Last week I got back from my trip to Los Angeles and it’s been really busy since.
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WHY DOES MY VOICE SEEM WEIRD?
For starters, you may notice that some of the audio sounds sort of weird – like cheap dubbing in the videos. The reason of that is because I ended up doing ADR – Automated Dialogue Replacement or Additional Dialogue Recording – for some segments.
The wind was crazy up there and it totally drowned out my voice from the mic, even though I had the wind resistant padding on it.
I figured after seeing the tour of ToddAO and Warner Bros. post production studios I wanted to give ADR a try. I’ll tell you that without ProTools it’s messy business.
If it’s not automated and you’ll have a bit of difficulty getting into the same mood and emotion to sync the audio and video together.
A pain in the butt really.
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MY PLAN TO A SUCCESSFUL STUDIO PRODUCER
My plan is to simply exhaust all routes until I get to where I want to go. The way I see it, its going to take a lot of hard work and sweat.
What better fuel for that than passion?
One of the routes I’m in the process of initiating is starting an internship. Basically take in and train focused and dedicated individuals on producing content with Leechon.
I was hoping to launch this initiative in October, but client demands, seminars, classes, and being married it taking its toll.
My objective is to launch this internship initiative before the end of the year, no execuses.
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SOME PHOTOS YOU MIGHT ENJOY FROM THE TRIP
View from the hotel I stayed at
In our attempt to find a Chase bank, our GPS led us to Disneyland with fireworks!
Griffith Park Observatory from the observation deck
Griffith Park Observatory - I think Charlies Angels was filmed here
It’s been an eventful weekend. This Friday, my wife and I flew out to Los Angeles.
While she hung out at the Bayyinah Tajweed classes taught by Wisam Shareef, I attended a low-budget film financing seminar conducted by Suzanne Lyons, an independent producer.
I met Suzanne in April when she spoke at Film Specific’s Going Global Bootcamp. It was there I learned out about this particular workshop that I attended.
Outside of all the technical factors of financing and getting investors, a few points I took away from the class,
Be selfless and inspiring - To be a successful producer, you have to be more than just a leader. You need to do more than just influence those around. Be able to put yourself aside and genuinely care for all of those you’re working with. Your very being must inspire excitement and enthusiasm for the work at hand. If you can’t do that, don’t be a producer.
Make your movie for less – If your budget is $200,000, cut it down to $180,000 and get ready to work your butt off. – You’re better off than the people trying to sell their films today. It’ll take you about two years before your feature is done. By then the market will have picked up again – hopefully.
Be unique in your movie – Don’t be a Slumdog Millionaire, Paranormal Activity, or Blair Witch. Be your own thing that the market wants to enjoy. Be the one to be copycatted.
If you have a niche audience, truly consider developing your own distribution channels and systems.
One of the guest speakers – a sales agent – used an interesting analogy when talking about taking on the entertainment industry.
It’s like an Olympic race.
Are you getting up early every morning to run around the block while others sleep? Are you training yourself to be the best in your neighborhood, town, city, state and region?
Are you working to be the best in your country? Are you working hard to represent your people?
If in the end you make it into the Olympics will you really win the gold medal? That Oscar?
That is the reality of the business
Not everyone wins the Oscar, but many people have careers. Some just race. Others become trainers and mentors, but very few get the gold.
Out of 100 ideas there are 100 scripts. Out of 100 scripts only 10 movies get made, but there is usually one success.
My thoughts to all this: Dream bigger dreams, work smart and leave the results 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.
Of course it’s not the ONLY reason I’m going, but it’s certainly ONE.
One of the strategic objectives I’ve set for this last quarter – expect a post on quarter 4 goals soon - is to totally systematize the production of video and content for social media and offline marketing within the active AlMaghrib community.
My hopes are to seek out about five people from Qabeelat Nurayn who are dedicated to learning not only the craft of producing video, but also the vision of what AlMaghrib has to offer to the world.
The idea is to train the individuals in the processes of producing specific types of content and the processes of distributing them out there for maximum impact. – Think of it as the beginnings of a decentralized studio system inshaAllah.
First step is to get the right people on the bus. – If you feel you’re a super star and want to be on the team, hit me up at Ilm Fest. I’ll be actively checking my twitter >> @khanb1
I’m probabaly sitting on a plane at this point in time waiting for it to take off so I can be on my way to Houston, TX for this years Ilm Summit 2009.
First of all -
I’ll be doing daily video blogging from Ilm Summit. Basically everyday put out a short video featureing some of our very own AlMaghrib instructors, faculty, students, and more. More Smack Talk. More Fun. More Class. More Character. More Gems. More Inspiration over all that hopefully will make you go “WOW!”
If you want to keep yourself updated on the daily videos I suggest you seek out the following social media outlets and subscribe to the ones that work best for you:
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.
