One of my goals is to be able to provide content in the following quality:

My first experience in producing a lecture was The Strangers, followed by Desert Rose and Darkness2Light. Although with time the standards for Islamic video content has been rising I don’t believe the standards are where they should be. The above video should be the standard for Islamic content in terms of production quality. No less.

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The next logical step toward setting that standard was the birth of IlmCast.com. AlMaghrib in their efforts to reach out to more people and deliver the knowledge further and wider than ever before started a project called “AlMaghrib Radio on Demand” where they would post a new lecture every month.

Personally I thought that the concept of extending the “free-line” in Islamic content was great but the approach wasn’t great. I proposed setting up a separate website that would act as a brand in and of itself. Sort of like how EmanRush is for AlMaghrib. The advantages being that it was web 2.0 friendly.

• Content can be syndicated to the people via RSS, iTunes, and Facebook
• There would be a sense of social community where people can post comments and feedback as well as blog about it on their own blogs.
• People can share with other people through services such as Digg, StumbleUpon, or simply email.

The initial approach didn’t give this level of usability.

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As we progressed into the third month of IlmCast, one of the things I wanted to do was to systemize the process. Initially I figured what we can do is simply have the video recorded. I can take it and encode and compress it to a specific size, after which it would be uploaded so that editors can get the footage to edit and finally out put it up for me to format it for final distribution.

I decided to test the process on IlmFest. After a couple weeks — one thing I’ve learned was, double handeling video is a BAD idea. In order to make the best of everyone’s time the work flow process from event to ilmcast will be as follows:

If there is going to be video recording of a lecture event, there should be a dedicated person responsible for this task. Their job is to make sure the video gets recorded, edited, and put online on the IlmCast server for later portion where the video is encoded for online distribution.

Development Stage:

• Dedicated individual should be in charge of video, just like how there is a person for food, hospitality, etc.
• proper equipment and should be secured: microphone, cables, camera, lights, as well as human resources for tasks such as doing the recording, lighting, editing — the event organizer should set aside a budget for this just like they would for food and other aspects of the event.
• Permission from the speaker and location should be sought out before recording takes place (usually done with release forms)

Production Stage:

• Standard should be a two camera shoot. (if they cannot find a second cam, then 1 camera can work). Camera 1 takes a medium close up (shoulders up) at a 45-degree angle, camera 2 takes a medium long-shot (thighs up) at an opposite 45-degree angle. — – Ideally it be great if 3 or 4 cameras can be brought in to get some b-roll footage. Cam 3 would be audience from behind the speaker and cam 4 would be extreme long shot from the back of the audience in the form of a tracking shot.
• Lighting should be adequate. The ideal setup for lighting is to take the wedding video approach. About 6 tungstun lights around the room on stands that position the lights 12 feet above the ground (see image below), giving a 3-point look on anyone in the room.

• If they don’t have that option then getting simple lights that light up the speaker from the sides can work. — – If the organizers and producer is on a shoe-string budget, then make the best of in house lighting as they can, like using lamps, mirrors, sunlight, etc.
• Audio needs to be fed directly into a Camera. There is no excuse for not having this.

Post Production Stage:

• Audio Cleanup – this requires adjusting the background noise levels, as well as EQ settings. If they don’t know how to do this, then simply ask! It literally takes 10 mins to clean up the audio if it was captured properly, just a matter of knowing what buttons to push.
• Color Correction – Whether it be the brightness, contrast, color balance, hue, saturation, etc. All of this should be adjusted. Purpose of this is to balance the video to give it it’s proper look, or to save it from its horrible look (which usually happens due to bad lighting). If shooting was done properly, then hardly any color correction should be needed.
• Titleing and Letterboxing — This is part of the IlmCast branding. Always opens and closes with the ilmcast title screen, and has the slight letterbox on it.
• Encoding — The final output should be encoded in WMV format at 640×355 deinterlaced, 1.5Mbps CBR (constant bit rate), 128kbps audio CBR.
• Delivery — After output, the WMV file is to be uploaded onto a server so the distribution and marketing guys can handle it.

Distribution and Marketing:

• Syndication — Once the video is on the server. The marketing and distribution guys should download it, encode for purposes of online distribution and syndication: FLV, MP4, MP3 — after which our brothers and sisters will rip it off the website and put it on youtube, post it on their blogs and forums. (which is great for producers of IlmCast lectures since it brings back links to Ilmcast website and more people hear about it and subscribe to the RSS and iTunes feed.)
• Facebooking — Major releases should have a “launch/release” date where events can be made.
• Emailing — Qabaail leaders can be encouraged to send out an email to their lists and get everyone to subscribe and stuff.
• Blogging and Reviews — bloggers and the people in the video can post it on their websites and other such places.

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Every step of the way there are lessons. It will be great to see IlmCast turned into a well oiled machine.

“I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a “transformer” in any situation, any organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an entire loaf. It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader.”

- Stephen R. Covey

Last year Sensei started a thread on the AlMaghrib forums titled “Imagine a world without AlMaghrib.” One of the bullet points that I responded with was “I would have never taken the GoBeyond coaching sessions, and would probably be tens of thousands of dollars in debt.”

You’re probably wondering what GoBeyond is and whats that got to do with you “the reader.”

Leechon Films is the result of the coaching that I got at GoBeyond (now “DiscoverULife“) from Sensei. The very catalyst that moved me to do something extraordinary was from what he taught. Its been a little over two years since and progress made has been great. The thing was I needed another catalyst to get me further. What got me here wasn’t necessarily what will get me to where I want to go.

My intention was to grow Leechon beyond just me. I needed to devise a system where i can train individuals to carry things forward further and faster than I have already. Truth is I cannot do everything myself. The idea for Message Mastery was born.

I approached Sensei and sought his advice on how to go about attaining what I was aiming for. He said to me, “After the tawfeeq of Allah, realize the present day success of AlMaghrib is based on NOOR, not me.” after which he told me to approach Noor to help me get to where I want to go. Three months later, after the Tawfeeq of Allah-swt, Message Mastery is where it is today because of what I got from Noor.

I have have awesome ideas MASSIVE plans for the future of Message Mastery, Leechon, and other projects that are forming in my mind.

Before moving forward its always a good idea to look back and see the lessons learned during the journey:

• Amazing ideas will not develop until you take action NOW. – If it wasn’t for the results from Message Mastery I wouldn’t be developing other awesome ideas that could help carry this ummah forward. Actions brings results. Results bring progress. Progress gives birth to new ideas. New ideas need action so the cycle continues.
• When your intentions are for the sake of Allah, He-swt facilitates you on your path to greatness and success. – You really don’t appreciate it until you move forward for His sake alone. The work done in Leechon was a means to create content to strengthen the hearts, encourage the good, and forbid the evil. Message Mastery has come about to teach people how to create that content to strengthen the hearts, encourage good, and forbid evil. The people who stepped up to facilitate this were truly a Godsend.
• Showing kindness and patience with people goes a LONG way. — To all those whom have helped spread Message Mastery further and farther. Leechon-PR team, YouTubers, Facebookies, stumblers, and everyone else that were involved…May Allah-swt make a home for you in Jannah close to Him.

If you haven’t been following the progress since the beginning, read the following posts:

• Driving Your Dawah With Power and SINCERITY!
• Baba Without a Crew -and- Three POWER Principles
• A Little Crew Worth A Lot of Attention
• Inside the Lighthouse

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With that said, just a little bit about the launch of Message Mastery. Overall, alhamdulillah it went well. There were some bumps along the way and as we move forward we have smoothed them out and are continously improving. I’m always great full and take notes of critiques from people who are looking into how to improve each point.

The community is awesome; the people are dedicated, come from all walks of life and all have different specialties and resources to add to the group. There will be a lot of “backstage” things added into the system and it is extremely exciting. You guys will see great things coming out of this, inshaAllah.

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The deadline to register for the course is Friday June 13, 2008. After that date registration will be CLOSED.

Remember if you register for this one course you will get into all future classes free. — which are currently in development. To register go to messagemastery.com/register

If you want to get in on free session that took place last week:

This last video was quite the test of patience. There were challenges every step of the way.

The brothers and sisters I’m working with all agreed that we should make this last video a bit different and special than the ones that I did previously. I decided I’ll break out my 3D skills combined with some outdoor action footage would make for a nice treat. — We plan and Allah plans. Allah is indeed the best of planners.

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• The initial script that I had written up was obliterated by the PR team, thus making me start back at square one.
• It just so happened that Allah-swt decided to bring the rain upon us. The upside to the rain was that it washed away most of the spring allergens (I’m allergic to spring). The down side was that those were the days that we had scheduled to shoot.
• The fact that my bedroom “studio” is in the attic, the uncomfortable heat kinda forced me to work off my laptop. This had its own share of challenges. But the greatest advantage of working off my laptop was mobility.
• Having finals followed by four hours of brain drain sessions of finance every night. After that those four hours, I nearly impossible to think. You have just enough cognitive power to get home and knock out.
• Bryce (3D program) at times were being uncooperative. I should have expected this, but it had been a while since I had used this. Multiple occasions the render would fail. — Perhaps it’s time I move on to some real 3D programs like SoftImage or Maya.
• Running out of disc space becomes a real challenge. Due to the fact that I have other projects running in parallel to message mastery 2TB (2000 Gigabyts) is not hard to fill up. I ended up dishing out some cash to get another 1TB hard drive.
• Evening of the 24^th one of my hard drives psudeo-crashed. Im working on the video and all of a sudden I hear “BTzzPEwwwOOooooooooooo……” — I shut it down and turned it back on, and nothing would come up. All of my sound files were on that drive! Alhumdulillah the next morning it turned on. How and why….I don’t know. All I know is that I didn’t hesitate to back up all necessary date from that drive if it decides to go belly up on me again.

One of my teachers who is a former producer for CBS was telling us how one day on a shoot everything just decided to go wrong. There was a truck that was suppose to be in a later scene, so the driver decides to park it in the lawn behind the stage. Unfortunately the ground was too soft for the weight of the truck.

Basically you had a big truck right in the middle of the shot that wasn’t going anywhere. You can image the stress and frustration that comes from something like that, especially when you have hundreds of thousands of dollars riding on your back.

In the midst of all the stress, one of the assistants gets on the mega phone and yells, “It’s only a MOOOooovie!” — basically giving the understanding that…its not the end of the world. So long as you’re still breathing you can make it through.

These last couple weeks have been quite the trip, but the time, effort, and struggle put into it was well worth it. The video completed today…Alhumdulillah! — Click the image below to see it