If you have ever wanted something different for your devotional programs, something unique, this is it.
If you've wanted something unique for your Firesides, public meetings, or Holy Day Observances, something that touches the heart of the seeker, this is also it.
The first of a series of devotional DVD's we plan to produce over the next several years, Praise Be to God has ten video devotions (six compilations and four tablets). The Bahá'í Writings are read to music while images from our personal library, plus archival video footage from both the United States Bahá'í National Assembly and Bahá'í World Center Audio-Visual Departments, flow across the screen, reinforcing what is being read. In all there are over 72 minutes of devotions on the DVD.
Many of you are already familiar with our video work from watching The Light of Unity, An Introduction to the Bahá'í Faith, and our photography from our ArtPrints and ArtPrintCards CD. The Light of Unity grew out of our beginning work on the Praise be To God DVD. We put the Praise Be to God project aside to fill what we believed was a more urgent need for a video introduction to the Faith that could be given to people easily and affordably.
In one respect, one could say that Praise Be to God has been over thirty years in the making because we have been shooting slides and creating slide programs from the Bahá'í Writings since the mid-seventies. In all we created a library of some 7,000 slides and produced 18 slide programs which we showed at Feasts, Firesides, public meetings, and Electoral Conventions. Since the first program was shown at a Fireside, we have been asked if copies of these programs could be made, but the degradation of the soundtracks and images imposed by the duplication process and technology of that time, not to mention the incredible expense involved, made it impractical. Each program would have had to have a price upwards of $75.00 to cover the cost of duplication. But we never gave up the dream. We just bided our time until the technology caught up with it.
By 2002 we could see the fulfillment of the dream was on the horizon, but would require amassing an adequate library of video footage from which to draw images for the programs and we began adding video footage to our library. In 2004 we began adding digital still images to our library as well, and began to learn the video editing process in earnest. In 2005, our brother, Randall Dighton, went on pilgrimage and, at our request, shot more than 200 fresh images of the World Center and Holy Places as they are now which we had professionally digitized. These, added to the roughly 300 slides we had taken on our pilgrimage in 1977, give us the oportunity to provide an historical perspective when approriate. We also added, with permission, digitized video from the U.S. Bahá'í National Center's Audio-Visual Department and the World Center's satellite broadcast of the dedication of the Terraces. Finally, last year we digitized all our slides, giving us a current library, which continues to grow, of some 9000 still images and over 30 hours of video clips.
Oddly, the greatest challenge was the music. Our slide programs relied on recordings available to the average consumer--movie soundtrack records, classical recordings, whatever we could find in record stores that we thought would work. All of these, of course, could not be reproduced commercially without paying royalties. When, in the early 1990's, we began to explore putting our slide programs on video in a simple transfer process in order to offer them for sale, we found that there was no central place one could go to pay royalties for recorded music and that even when we did find one entity to pay them to, they refused to grant permission because our operation would be too small to be profitable to them. We also found that what little "public domain" recorded music was available was banal, of poor quality, and not easily obtained. Enter the digital age and the problem of getting music disappeared completely. There are dozens of sources and thousands of pieces of high quality royalty free music available to anyone with internet access and the willingness to spend the hours necessary to audition them and pay the one-time fees for the recordings. All the music on Praise Be to God, with the exception of The Rose of Love and The Work of a Bahá'í, which were recorded by Randall, are from those royalty free sources. What we like most about this music is that it fully supports and informs the readings from the Writings, allowing them to shine as they should, unhindered by associations with any other production or presentation.
Appropriate for Feasts, devotions held in your home or at your Baha'i Center, Holy Day Observances, conventions, and conferences, to name a few possible venues, the programs on Praise Be to God can be used any time a devotional program is needed. They also make excellent programs to show at public meetings and Firesides, especially City of Certitude (drawn from the Tablet of the True Seeker). Their extensive use of images from the Bahá'í World Center and Holy Places, as well as the Wilmette House of Worship, will stimulate questions that can lead to discussions that arise from the viewer's spiritual experience with the devotion. In essence, then, Praise Be to God can be used as a teaching tool that touches the heart, complimenting The Light of Unity's more informational approach that is aimed at satisfying the seeker's intellectual needs. Using both at Firesides and public meetings, gives the planners of these events many options to keep their programs fresh.
These videos project well on movie screens using a DVD player and LCD or home movie projector. They can be used alone or in combination with other components of a devotional program such as prayers or other readings by those present. A unique feature of each video is a 5 second pause at the end of the program before the credits are shown. This provides a few moments for reflection as well as allowing the DVD operator to stop playback, if desired, to extend the spiritual atmosphere created by the program. He or she can then restart playback whenever it is appropriate to watch the credits, which we have made an artistic extension of each program in an effort to continue that atmosphere as much as possible.
Praise Be to God is also available as an audio CD. At the suggestion of several friends who previewed these videos as they were produced, we have taken the soundtracks from each video program and put them on a CD so you can listen to them in your car or play them on those occasions when a video program is not possible or doesn't suit the situation. You can order the DVD or the CD, or a Combo-Pak of both disks.
Because a printed booklet of all the passages used in the devotions, with their source references, would be too bulky to fit in any of the disk cases, unless we made the print unreadably tiny, we created a PDF (Acrobat Reader) file of the booklet. As the disks have no place on them for the file, we made it a free download. Simply Click here to download the Praise Booklet PDF.
The video titles are listed below with their total run time in parentheses. Click on either the Compilations link or the Tablets link to view excerpts from them.
A Pure Heart (6:47) The Tablet of Ahmad (6:27) Broken-Winged Bird (5:44) The Tablet of Carmel (7:26) City of Certitude (13:31) The Tablet of Visitation, 'Abdu'l-Bahá (3:58) Love Is... (6:48) The Tablet of Visitation, Bahá'u'lláh (7:12) The Rose of Love (5:06) The Work of a Bahá'í (5:47) Orders are shipped free via USPS First Class. DVD's are packaged in a standard DVD case, CD's in a standard jewel case, and the Combo-Paks in a standard, two disk DVD case.
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