In August 06, Br Atiq over at Eman Rush gave me a call requesting a video to be made to promote Eman Rush and its new release at ISNA. I told them my price: A copy of each new release from Eman Rush, and credit towards the next AlMaghrib seminar. They agreed.

I didn’t want to face the obstacle of becoming unmotivated like I did with the Fiqh of Love trailer, so this time I decided to get a little more creative. I broke out my dysfunctional Sony D8 camera and started filming, but it wasn’t long until I became frustrated. So I decided to release my frustration:

After I got that out of me…I was able to think clearly.

I figured I’ll use a technique that I learned from watching a couple “The making of” documentaries. One thing that was consistent with many films is the type of lighting. They always started off with plenty of lighting, and in the post production they adjusted it. Its difficult to make a dark picture bright, but its very easy to take a bright picture and make it dark.

I ended up with this:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4708383569419950503

Alhumdulillah, I think this was my best one yet

When making the presentation DVD for Eman Rush, I felt something was missing…uniformity in the introduction to each AlMaghrib trailer that I had access to. I decided to resume a project I had started some months back. I was in the process of doing a 3D animation for AlMaghrib. I went ahead and completed the rendering of the 3D and attached it to the beginning of every AlMaghrib trailer that I had made previously and put it on DVD.

The following is the intro 3D animation:

Feel free to comment

Having enjoyed making the Islam Invulnerable video, In November 05 I decided to make more. This time I had an alternate goal in mind:

1. Make a cool trailer for the Conquest seminar
2. Motivate people to get in on making trailers for future seminars

After I made this trailer excitement grew withing the AlMaghrib community. Shorty after this video (Dec 05) Sensei requested that I make a one minute trailer that would be displayed at the RIS conference. The challenge was to make something visually appealing for a crowd of 15,000 that would keep the name “AlMaghrib” stuck in their minds. The following was the result:

I think it did its job. The reaction and feedback was quite positive and it got people curious enough to come to the AlMaghrib and Eman Rush booth. After this trailer went online people got motivated to start making trailers for other seminars. Goal achieved!

January 2006, I decided to make one more trailer. Fiqh of Love! After having completed about 80% of the trailer. I was presented with an obstacle. Lack of motivation. I didn’t find it a challenge any more, and it seemed redundant. In the end I completed the video at the request of Mostafa.

——–

Lesson: To grow you need challenges. You need a standard. If you reach it, set a new one. If you don’t then you will lose the drive and motivation to move forward. Set a target and aim above it!