How Do I Add Content?

What Types of Content can I add to the Site?
How do I add Videos?
How Do I Add Headlines?
How Do I Add Actions?
How do I add Thumbnail Images to new content?

How Does the Site Work?

Find a Video that's No Longer Working?
What are the "Featured Headlines" on the Homepage? 
What is "Hidden" content?
I Added a New Video. Why isn't it Appearing on the Homepage? 
What Is Reputation?
What Are Levels? 

What Does Films For Action Think About...?

What is Films For Action's stance on 9/11/2001?
What is Films For Action's stance on the "Birther" controversy?
Why Is {____} This Film Not Included on the Site?
What about a film that's mostly good, but has a little misinformation in it?
Why Does Films For Action exist?
Why Have We Not Posted Any Alex Jones Videos?
What is Films For Action's stance on the Climate-Gate controversy?

How Do I Add Content?

What Types of Content can I add to the Site?

Videos: Embedded video from another site, such as Youtube or Vimeo
Headlines: Republished news stories or articles from other websites, not written by you.
Articles: Original writings written by you.
Actions: A specific thing anyone can do, regardless of location, to make the world better.

City Chapter Content
Events: Local events happening in the city chapter area
Groups: Local groups working on social change issues that are generally aligned with our mission and vision
Blog: Articles written by you with a local focus, contact us to become a blogger for a city chapter

How do I add Videos?
First, do a search for the video to make sure it hasn't already been added.

Then go to the Add Video page and paste the Video URL into the form and hit submit. We will draw as much info from the URL as possible.

Title
Next, please clean up the title field to display the title only (removing the name of the site the film is from, for example, or other extraneous text), and double check to make sure all the main words are capitalized. If the video is a trailer you don't need to mention that. We will add that text automatically. If the video is a documentary, include the title and the year released in (parenthesis). 

If the title could be worded more clearly, consider changing it slightly to get it up to the proper standards.

Take this title for example: "Former spy tells all, keep blogging and exposing pursue Treason charges." The title is grammatically nonsensical, the main words aren't capitalized, and the confusing lack of syntax makes it hard to read, appearing amateurish. It's a great video, though. So to clean this up we changed it to "Former Spy Tells All; Calls on Citizen Journalists to "Keep Blogging and Exposing Corruption, Truth"

If the video is a trailer, include the title only and we will automatically add (trailer) to the title when you submit.

Thumbnail
Find an image to upload, if one isn't added automatically. See farther below in the F.A.Q. for more.

Category
Choose the category for the film. Here's a break down of  the different types:

• Documentary: Feature films usually 30 minutes or greater in length.
• Short Film: Good-quality production with a clear beginning, middle and end. Length usually 5 to 25 minutes.
• PSA (public service announcement): One to five minute video that advocates a specific action campaign, non-profit website or cause.
• Presentation: A speech or talk given by an individual.
• Peak Moment TV: A specific online and Public Access TV series. New episodes can be found and added from here. But make sure the video hasn't been already added first.
• Trailer: a preview of a documentary
• TV Clip: A short video that originally aired on television.
• Video Clip: Any video that doesn't fit another category. Usually shorter videos that lack the coherent structure of more polished short films.

Length
Enter the length in number of minutes (120).

Website Url
Enter the film's official website or related action campaign. If none exists, you can leave this blank and we will add the URL you added above in this space.

Description
For the video description, one paragraph is ideal, but longer descriptions are okay. Most of the time you can simply paste the description provided with the video, but if no adequate description exists, please write your own summary of the film.

Offering a description of the Who and the What should be sufficient, adding the when and where if it seems relevant. Please write the summary from a third-person, neutral point of view (think Wikipedia), and reserve your personal opinions for the comments section after you have posted the video. Two to three sentences is ideal.

Subject Tags
Add one or more subject tags that best categorize the film. If it helps, for each subject you're considering, ask yourself if you'd expect to see the video listed on that subjects dedicated page. We'd like our subject pages to be a high functioning resource for exploring and researching specific issues

Parts
If the film is broken up into multiple parts, enter the first part's URL as the primary video, and then add the rest of the URL parts here. Alternatively, if there are multiple good videos on the same subject, that would work better grouped together as a theme, rather than being posted separately, you can post related videos as parts.

For example, if you've found several videos covering a major protest event (think G20, G8, WTO), add the best video as the primary video, and then add more supporting video clips as additional parts.

Search tags
Add a few keywords to help people find the video when searching the site.

That's it! Hit submit and you'll be good to go. After you've submitted the video, you can add a comment, and share the video on social networks to help spread the word.

How Do I Add Headlines?

Watch a Video Explaining How to Do This

"Headlines" include news and articles re-published from other websites. Check  our Adding Content page for content guidelines.

Copy and paste the title of the film into the title field, ensuring that all of the main words are capitalized..

Add the article's author(s).

The Description is the body text of the article. Four to five paragraphs from the beginning of the article is ideal. If a Creative Commons attribution allows it, or the site or author has given permission, you can include the whole article.

Check the check box below if you included the whole article.

Subjects and search tags are the same as for other content.

How Do I Add Actions?

There are four types of actions. Here's a breakdown of each:

• Activities are specific actions that anyone can do, either individually or as a group, and that can be done multiple times.
• Campaigns are larger actions that are usually sustained over a longer period of time. There are often many activities involved in carrying out a campaign. The main difference between activities and campaigns is that a campaign can only be "completed" once, whereas activities can be done many times by anyone. Campaigns can be incredibly specific, such as auditing the Federal Reserve, or more general, such as Adbuster's campaign to shift our culture's understanding of neoclassical economics. 
• Organizations are groups that are working on multiple campaigns.
• Petitions are a specific type of campaign, which rely primarily on people signing or writing a letter that is mailed to the person's representatives in Congress or other public officials.

Title
For Activities, Petitions, and Campaigns (when possible), use a strong verb to begin your action: create, start, sign, host, build, organize, join, stop, plant, etc. For Organizations, just include the name of the organization.

Website Url

This is the primary link to supporting information or specific take action page, if the action requires an action off-site. The url should start with http://

Description
This is the introduction or summary of the action. A good summary will briefly explain the problem to be solved and then quickly get into the action that addresses it.

What To Do

• For activities, this will likely be the longest part of your action, offering a step-by-step guide explaining how to carry out the action.
• For organizations, list ways that people can get involved with the org, or things they can do to support the mission of the group.
• For campaings, list the different activites that people can do to support the campaign.
• For petitions, the action can usually be included at the end of the Description form, or simply left blank, as the Website Url is included at the bottom of every action, saying "For More, Visit Website.com >>"

For all What To Do lists, we encourage you to break up the content by bolding each activity's title, such as "Plant a Garden," and including as much description below each title as necessary to carry out the action. You can also add links to key words, for additional resources, downloadable materials, or links to more information.

Downloads (optional)
Upload any supporting materials, such as guides, literature hand outs, flyers, poster templates, tool kits, etc. Accepts most common formats that are less than five megabytes each.

Supporting Links (optional)
Link to other sites or specific pages from the main site. If the link is a website, capitalize the first letter of each word. Ex: "FilmsForAction.org". If the link is to a specific page, put the title of the content in the title field, capitalizing all main words.

Include http:// in the link url.

Customized Related Films (optional)
Here you can specify specific films to associate with the action, in place of the automatically generated related films.

A Note on Formatting
For campaigns, organizations, and petitions, you will likely be copying and pasting a large amount of the text from the associated action's website. These websites often have widely varying style sheets that will potentially mess up the formatting, making the text either look bad or hard to read.

To correct this, select the messed up text and use the Remove Formatting button at the top-right of the text editing box. This will remove most of the formatting while leaving any embedded links in place. You can then re-format the text (adding bold for main titles etc) to be consistent and look good with the rest of our site. Some style formats cannot be removed with this button and will have to be removed by hand. To do this, click the HTML button at the top of the edit box and look for <h1> <h2> <h3> tags that may be in use, and <div> tags with other stylings that didn't get taken out. Remember to remove both the opening as well as the closing tag. For instance, <div> and </div>.

This can sometimes take time. But if the text looks garbled, or styled funny, or there aren't proper line breaks in between the text where they should be to give the text proper breathing room, people will be less likely to read and use the content. Users may vote it down if it's pretty bad, and overall bad style formatting simply makes the content (and the ideas associated with it) appear amateurish.

By taking the time to present your content in a pleasing, clean and consistent style, people will be able to focus on what matters: the ideas, information and resources that will help them take action!

How do I add Thumbnail Images to new content?
If the content already has an image to go with it, drag and drop the image on to your desktop. Then click Browse on the Add New content page and find the image on your desktop. You'll then be able to crop the image to the proper dimensions.

If no image or thumbnail image is already associated with the content, do a Google image search for the name of the content and look for images that will work. If you can't find anything, try searching for keywords related to the content. Finding a good image that's interesting and fits the content well may take a few minutes, but our community will thank you for taking the time.

Additional Video Notes:

For some video types, we're able to automatically grab a thumbnail graphic to use.

If the film is a documentary, please google the name of the film and upload the official cover art for the film.

If an image isn't added by default and a google search doesn't yield satisfactory results, you can use a screen-grab program to capture an image from a frame in the video. On Vista and Windows 7, you can use the Snipping Tool, and on a Mac you can use Grab, which both come pre-installed on their respective OS.

To grab an image, first, play the video and pause it on the screen shot you wish to use as the thumbnail. Either of these programs will then allow you to snip an image that you can save and upload as usual.

How Does the Site Work?

Find a Video that's No Longer Working?
Let us know. Just click the  (broken link) icon on the page where the video isn't working and we'll promptly look for a working link and get the video back up if we can find an alternate version. If you want to help us out, you can look for a replacement video and include the URL for us in the info box that comes up. Thanks for helping us keep the site up to date!

What are the "Featured Headlines" on the Homepage?
"Featured Headlines" includes headlines and articles published in our Independent News section that have been voted up enough times by our members. While our community of members who vote regularly on content is still forming, we also have two editors to help with this process and make sure the best submissions get featured.

What is "Hidden" content?
If a headline, article, video, or action gets voted down enough times it will be hidden from the main view of that section, but will remain accessible through the "Sort By" drop-down filter in each content page's navigation area. Content can be hidden for a few reasons. Sometimes, the subject matter could be great, but the format of the content could be inappropriate for that section. A common example might include posting a personal blog in the Indy News section, which we differentiate from the kind of news and op-ed articles that this section features. Other reasons for voting content down include being overly self-promotional, promoting disinformation, being poorly presented, adding content not relevant to the site's mission, or simply being "not that great."

If something you add gets hidden, don't worry about it too much. Take another look at our Adding Content guide for tips on what kind of content to add, and have another go at it.

I Added a New Video. Why isn't it Appearing on the Homepage?
Our newest films on the homepage is a combination of the newest films added by Films For Action and the newest top rated videos added by members. Member videos will appear in this feed when they have gotten enough high ratings from either us or the community, and will also be added to the "Top Rated" filter.

What Is Reputation?
Your reputation serves as a general mark of how much others on the site trust and value your contributions. You gain reputation points whenever another user votes up something you added, whether content or a comment. You can lose points by the same measure. When you hit a certain reputation/level threshold, your votes will be given a greater weight, making it easier for you to push content to the front page. This essentially allows the community itself to choose which members gain greater editorial privileges, to help choose the best content to feature on the site.

What Are Levels?
As you add more content and participate more in the site, you gain levels. You'll level up at different times depending on the type of content. With each level up and a comparable reputation level, you'll gain additional "voting weight," making it easier to push content to the homepage or hide the duds. In this way, members receive greater editorial privileges directly from the Films For Action community and their own participation.

What Does Films For Action Think About...?

What is Films For Action's stance on 9/11/2001?
Of all the issues Films For Action covers, 9/11 is certainly the most controversial. To present information that implies that select individuals in our own government could have allowed or assisted the 9/11 attacks can certainly not be taken lightly. But with every issue the mainstream media has failed to adequately cover, fairly and thoroughly, we feel that it's important that people have access to the full spectrum of information on a given issue, not just the government's official take. Let people investigate and decide for themselves.

We strongly believe vigorous and rational debate in this country is the corner-stone of a healthy democracy. No matter how taboo or controversial, the free flow of ideas and information will ultimately benefit us all. We believe journalism has a responsibility to impartially look at the evidence available, sift out un-substantiated claims, and present what credible evidence can be verified to the public. Sadly, this approach has not been taken by the majority of mainstream news outlets as well as alternative-leaning left-progressive media.

At the same time, we do not promote junk science, wild speculation, racist epithets, or other nonsense claims. A few examples include: the idea that no plane hit the pentagon, that nuclear, space, or holographic weapons were responsible for the demolition of the WTC buildings, that Arab hijackers were not involved in the plot, or that "Jews did 9/11."

These and other similar claims have been rejected by the majority of the 9/11 movement, but unfortunately, mainstream media continue to bolster and amplify these fringe claims as if they represented the entire movement. On the whole, the movement has shown a sincere propensity to self-correct as further research is conducted, claims are peer-reviewed by others, and new information comes to light.

It is worth acknowledging that the 9/11 truth movement, as you'd expect, is not perfect. It makes mistakes, follows dead-end leads, can jump to conclusions too fast, and can diminish their own efforts with misleading slogans like, "9/11 was an inside job." A statement like this will always be too simplified to capture the complexity and nuance of the situation. And yet, they are prone to these mistakes because these patriotic citizens have stuck their necks out to do what their government and their media has failed to do, which is to try to get the full story.

Having done hundreds of hours of research over the last few years, we've been able to sift through a great deal of information out there and hope to provide an archive of the most credible, verifiable and factual information we have found thus far. Contrary to popular belief, there is enough hard data that can be verified to support the movement's basic call for a new, independent investigation.

It is perhaps unsurprising that the most conservative 9/11 film, with virtually no speculation, sticking just to verified facts, and following the story of the victim's family members would also receive the least mainstream attention.

What is Films For Action's stance on the "Birther" controversy?
We're not ones to dismiss an issue out of hand. With due diligence, we've looked in to it, and... it's complete nonsense.

Why Is {____} This Film Not Included on the Site?
With thousands of videos scattered across the internet on various websites, both obscure and mainstream, we wanted to create a site that catalogs the best of these films all in one place. We've spent hours watching all sorts of videos, researching the issues they cover, and have done our best to include the best we've watched, while importantly, not including any films that are misleading, contain disinformation, misinformation, or are simply not that great.

You won't however, find that we are squeamish when it comes to covering controversial issues. You will see we have lots of documentaries on 9/11 and aren't concerned about covering these difficult subjects the way a lot of left media avoids 9/11 and similar 'don't go there' topics. As our motto goes, "Neither left nor right, but straight ahead." When the ideas or assertions are grounded on thorough research and evidence, we will add the videos or articles to the site.

That said, if there's a good film or video that you think should be on the site, it's likely we just haven't come across it yet, so don't hesitate to create an account and add it yourself.

What about a film that's mostly good, but has a little misinformation in it?
Good point. It should hopefully be apparent that the editors of Films For Action will not agree with all the information and ideas in every film. There are a few instances where we have added a video that does contain spurious or questionable information, but we felt that as a whole, the video contributes something worthwhile to the debate on that film's particular subject.

We fully believe in the spirit of the "marketplace of ideas," where a diverse array of perspectives are made available to the public so that the best ideas can rise to the top, and people can research and decide for themselves.

Even if we don't personally agree with the perspective of a film, or parts of a film, we believe it's still valuable to be aware of those perspectives, simply to enhance our knowledge of the wide variety of beliefs that people hold in the world.

Again, when digesting media of all forms, whether mainstream or alternative, the golden rule still applies: Think for yourself. Do your own research. Be skeptical but stay open-minded. Don't just agree with it because you identify with the messenger, and don't turn off automatically to the idea if you don't. Developing excellent media literacy skills is important for all of us, no matter how reliable our sources of information are. This is why we have dedicated a section of our site exclusively towards media literacy videos.

Why Does Films For Action exist?
For the short answer, check out these videos tagged under our "Big Media" subject.

Why Have We Not Posted Any Alex Jones Videos?
Unfortunately, we feel it would be irresponsible to promote Alex Jones, his websites, or any of his films. His films were always overly sensational and hyperbolic, but over the years the assertions he makes in his films have gotten widely outlandish and unsubstantiated. There are nuggets of truth and important perspectives hidden in the films, but they are buried under so many wild claims, tabloid style rhetoric, fear-mongering, and misleading conclusions that sifting the valid points from the misinformation would take more time than most folks have the patience for.

Most skeptical people will have written off his ideas (and anything associated with it, including, likely, this site) long before the film finishes. We must regretfully conclude that Alex Jones does more harm to the movement than good. Considering that every single good point that he makes is being said by someone else, there is simply no reason to include his films on this site. He simply lacks credibility, for good reason, and when your trade is the dissemination of information, credibility is all you've got. We know Alex Jones has quite a strong base of followers, and if you are a fan of him, we would like to ask, what is more important: promoting Alex Jones, or achieving the goals that (despite the outlandish rhetoric) we basically share in common. If you are a die-hard Alex Jones fan, this site is probably not for you.

What is Films For Action's stance on the Climate-Gate controversy?
Our staff has spent several hours researching the climate-gate issue, and well-over a hundred hours researching climate change itself. Unfortunately, for us, a neutral investigation into the issue showed that there wasn't evidence of data tampering. One of the judges that looked into it said that they should have and need to be more transparent about their information, but that a look at the data did not reveal tampering.

If you're not inclined to trust 3 separate investigations into the issue, as well as the analysis by the majority of alternative media, there are logical reasons the premise that climate change is bunk science just does not hold up. Original climate change research has been produced by hundreds of scientists from dozens of countries all over the world, and a close and impartial look reveals that the science we have is solid.

What can be proven to be a fraud are many of the solutions being proposed by government and industry currently. Cap and Trade is the most obvious example. It's also true and perfectly logical that the ruling class of the world (powerful political and corporate interests) would use the climate issue to further their own agenda. This does not mean that the science is wrong and that a genuine solution to the problem is not needed. This seems to be the main point that Alex Jones and other skeptics get wrong.

If you're open to it, I'd recommend watching some of the other films in our climate change section. We put these videos up after a long and arduous investigation into the issue, and we don't put up any films that we believe are promoting disinformation. We are non-partisan in our search for truth. You will see we did not side with a lot of the alternative media on the issue of 9/11, even though it would be convenient to do so. We promote information that is supported by evidence.