did
really well. She’s a total extrovert, and she just loved meeting new people.
Along the way people hosted us, babysat for us, sent us on our way with
homemade goodies and encouragement, and they continued to give to the project.
We’ve had one individual and one group make significant contributions
(offline), but all of the online fundraising has been through individuals, many
through $25 donations here and there.
DA: On our recent research/production
trip, we had quite a few conversations both on and off-camera with thought leaders,
and we’ve really been slowly building our audiences from the ground level. We
often laugh about the fact that we’re making a film about two topics people try
to avoid talking about--sex and religion. So we’ve been trying to meet key
individuals who can support the project in person first.
We’re just
beginning to start having conversations with other groups who might be
interested in this project (like the religious arm of the HRC), so we feel like
there is still a lot of work to be done in this area.
Q4. What role does the Internet and social
media play in your DIWO (Do-It-With-Others) efforts?
SE: Building
an audience is one of the most important things an independent filmmaker can do
these days. The question is how to get others involved and engaged
with your project. We all know there are
350 million people on Facebook, but how many of those are interested in seeing
your work?
We wanted to find out ourselves
and thought that building up a fan page for our film from the very beginning
would be a good idea. Luckily, one of
the great tools on FB is how easy they make it to do target advertising. So we created a new page for the film and
started advertising to people who we thought would be interested in the
topic. We didn’t have a big budget, but
spent a few dollars a day for a few weeks to see what kind of results we would
get. Before we knew it we had over 1,000
fans.
Now the trick is to build
relationships with those fans because right now there are many people on there whom
we don’t even know. We hope to do this
by providing regular meaningful content, exclusive behind-the-scenes
information, and personal interactions.
And yes, we will occasionally ask for contributions and point people to
our IndieGoGo page to make it easy for them to give (but, we’re trying to be
careful not to overdo it). People give
to someone they know and something they care about. So we’re trying to do both -- make sure our
fans get to know us a little bit better through our posts and provide helpful
information about the project and the issues our film covers.
Q5. What
tactics did you use for financing? How
has IndieGoGo worked out for you?
SE: We
knew when we started this project that we wanted to bring other people in to
help finance the project, rather than do it all on our own like we had on our
previous film. I think we’d been hesitant
before to get others involved because we were so green, and we didn’t want to
risk any one else’s money while we tried to figure it out. After finishing the film and winning a couple
of small awards we had more confidence in ourselves and in audiences to find
and fund these smaller, independent films this time around.
IndieGoGo and our fiscal
sponsor, the San Francisco Film Society, teamed up to offer an online way for
supporters to make tax-deductible donations. The timing was perfect—I had just
been looking around for a way to do this when I got the email announcing the
new partnership.
DA: The
Facebook integration with IndieGoGo has also been really helpful. We realize
that we have a lot more work to do to really take advantage of social
media—three months on a production trip with a nine-month old meant that we
were barely managing to post status updates on the film’s Facebook page—but so
far it’s been extremely helpful. We funded our entire first round of production
and research through our IndieGoGo contributions.
Q6: What is next on your radar? And where can
folks follow your efforts?
DA: Next up
is a pitch trailer. We still have a lot of filming to do as we continue to
follow our main subjects. That will mean more fundraising. I’m making Stephen
promise that next time we’ll raise money for a babysitter!
SE: The main
website for the film is http://www.sgamovie.com where you can sign-up for our newsletter,
become a fan on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter. Thanks!
