Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes

One of the greatest benefits of having a contract with a client to produce work is the existence of deadlines, which bring about a sense of urgency for you and your team to produce something of value.

If you really wish to grow in a craft, whether its basket weaving, graphic design, video production, motion graphics, medicine, law, engineering, etc. — you need to put yourself in a position where you have the opportunity to practice and work hard to hone your talents to mastery and excellence.

Practice doesn’t make perfect, but it sure can bring about excellence — ONLY if that practice is in an area of your strengths and talents. Working on your weaknesses and not developing your strengths will ultimately land you in a career that will make your miserable, or at the very least leave you empty in a way.

I’m not saying ignore your weaknesses, rather understand them and work around them and make sure they don’t undermine your strengths. What I AM saying is develop your strengths and talents to a level that will enable your to simply dominate your area of expertise. – What ever that may be.

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When you service a client well and shatter standards that were laid out, usually this ends up in the bar being raised — followed by a push of encouragement to shatter it again.

Visual Eye Candy Store

The last trailer I did was for the Torch Bearers seminar taught by AlMaghrib Institute. I ended up employing motion graphics, something I hadn’t done much before.

The issue this time around was that AlMaghrib and its base loved it so much they wanted more of the same quality.

I’m not a motion graphic artist. I’m far from it. Personally I haven’t had much opportunity to practice such a specialized craft (which by the way pays real well). I decided to look for outsourced venues to do some of the work.

For those who don’t know — RevoStock.com is an excellent source for stock footage and Adobe After Effects project files. I purchased a project file titled Particle Fractal Fly Through and began playing around with it in After Effects until I got it to be visually as I wanted it.

Personally still being new to After Effects, it took me quite a while to get myself around it. Longer than it normally would if I was editing footage shot with a camera in Premiere.

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Shatter a standard continuously is harder each and every time, but that doesn’t mean you cannot be consistant. I’m not a sound designer or sound engineer by any means what so ever. I personally don’t even have the proper tools, knowledge or skill set to be an effective sound designer.

Music To No One’s Ears

I go by an Islamic standard and principle that musical instruments are not permissible in my line of work. Whether those instruments are based in string, wind, brass or percussion.

I guess this principle has been an aspect of the brand I’ve been building for Leechon. I guess you can say that’s a good thing.

Fundamentally, in Islam musical INSTRUMENTS are prohibited — this isn’t a forum for Islamic jurisprudence, so don’t start a debate

The After Effects project file came with an audio track that I had to throw out the window and face the challenge of producing another track inline with my principles.

Creating the sound score is a difficult challenge for me personally. Its certainly not a strength of my own and its a source of pain considering that I’m not a sound designer by any standard.

:: UPDATE START :: 8:52pm

I forgot to add…

One of the ideas I had for the dialog portion of the sound I got from the movie Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. The opening lines start with a voice in “elven” language and then follows with a “translation” in English.

I thought that would be an interesting way of applying Yasir Qadhi’s voice into the sound track. Arab (a real language) followed by English.

:: UPDATE END :: 8:56pm

After about two days of intensive work, I ended up with a first cut for the trailer. This first cut is what was played at the GPU conference. Personally I find it a bit embarrassing.

After I got news back from AlMaghrib, I was basically requested to redo most of the audio and change up some of the visuals. After about another week worth of stress and facing the technical challenges I came out with the final cut which you see in the beginning of this post.

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E.I.D. – Enjoyed :: Improved :: Discovered

The only facet of this project I truly enjoyed was the end result. Not so much the process. The reason for that is because I spent most of my time working on my weakness of sound design — only because it was simply undermining my strength. I certainly did improve in my ability to take sound and develop a track that sounds quite professional to the ear while keeping to my principles.

My most important discovery here is that I need to move beyond working with only myself. If I’m to shatter the standards I’ve set for myself for future projects, I’m going to need some professional assistance — especially in the area of sound design.

Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes

For the upcoming AlMaghrib seminar in New York and in London, UK…I present to you all the Torch Bearers Trailer!

This video was done mostly in Adobe After Effects. Many thanks to Andrew Cramer over a VideoCopilot.net for his tutorials and products on learning Adobe After Effects. This was my seconds project involved with After Effects and I must say that I’m beginning to really like the program. The potential is beyond what I can see. So many amazing things when it comes to visual effects. I’m looking forward to learning more of this program to churn out material that complements that work I do on the editing side.

One of the biggest challenges with this project simply getting over my creative block. All my past AlMaghrib I’ve had some creative elements to work off of. Either some sort of presentation or design work to build off of and “translate” to screen. With this trailer all I really had was the club cards and the notes I was forwarded by HQ. I spent a good portion of a week simply going though the material hoping to find something of use.

What really came through for me in the end were the tutorial DVDs from Andrew Kramer’s VideoCopilot.net. I must admit, although a lot of the work was done for me in the template setups on the DVD, going in and modifying those templates in a program I’m not familair with takes a hell of a lot of time getting used to.

The approach to learning I take (and recommend to others) is that of the child. A child learns by copying those around themselves. Over time what happens is that the child has picked up a number of skills via copycat and due to the creativity of the child he/she is able to mix and match to the point where they’re able to do some impressive stuff.

With After Effects I’ve got quite a distance to go, but I can’t wait till I get really give a project that million dollar look!

Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes

Everyone is given 24 hrs a day. How well you use these 24 hours differentiates you from the others in this life and in the hereafter.

HQ (Almaghrib Headquarters) called me up late last week to make a trailer for their seminar A Heart Serene coming to Toronto soon. They wanted the trailer for a conference that took place this past weekend. Normally I would say no to such a request mainly due to the short notice. The trailers I’ve made for AlMaghrib in the past take me about 80 man hours of work (2 weeks full time hours) from coming up with a basic idea to delivery.

Why did I take up this challenge considering I had about one day to make this trailer?

Simply for the challenge! (…and to focus my mind away from some stress makers in life). I don’t recommend that you do this often mainly due to the mental and creative strain it puts on the individual and the effects of partial burnout that take place afterward, but I do advise that you challenge yourself once in a while.

Keep in mind that the video below isn’t near in quality (in my humble opinion) as my past trailers, but then again my past trailers were made in over 80 hrs of work spaced out over 2-3 weeks.

You probably noticed this graphic at the beginning of the trailer:

Leechon’s stance is that sound produced by musical instruments, whether they be made from percussion, brass, wind, or string instruments of music are not Islamically permissible. All projects that have been done officially done under Leechon (2005 and later) have kept to this principal. Some people have confused sound tracks of the videos to be sourced from musical instruments, for that reason all productions will now feature this slate before every video to remove that confusion/assumption.

If you wish to use this graphic slate for your videos, you are more than welcome to. Simply click the image to download the ZIP file which contains the image.

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes

“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:

Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes

This past Wednesday I finished developing an project I’ve started called Message Mastery, where the goal is to equip 200 Muslim brothers and sisters on producing effective and profitable dawah videos. Not only produce them, but also equip them with the tools necessary to develop, write, produce, edit, market and distribute their the call to Islam.

With any sincere initiative, Allah-swt sends down tests…

Saturday, the day we decided to produce the introduction video we had thunderstorm that knocked down plenty of branches and powerlines in the neighborhood. No power, no internet, no light, no heat. Where to go to meet my Sunday night deadline? – The house of Allah-swt!

I went to the masjid for Isha, and spent the whole night finishing up development and begin editing on a client project while I pondered on how to make these videos for message mastery. I prayed fajr, ate breakfast, and went home to get some rest. I woke around duhr time, to find that dad bought a generator to get the basic functions of the house going. — Our basement began flooding since the pump was off due to lack of water.

Shooting Time!

Only having a couple hours to shoot, I borrowed my little brother’s room, put up the lights, camera, mic…and action!

That night in the process of capturing, the generator went out. I resorted to using my car’s engine power and ciggarette power converter to power my laptop, hard drive, and camera as I captured the video. When I had 30 mins remaining in capturing the footage, I decided to drive to my university where I can have power and internet access.

I arrived around mid-night, prayed isha, and burned the midnight oil. Once Fajr came in, I just had some touch ups to make. I went to work, and made the final changes and set it to render. Below is the result. Watch the video

Now that you’ve watched video…take action! Do the following:

• Go to messagemastery.com and tell me 1….2….or..3 things you want to be able to learn from this program (you can post it here if you like as well), by posting it in the comment.
• Sign up for the early bird notification list by going to: http://www.messagemastery.com/earlybird