UPDATE – 9.23.2009
Some of the videos from this seminar series are going online exclusively on AlMaghrib’s Twitter -

see link for full story:
http://www.leechon.com/twitter-exclusive-training-videos-1161.htm

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After having completed the YM Promo video, word kinda got around that I make videos. The video caught the eye of Sensei. (Br Muhammad from AlMaghrib Institute. Why I call him sensei?) He said that he’d like me to create a video for him soon, but at the time I thought he was joking.

In August Sensei sent me an email to come down to College Park to film the teacher training seminar he was conducting for two new AlMaghrib instructors. This looked liked a real opportunity to grow…so I went forth with it.

I found myself in a situation doing a type of project that I hadn’t done before. This was the first time filming a lecture/seminar series. I figured I’ll need two cameras. I got my camera and I borrowed my friend’s (Uzair, you da man!) Sony D8 camera and headed down to college park.

Filming was for two days. I ended up with about 28 tapes (two camera angles worth of footage). That was the end of the filming phase of the project. Editing was where the challenge was.

After capturing the video, I learned my first lesson: Use a microphone to record the audio! The audio quality was so bad. It took me a while to work on the audio to get the quality up to par. A lot of digital cleaning. Using a microphone would have saved me about 80-100 hours of work on my side. Its a good thing I had a little brother and a second computer to help with the process.

When it comes to editing video or audio…efficiency comes down to film management. If you have poor file management. You will have a hard time doing your project. Its also a good idea to realize your work flow early in the game. It makes redundant tasks and processes much faster and efficient.

One editing challenge was trying to figure out how to make it not so boring. I ended up splitting the seminar up into different segments and topics that ranged from 15-30 mins. This made for good short feeds. I was experimenting with different opening sequences to the lecture. This was one result that I came up with, but it didn’t make the final cut.

After having missed two deadlines I realized that if you want to go big projects, you have to work in a team. Otherwise you will reach your limit quickly.

For obvious reasons I can’t post the entire seminar here. It’s 16 hrs of footage! For your enjoyment here is the intro to the seminar.

This intro was used as a teaser in some conferences to promote AlMaghrib. It was entertaining watching the instructors be themselves