Crosslinks April 2003 magazine

From April 1986 until 2001, I worked as a Crosslinks mission partner in Spain, specialising in audio and computer support for the Malaga Media Centre. These days I look after the Crosslinks website and computers at their headquarters in London.

A friend of mine called Nick Hall dubs Christian videos so they can be used in other languages, particularly in those parts of the world which are less accessible to Christians. He is developing a computer programme that makes the recording of new soundtracks easier.

Recently Nick contacted me because he wanted someone to take a computer loaded with his programme and try it out in a "live" situation. Nick has contacts with the Afghani community - including some Christians - in Perth, Australia and had backing to produce a Dari language version of a film called "Ransom". Dari is a language spoken by many Afghans. The film was originally made in Turkish and was set in Istanbul; it had a clear Christian message appropriately presented for Afghanistan.

And that is how I ended up in Australia! Crosslinks kindly gave me some time off - about two weeks - on condition that their computers didn't collapse in my absence. Before I departed I gave a stern lecture to said computers, and also gave the Crosslinks staff my son's telephone number: as David is studying Computer Science, hopefully all would be well while I was away!

In Perth, I was met by FEBA (Far Eastern Broadcasting Association) representatives. We set up a temporary studio in a local Baptist church. It's amazing what you can do with a modern microphone and electronic noise reduction; with blankets and quilts draped over music stands to act as sound deadening! And so the recording of many short bits ("loops") of the new soundtrack began. These had been translated, but many had to be modified as we progressed, in order to get the lip synchronisation between the new words and the existing pictures as close as possible.

Dubbing in progress

Some challenges soon arose: on the second day of recording a contract cleaner was working in the church and the noise of their machinery made a move of studio rather necessary! So we re-assembled all the blankets, equipment and computers in the front room of a house in a quiet residential neighbourhood. Next day we were disturbed by the sound of pneumatic drills as a trench was being dug in the road outside! Apart from these and other technical hitches, there was also the inevitable challenge of getting the various actors used for different voices to be at the right place at the right time: in other words, making quick changes to recording schedules so that we could record the actors' voices when they were actually there!

Each evening we sent the day's recordings over the internet to Nick Hall in England, so he could do the necessary finishing work and fix the new soundtrack to the pictures. By the next morning (Australian time) Nick had sent us, again via the internet, a first version of the part of the video which we had completed. This encouraged us all greatly! Often he would also modify the computer programme and send a new version to overcome any difficulties that we had noticed.

One of the actors (disguised) with Peter

By the grace of God we got all the recordings made by the time I left Perth. As planned, the computer was left in Australia for recording some re-takes for the project and also for future work. For example, we hope that one of the Afghani actors, a Christian, will record radio programmes using this equipment.

Please pray that the dubbed video would be widely used in Afghanistan. One of the Afghani actors was not a Christian, but after being involved in the film script for a week, he was asking serious questions about Jesus. Please pray for him too!

Peter would like to express his gratitude to FEBA Radio and CMS for their help with this project.