Bringing the power of positive media to a new generation.

Something as small and simple as your kids watching a Vitainment film can have a profound impact on them. Our goal is make this world a better place, one movie at a time.

Your family bought movies in the past. You have a right to watch them now.

From its inception, Feature Films for Families did not just preach family values. They tried to live them as well. In the early to mid-'90s, one of the first Vitainment efforts was a program called "Take a Video Home."

This program sent VHS copies of The Buttercream Gang or The Seventh Brother to elementary schools where each kid, after agreeing to return the video to school on Monday (learning honesty and responsibility), got to take the video home for free for the weekend and watch it with their families.

There was an incredible unpredicted benefit of this program as principal after principal reported to us that the behavior of the children on the playground changed and they were much more caring about each other and bullying virtually ceased after that weekend.

This proved to us over and over the incredible value of positive entertainment.

Not only that, but we received letter after letter of the positive effects these films had on individual children, including helping a 5th-grade student in Cleveland, Ohio, realize he didn't need to join a gang and two young foster kids in a depressed timber mining town to change bad behaviors and become positive members of the community.

The Magic of Mirror Neurons

One very powerful question has saturated the field of psychology and, more specifically, education: How do people learn? What is the process that takes us from a blank-slate baby to an engineer, lawyer, or doctor?

Beyond this, how do similar animals such as chimpanzees and gorillas learn? And what exactly sets the limit between us and them?

As it turns out, one powerful mechanism in learning is that of the mirror neuron. A "neuron" is simply what we call the cells in our brain, but a "mirror neuron" has a special function beyond just sending and receiving messages communicated through our brains.

Discovered in the early 2000s, mirror neurons are brain cells that fire off when a specific action is observed. For example, say you are watching a game of tennis on the television. While watching, there are mirror neurons associated with the swinging arm movement of the players and their running leg motion that will trigger your brain as you watch.

In a very subdued way, it is almost like you are playing tennis, despite really just watching it. But of course, it would be a mistake to view mirror neurons as some kind of holy grail of learning. Scientists already made that mistake shortly after their discovery.

The problem with mirror neurons is that they only fire off in response to particular actions—for example, swinging the arm—and that alone doesn't magically make you a better tennis player. Watching ten hours of tennis before trying to play for the first time ever isn't going to somehow make you an expert.

Does that mean mirror neurons are useless in terms of learning? Absolutely not. While you won't become a tennis pro just watching tennis, there is something to be said about watching and doing.

Mirror neurons carry electrical messages through the brain. Similar to muscles in the body that get stronger the more you work them, neurons and the neural pathways they form through their complex connections with one another get stronger the more they are used. The more a specific brain cell fires off, the easier it is for it to fire off at a later time.

The phrase "fake it to make it" is a poignant one here: If you are an ordinarily grumpy person and want to be happier, a good first step can be to "fake" happiness—just as a means of helping the associated brain cells get some use. Over time, you will need to "fake" happiness less and less as all of the neurons associated with that feeling become stronger.

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For generations, people have speculated that the things we watch on television or in the movies affect us on a deep level. While no link has been found between violent behavior and violent media (only a link between violent behavior and untreated mental illness), a possible link between positive behavior and positive media is growing more apparent.

Imagine you are watching a film where the hero is a down-on-his-luck nobody. Via mirror neurons, you can immediately begin empathizing with the hero in this starting state. But as you watch the hero rise and become someone greater, the actions they take to get there will trigger various mirror neurons in your brain.

It is subtle, and perhaps seems unimportant, but every time the hero does a simple task—like swinging their arm—it will trigger the mirror neurons in your brain associated with that swinging. And each new thing the hero does and you associate with helps build a stronger connection to them: helps you feel like you are the hero.

And as the hero rises above the challenges presented to them, and successfully saves the day, you become someone more likely to rise above your own challenges. You become more likely to act as the hero in your life, and maybe in the lives of others.

Mirror neurons aren't magically forming new ways of thinking in your brain, but each one is a start that can help those new neural pathways form. And over the course of a whole movie (especially one that is more grounded in reality), you will activate many mirror neurons, giving yourself multiple anchors for new, positive ways of thinking and behaving.

Science is only now just starting to catch up with these ideas, but Vitainment has seen them at work for decades now. Vitainment films have had far-reaching benefits on the people who watched them, ranging from young kids who were persuaded to join gangs but said "no," to actual prison inmates being rehabilitated by something as simple as sitting down, and watching a movie.

We're happy to see that scientific research is finally reaching a place where it can begin to explain the phenomena that we've been observing for decades now. And we hope that you have a stronger grasp of why something as small and simple as a Vitainment film with your kids every day can have a profound impact on them.

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