  We determine the out-of-equilibrium production rate of dileptons at rest in
strongly coupled N=4 Super Yang-Mills plasma using the AdS/CFT correspondence.
Thermalization is achieved via the gravitational collapse of a thin shell of
matter in AdS_5 space and the subsequent formation of a black hole, which we
describe in a quasistatic approximation. Prior to thermalization, the dilepton
spectral function is observed to oscillate as a function of frequency, but the
amplitude of the oscillations decreases when thermal equilibrium is approached.
At the same time, we follow the flow of the quasinormal spectrum of the
corresponding U(1) vector field towards its equilibrium limit.
