BarnaFilms - Gone?

[rkresge]

I've been worried about the status of our BarnaFilms.com subscription for some time - it just hasn't felt right. Anyway, today I find that the domain name is "parked" at godaddy.com. Can anyone shed any light on the situation? It doesn't look good, that's for sure.

Thanks,

Roger

I can't give you any official word, but I had extensive talks with Barna Research when they were forming BarnaFilms. All I can say is that we couldn't come up with an agreement between CMN and Barna that I felt comfortable with. I offered extensive advice on the church media market. I decided not to partner with them, despite how big Barna Research is.

What I would do is contact the Barna Research Group directly (www.barna.org), who should be ultimately responsible for Barna Films, and go from there. Try to recoup your funds. Thom Black was the person officially in charge of Barna Films, who -- at the time -- was Barna's right-hand man.

[rkresge]

Tim,

Thanks for the quick response to my question about BarnaFilms. Back when we were considering a subscription I had at least 2 long conversations with Thom Black. He made several promises to me about the future and direction of BarnaFilms, but they never came through. Big on promises, not so big on follow through.

About 6 months ago I started a slow process of downloading as much BarnaFilms content as I could, because I was getting nervous. I guess I got about 30% of the video content.

Maybe they lost their hosting and will come back. But I'm not about to bet on it, either.

Again, thanks!

Roger

That's pretty much the same reason that I didn't partner with them. The promises from Thom Black were too big and I couldn't get them down on paper into a signed contract. I believe I made the right decision -- on that deal, away.

[Lburk]

Well...I guess the $900 I shelled out for a "Lifetime Membership" with Barna Films is toast. I originally joined back in 2006 because I was in need of more and more footage for various church video projects. Plus, we were planning on buying Easy Worship anyway, and it came free with a Lifetime Membership. So, I just went to the Barna Films site. It came up, but there are no graphics, just a lot of random text and empty place holders where the video segment thumbnails used to be. I tried the contact email form, but it didn't work. The copyright on the page is 2010, so I'm wondering what's going on.

Does anyone have any more information about Barna Films? I don't really want my money back...I just want to be able to access the video content as promised.

Any help you can give will be much appreciated!!!! Thanks!

[hoosierdraft]

Looks like their css file is having an issue. Bet it will be back and available in a few hours.

[rkresge]

Originally Posted by hoosierdraft

Looks like their css file is having an issue. Bet it will be back and available in a few hours.

History says they'll be back, but history also says it'll be a few days before they figure out they've got a problem, rather than a few hours.

Roger

[Lburk]

I tried once again to get through to Barna Films. Once again, the site is still "down". Anyone else have any information about what's going on, or how I can get my $ back. I guess this is the last time I let myself get suckered in to one of those "lifetime" membership deals!!!!! Hard lesson learned......

If anyone has any info, please pass it along...thanks!

[ceddy]

Nice information about BarnaFilms i like it

[JarrodBCecil]

I have sent numerous emails over the past few years with no reply.
I was the one who convinced our church to go ahead and get the 'lifetime membership'. Wow - hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

This site has been a disaster since inception. Crazy slow download speeds, weak catalog offerings, few updates and no SEARCH!

Here's hoping we all get some sort of return for our investments.
So sad.

Jarrod

[rkresge]

We had a "lifetime" membership. Late last year when they started having various technical issues I started downloading the entire site. Although I never finished, I got maybe 75% of the total video content. It was a real chore due to the performance issues of the site, but I got a lot of it - especially the video content - and it's on my hard drive. (I got the MPG files not the MOV versions - my hard drive and bandwidth aren't unlimited!)

Did anyone else do that?

If other "lifetime" members are interested, perhaps we could figure out a way to pool and share the content we paid nearly a thousand bucks for and we thought we would be able to access at any time. And if anyone knows of a good tool we could use to index and cross-reference the content, that would be really neat, too.

Roger

[Lburk]

Thanks for the posts, Jerrod and Roger! Good to know that I'm not the only one 'ticked-off' about this! It's been frustrating , but let's keep pursuing it. Maybe at some point, we'll get a break, or a lead that could help us get either the content or some of our investment back. I'm open to the sharing of content that was downloaded from the site. Unfortunately, I did not save most of what I used....thinking (duh?), I could just download it again if I ever needed it since yeah, ... I'm a 'Lifetime Member' (I thought I was special!!!). Anyway, let's keep working together on this. Thanks again and I hope you both have a blessed Christmas and New Year!

Larry