The Spider Web Of Islam

I explore Surah XXIX, and explain how Mohammed's poor understanding of the Bible contributed to his misconceptions about Christians and Jews.

Powerpoint. Slides with no more than 6 lines and 6 words per line on the high side according to pros who make educational material using slide shows that I know. A nice background image that doesn’t distract from what you’re saying and maybe builds it up, particularly with transition slides, would be good.

Otherwise stand in front of a group of people who are nicely dressed and attentive and film yourself giving a live lecture. Allow questions at the end.

Either method, or something in between, would represent a sharp uptic in your production values. The second might be harder to pull off especially if your lecture series were to get inquiries from people wanting to sit in. The effort would pay dividends.

Why would anyone go to Youtube in search of high production values?

There are multi-national corporations that invest billions of dollars in producing professional music, film, and television.

If the only thing someone was interested in was high production values, they can go to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon-the options are virtually limitless.

These are educational videos, intended to edify people not entertain or dazzle them. They're not intended to be aesthetically overpowering.

I wasn’t suggesting some professionally made extravaganza! Far from it.

Higher production values are relative.

Take the power point suggestion: well there are lots of alternatives to Power Point, some may be free (especially in the Linux world) and very capable. The benefit of slides that don’t get too busy is that they highlight your material and give your audience something to involve themselves in with the video, As I said, no more than six lines of text with about six words per line is shown to work.

Then there’s standing in from of an audience, which could be friends and family, and giving your presentation recorded live ... this is a way to sell yourself better ... and while you may chide at the idea of selling yourself rather than your material that’s absolutely fine ... leading to...

Doing both. Stephen Coughlin gives presentations, very detailed ones at that, that have both presentation slides and him presenting his material. He does let his slides get a bit complex at times but they they highlight the text as he is addressing them.

But you don’t need to have a place to give lectures like he does, there’s another guy, whose name escapes me at the moment, who gives a history of Islamic battles with simple animation (dots appearing on a map and changing color later) who gives his talks to an audience in what looks like his living room. You may not ever need graphics like he uses, but you can still do this without even the budget Coughlin uses to rent some place ... if you were to choose any recorded presentation with or without slides.

Again, “higher” isn’t “high”.

I’ve never posted critical comments on your material ... but you do need to present it with something to keep the audience involved by giving them something to do with you (they won’t have the books you’re citing for example, put that on screen) or sell yourself more or both.

And that’s right up YouTube’s alley.

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