Jawaad Ahmad Khan

Salaam (Peace)!

Procrastination plagues me at times. I read about this contest a week ago and set my mind to actually entering it. If you don’t know, the contest I’m referring to is the Tobacco Free Speech Contest where basically you make a sixty-second video on why you want to be tobacco free in 2009. I was so excited, I immediately starting planning for the video. I first wrote a poem about being tobacco-free and in my mind, planned all the shots I was going to do. It was gonna be a cool video with the words being presented through a black permanent marker writing on several notebooks as well as a montage of shots of me actually reciting the poem in different places. Needless to say, it was a pretty ambitious vision for just one week. And it didn’t really mesh out.

Planning and pre-production is definitely an important aspect of video-making. However, the actual execution of it is probably more important because without it, there is no video made. Today (Friday, the deadline for submissions) came and I found myself with no organized plan or any footage or actual video. This week I’d been sick and had a lot of school work to make up and I wasted all my free time. However, I still made the video. It wasn’t as great as it could have been but at least it was produced.

One of the greatest and most profound lessons that any video-maker will tell you is that actually making the video is the most important part. Ideas are great. But ideas aren’t turned into great things unless you actually act upon them. Too many times, I realized, have I planned and planned to make a video or enter a contest and have gotten bogged down in my own planning and pre-production that it ends up negatively affecting the production itself. I would never follow through or produce anything. So, as an attempt to get out of this habit which plagues so many of us (the fear of failure that causes no action to be done), I still made the video.

I ask you to watch with an open mind and know that the entire production time of this video was abot 45 minutes total including shooting, editing, exporting, and submitting it to the contest. If you’d like to support me, rate the video with five stars and make a comment on the video (and here, too). The lyrics to the poem recited in the video are below it.

Here’s the poem, from my memory at least…

Why do you want to be tobacco-free in 2009?

Why? is that the question you are asking?

Well, because I don’t want to be another percentage or fraction

I don’t want to be yet another kid, acting

I don’t want a cigarette to be my attachment

(breathe in)

When that O2 (oxygen)

Flows through

My lungs/I’m so glad ’cause I know too many have died so young

I want to set an example/Be a stranger among

My peers, and speak some truth into their ears

Guys! It’s these choices, in addition to voices

Noises, causing the world to appear on our shoulders

And the world gets heavier as you get older

Though the, pressure makes you lose compsure

Still know the, light’s at the end, it shines

I want to shine like that, and be defined

As tobacco free in 2009

Once again, please comment and rate the video.