I feel like video-making...

If you don’t know what The Lecture Experiment is, you can read all about my experience of how it came to be in my previous post.

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Here’s my list again:

MASSIVE ACTION PLAN

1. Make Du’a to Allah (SWT) for what I want (using the exactness of my ‘result’ statement) constantly/everyday.
2. Secure recording device and borrowing the camera to tape.
3. Look up prices for my dream camera, prices for DVDs, talk to friends about the project
4. Get permission from the speaker to tape and sell his lecture
5. Get permission from the Masjid to tape and sell the lecture (and offer them some of the profit).
6. Do a 5-minute trial run at home to test the taping
7. Be at the Masjid on Saturday (April 18, 2009, when the program will be) at 4:00 pm; set up, execute the production.
8. Edit and complete the master copy of the DVD
9. Start duplicating and selling the DVD

Okay, it doesn’t look like there’s much improvement here, but Alhamdulillah there is (if you could read between the lines, you’d see). Once again, blue is what’s done and red is what’s “half-done” or started but not completely finished. I’ll just focus on what I’ve done since the last post.

2. Secure recording device and borrowing the camera to tape.

I’ve already gotten my brother-in-law’s camera (the photo above) and Alhamdulillah, my friend Mohammad Ali Ismail loaned me his camera as well (Jazakallahu Khair, Ya Akhi). He also loaned me his Penman Digital Qur’an which records audio. I’ve spent a lot of time digging through boxes and boxes of my old stuff trying to find one of my old mp3 players. I’ve been researching to get better audio and I have a lavalier microphone (one of those clip on ones). I never realized it but you can plug in one of those mics into the ‘line-in’ jack of an mp3 player that records. I found a few mp3 players, but none of them with the line-in. InshaAllah for future projects, I found an mp3 player online for about $30 which has the line-in feature. However, that’s for future projects. As of right now (the night before the execution), the Digital Qur’an will have to do. InshaAllah I hope I can try to perfect it in post (editing). Also, along with getting an extra camera, I also borrowed an extra tripod from my school today. I have T.V. Production and I had to shoot today. Afraid I’d be denied or hit with some speech about being responsible and extremely careful (which I’d do anyway), I asked my teacher to borrow a tripod over the weekend and to my surprise, he said, “Yeah, sure. You can pick it up at the end of the day.” Thanks to Mr. L for the awesome tripod (also in the above picture).

4. Get permission from the speaker to tape and sell his lecture

I was unforunately unable to go to meet up with the Imam (due to the lack of a ride) and had to leave yet another message. However, InshaAllah I plan on trying to get another ride tomorrow for one of his classes (11:00 Aqeedah, I believe).  However, after asking so many people that know him (my sister that works at the Islamic school, and my other, elder friend who works there), they’d said he most-likely would agree with the idea. However, I’d still like to confirm with him. So, this is still in the red.

5. Get permission from the Masjid to tape and sell the lecture (and offer them some of the profit).

This one should really be in purple. Actually, in a violet leaning towards blue. I called a brother from the Masjid today and he said that it should be okay. Tonight, I’d talked to him at the Masjid and again, he said it’s okay. The only reason this is in red is because he said he just has to notify the Ameer of the Masjid. However, he said, as of now, it’s “all systems go” unless I hear anything back from him saying otherwise. So, InshaAllah, I’m set to do that.

Now, I just have to do a little test run and then execute it tomorrow. InshaAllah I’ll accomplish this with Ihsaan and Allah’s pleasure.

Two is better than one...

Wasalaamu Alaikum

p.s. just a side lesson I also learned so that when I look back at this post I can remember this. Any camera that supports A/V input (the red, white and yellow, or just white and red), also supports an external microphone, if the jacks are compatible with the mic. Unfortunately, neither of the above cameras are compatible with my external mic. InshaAllah I work with what I have.