Over the coming weeks I’ll be posting up each day of the ICNA-NY Back2School Giveaway web documentary series. The video above is day 1 of 10.

As the story unfolds and communities are profiled you’re going to see that this documentary is an intimate portrait of dedicated New York Muslims who, despite the struggle with current political climate and firestorm of Park51 in the media that eventually leads to a neighborhood silently protesting their presence, believed in the power of giving back to the children of New York City as a tool for better social and political understanding.

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Personal Reflections

Personally I’ve found that one of the most challenging aspects of directing a documentary is getting the interviewee to coherently put their feelings into words. I’ve learned that asking the right questions is key to getting the right answers. The questions have to be directed towards their emotions.

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Ideally one would start editing a project in parallel to shooting it. The benefit of that is you’re able to catch any mistakes and issues while everything is still in play. This way as you progress forward you’ll have the best possible quality. Unfortunantly in this project’s case, due to the work load I already had I entered into post production only after I finished all the days of shooting.

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One major production lesson I can take away is:
Voice content of an interview takes priority over visual composition of the person speaking. When you’re a one-man crew you’ll have to make make sure there are enough b-roll visuals to cover an in-your-face close-up interview.

The best solution to get the best of audio and video is to get the assistance of an extra person to record to a seperate audio recording device such as a Zoom H4 or H4N via the use of a shotgun mic on a boom pole.

In August 2010 – September 2010 ICNA New York – Islamic Circle of North America, NY Chapter – did a series of events where they gave away a total of 4000 school bags at over 10 different locations throughout New York City. I was commissioned to document these series of events.

I set myself the challenge to tell the story of this project from the eyes of the volunteers themselves, showcase the struggles and challenges they themselves faced and the impact they had on the community.

The following video is an overview of the entire giveaway that took place.

The video was premiered at the volunteer appreciation lunch yesterday. I don’t remember much of the event considering I hadn’t slept for almost two days in order to deliver this video on time. In a week’s time I think I spent close to 80 hrs on the above video.

Over the next several weeks I’ll be releasing a short film of each of the individual locations that took place along with my own blogged commentary – so go ahead and subscribe to stay updated!

Ammar and I got together a couple months back and sat down to discuss what are some ways that he can get his poetry out more without having to travel so much and perform. The thing with entertainment is that a lot of it is pushed by event marketing. If that’s not an option either due to time and/or budget constraints then you have to really focus on content and online social engagement as much as you can.

In Ammar’s case, content doesn’t necessarily have to be in the form spoken word poetry – a great way to start – but it’s it should be the area of presenting who you are and what you care about.

A lot of content can be produced as a means of:

• Engaging people, such as answering each person’s questions and responding to comments in the form of video.
• Talking head videos talking about things that go with your brand – Ammar is the head of student leadership development and training with AlMaghrib Institute. He also takes AlMaghrib seminars, he can make talking head videos addressing topics that are relevant to the AlMaghrib student community or topics of general appeal that also resonate with the AlMaghrib community.

One of the things Ammar is doing is he’s translated poetry by Imam Shafiee from Arabic into English into eBook form. I think this is awesome. Here is a snippet from his Facebook page:

Let the days do as they please
And be optimistic when destiny decrees
Do not despair due to the events of nights past
For the events of this world were not meant to last

- Imam AlShafi’ee

Here’s another one:

I love the righteous though I am not of them
Lest that I receive through them intercession
And I despise those whose transactions are sins
Although we are similar in profession

-AlShafi’ee

If you want the full book free of charge – check out his website: iAmAmmar.com

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By the way,

When Ammar and I got together a few months back, he told me that the inspiration for the poem was a video my wife had made several years ago.

Here’s the original video that inspired the poem.