You’ve probably heard about the unfortunate news of the recent bombing attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airline jet on Christmas Day by Nigerian terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
I hope that this doesn’t affect the good work that people at AlMaghrib and the students are doing.
Seriously, I don’t understand what people like Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab are thinking. They’re not helping the Muslims or society. They’re simply making lives as Muslims harder.
The above promo is a sneak peak at the content of the series.
The first DiscoverU workshop that I ever attended was “Live Your Dreams” back in April 2006. This was just after I had completed my 1-on1 coaching sessions with Muhammad Alshareef – which resulted in a chain of actions that led to Leechon being born.
In June 2009 I got the opportunity to share the benefit of the experience with others by helping produce the workshop in an online video series format. Producing this particular video series was quite a challenge, mainly because the person who had shot the video delivered it in a very peculiar format, making the post-production more difficult than expected.
The other challenge was getting the video’s to interface properly with the current members area design. After a few hrs of tinkering this morning, I was able to get the layout to accept the videos. All I have to say is I love CSS when it comes to site design. It makes design very flexible.
The good news is that the project is done and this seminar is being launched online in video form. Inside you’ll find 12 Chapters that consist of over 480 minutes of video content. For those people who purchase this online video set, I pray that you benefit.
I wish my coach and mentor the best of success in this life and the next. He’s inspired myself and many others. May Allah-swt bless him to share in the reward that others make as a result of his inspiration. Ameen.
I’d love to hear back from you letting me know how you benefited.
I spent the weekend putting together this special product for you guys. Look for it at the AlMaghrib booth in Toronto’s RIS Conference. You should see a big poster that looks sort of like this:
Check out some of the videos that were taken at IlmFest to see what people’s experience was:
Okay, so the title is slightly misleading, considering this post is about bringing the Ilm Summit documentary to film festivals and there aren’t any tier 1 film festivals in Hollywood that I know of. However, there is a tier 2 film festival in LA!
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WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN NOW?
Imagine the names Sundance, SXSW, Cannes, Toronto, Tribeca, or Berlin. Now that would be exciting.
Considering that I practically shot and edited a feature film because of Ilm Summit, I found myself asking, “What’s keeping me from going all the way with this?”
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A question regularly being asked of the people who attended Ilm Summit was, “What will you bring back to your community?”
I believe the above question is at the core of the AlMaghrib business strategy.
After the tawfeeq of Allah it’s the internalization of this question combined with the systemization of its operations that has led AlMaghrib to grow at the exponential rate that it has.
I honestly believe an organization, company or brand becomes socially successful only when it becomes selfless. Making it’s existence for the betterment of community. Giving to the people before asking for their hand.
I believe what needs to be recognized by people who attend these seminars and are active participants is that initially people don’t care about the company, organization or brand.
Whether it be AlMaghrib, Bayyinah, etc, they initally only care about the potential benefit that can be brought to themselves and their community as a result of them being there.
Only after a relationship has been established will people become loyal.
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WHAT’S THAT GOT TO DO WITH FILM FESTIVALS?
In order for an organization or brand to be successful they must build solid relationships with their market.
One of the quickest ways to build a relationship with people is through stories and characters that pull your emotions. That’s why producing films with those elements can be a major asset to an organization’s marketing strategy.
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Imagine seeing the front page of your local entertainment section covering the screening of this Ilm Summit documentary.
The purpose of putting a film into the festival circuit is to give it exposure and to build its pedigree by getting as many media outlets that are covering the festivals to also do a story on the film.
One of my objectives is to recut the episodes and put them together to make a “feature film version” of the Ilm Summit 2009 experience.
It should be fun submitting this to film festivals and exposing AlMaghrib to an audience that would never have heard of it otherwise.
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How many more new people would be exposed to the dawah?
Think of people attending the film festivals, people in the documentary ending up on IMDB, as well the possibility of getting a distributor to buy the film and air it on television.
I ask again, How many more new people could be exposed to the dawah that would never have otherwise been exposed.
None of us are responsible for the outcome. Just sincere work. The rest is up to Allah.
This blog post is simply the story behind the production of the Ilm Summit videos.
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The following message is an excerpt from an email I received recently from SaqibSaab on the image of AlMaghrib to the masses.
The IlmSummit videos. MashaAllah the experience of the ‘ilm and the summit was beautifully portrayed and I was glued to updates that came almost everyday, jazaAllah khair to the players involved.
At the same time, a lot of the image of AlMaghrib offering an incredibly high caliber retreat was put side by side with some “fun” scenes to show the great time everyone had.
I laughed and enjoyed them personally, but a brother once wrote to me:
I don’t think AlMaghrib adopts cheap tactics, overall they are slick with their stuff but sometimes things get out of hand.
The only thing I disagree strongly with AlMaghrib is the videos, and I don’t just mean the beat-boxing.
I really think some of the Ilm Summit videos will do a disservice to AlMaghrib. That is supposed to be the intense 2 week academic seminar. It just bugs me when the cheesy experience is sold instead of marketing.
It’s so weird to see Yaser Birjas talking about qawaid al fiqhiyyah in one video and then cookie monster and dinosaurs in another. Or see Wisam doing an AWESOME recitation, for it to fade out and into a groggy brother being woken up by 3 people.
If you’re wondering what this message is all about, you probably haven’t seen the videos.
TO THE ANONYMOUS PERSON who sent the email to SaqibSaab:
I respectfully disagree with you.
The videos were produced to tell the story of the students at Ilm Summit and what they experienced. Fundamentally it is part of marketing that these stories be told. However, the purpose of the video’s wasn’t to directly sell AlMaghrib or Ilm Summit.
The videos communicated exactly what was meant to be communicated, which is the atmosphere and environment of Ilm Summit. Not only on the side of brotherhood and sisterhood but also the academic side of things.
By far, everyone I’ve spoken with and my wife has spoken with who’s attended Ilm Summit 2009 agree that the videos communicate accurately what was seen and felt by the students.
You’ll notice that first week of videos contain a mix of the academic and the fun while the second week of Ilm Summit videos are much more academically inclined.
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The purpose behind me going to Ilm Summit 2009 was two fold:
Gather footage that can be used in an AlMaghrib promo documentary laying forth the academic nature of the institute.
Produce short “GemReels” for every day of Ilm Summit 2009 that tell the story of the people attending and also show the academic nature of the retreat.
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WHO’S IDEA WAS IT ANYWAY?
The idea of producing a daily video came about as a discussion between some of AlMaghrib’s HQ people and myself at AlMaghrib’s Ilmweek that took place in Toronto in May 2009.
We figured the idea is great especially since no other Islamic organization has really pulled off daily video blogging in an effective manner. The idea certainly gave me butterflies since I personally never produced so many videos back to back.
I’ve always wanted to do something like this ever since I saw Kevin Sites do it back in 2006 with Yahoo’s “Kevin Sites in the Hotzone.” — I just never realized how much work was in store for me.
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WHAT WENT INTO PUTTING THESE VIDEOS OUT?
One of the lessons I’ve learned from past projects is — In order to meet deadlines you need to set a time limit for how much footage you’re going to gather.
I set a time limit of maximum two hrs of footage to edit every day into less than five minutes. A 24-hour turn around time sounded reasonable considering my current skill level and experience – until I got down to editing.
Sleep literally went out the window. I remember having slept only four or five times in the 16 days I was there, and it was only out of exhaustion that I slept. My body would simply shut down.
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CHALLENGES THAT MADE ME YEARN FOR SLEEP
In an event where there is going to be filming, the attendees are usually notified.
During registration they’re suppose to be given release forms to fill out or at least have a sign saying “filming in progress” or something.
It’s been done past events that I’ve filmed at, but for some reason it wasn’t done at Ilm Summit.
For the first five days or so I was able to keep to my 24-hour turn around time schedule.
People were being cooperative and others were quite enthusiastic to be in front of the camera.
However it only took one sister’s complaint for me to receive an “executive order” to re-edit or completely take done some of the videos.
This basically led to a meeting with the heads of Ilm Summit where we decided on the policy of what to film, how things had been going thus far and how we wish to move forward.
Yasir Qadhi made it a point to announce the fact that there is filming and I’m not that hard to miss. Therefor if anyone doesn’t wish to be caught on camera they should stay behind my “contraption” and at the same time I would be making the best effort to keep certain people out of specific shots.
One of the other issues we addressed in the meeting was that not enough of the academic nature of Ilm Summit is being put out there.
The “academic nature” of “What Is Your Story: Ilm Summit Day 08″ and the latter videos was a direct result of that meeting:
From this point forward I was constantly playing catch up, however the videos that came forth were given more exposure for the academic nature of Ilm Summit 2009.
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Next post will be address some personal reflections I’ve had as well as what’s to come next with the Ilm Summit and AlMaghrib stuff.
Leechon Films is a media production company focusing on the production of promotional videos, commercials, trailers and social media content for clients as well as independent projects of it's own.
If you want to learn more about what we do, see the about page.
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In an event where there is going to be filming, the attendees are usually notified.
