Reading time: < 1 minute

Reading time: < 1 minute

In the process of trying to get the whole Abdullah idea together, my wife and I realized that we need to come up with a theme song. Something that's catchy, memorable, makes people feel good and when they hear it they'll snap their fingers and say, "That's Ghetto Abdullah!"

Our first trial run of the song recording with Abdullah was a bit harder than we thought.

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes

My wife has been wanting to do a kids show for a while. I naturally took the business approach and started doing reserach, industry analysis and looking up case studies to develop this into a potential profit project for the Muslim market.

Out of sheer fun she took the initiative to start doing some sketches of potential characters. I decided I’d join in on the fun. We came up with the following.

Yesterday she decided to go out purchase some supplies to make a puppet. Keep in mind, we had never made a puppet and just wanted to play around with the idea. Turns out my wife really liked the middle sketch – mine is the crazy chibi on the left.

After we got all the supplies from the store, I took a much need nap and few hrs later woke up to this:

Update & Notice:

Just a reminder – comments, advice and feedback are welcome and appreciated, however this isn’t a forum for fiqh discussion. If certain Islamic issues and principles come up and you feel strongly about it, its best to discuss it in a respectful manner in the appropriate setting (ie AlMaghrib Forums).

Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes

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

Parked on Mulhollard Drive

Santa Monica Beach

Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes

I want to see YOU at Ilm Fest 2009 This Weekend

You may or may not heard about the buzz about Ilm Fest 2009.

Whether it be that Baba Ali is going to be there, or the topics being covered are very contemporary, or you’ll have the opportunity to meet a lot of the AlMaghrib instructors, or the fact that you’ll be chilling with some cool cats like Haytham, Ammar, Amir, Adib and for the sisters Egyptian Gumbo – just know that now you’ll have one more reason to be at Ilm Fest:

I’m hunting for talent.

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