FINALLY
A Billion Lives is the documentary the vaping industry needed, but didn’t deserve. , director and producer of this documentary, has just released a newsletter to those following the ABL Documentary stating that the long awaited movie is coming to iTunes on April 12th, andd is available for pre-order now. This documentary is the long awaited film that exposes the corruption behind the collusion of Big Tobacco and Big Government, explains how the vaping industry has been getting buried by Pro-Tobacco lobbying, and explains how the Master Settlement Agreement runs deeper than most consumers think. Catch the trailer below…
The Mission
In this newsletter than Beibert wrote about, he detailed his plans to help get vaping the attention it needs to fight legislation. These steps include sharing and rating the movie to reach the top of the iTunes chart, then get on the Google Play Store, and hopefully end up for free on streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video. Unfortunately this newsletter reeks of bad marketing, and forcing consumers to rate the movie highly to get to the top of the iTunes ratings board doesn’t seem like an effective plan to “save vaping”. Nonetheless, the movie is important and the more NON-VAPERS that see the more it will help the terrible PR that surrounds vaping as we know it.
Is It Too Late?
One of the biggest criticisms of this movie was how it was released. Not many are familiar with the “Film Circuits” and don’t understand how small independent movies are released. The cost of production is astronomical and with indie’s, it usually falls on the small production companies. So their entire goal is to break even, a very difficult feat in itself. Most films make money through playing theaters, and Beibert needed this film to hit as many theaters as possible to recoup costs. Him and his team did all they could to try and get this film played at theaters all across the world, and relied on the vaping community to purchase the tickets and sell out these events. While this was great to drum up reviews and attention towards the movie, ultimately what this did was get the movie into those who didn’t “need” to see it. It’s not fair to say that Beibert “used” the vaping industry to increase sales of his movie, but I can understand why many feel this way.
The film in itself was regarded very highly in the vaping industry as its “PR Savior”. This is a pressure I’m sure Beibert was not ready for. I fully believe his intentions are pure and he found and very interesting story within this niche new technology that he wanted to cover. I don’t think its too late for the industry to reap the rewards of the public watching this movie, and I think the vaping community will do a good job of spreading it around. And I’m also optimistic about the response towards this movie and I think many people will see it as the push they need to continue the fight against anti-vaping legislation.