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

Geek Pride! — Some of you may know that I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to technology and when something interesting in the practical sense comes along I get totally excited!

My man Basil (http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/) recently made a post on his blog about “hack” he applied to his Canon Powershot A550 digital camera that enhances the camera’s abilities…kind of like how a Power Ranger morphs into his power suit (told you I’m a geek) and gives the camera abilities that are beyond your normal digital camera abilities.

The “hack” give the digital camera features like HDR, timelapse, and other things. My friend Usman (whoisusman.com) a little while back did the same thing. You can see the results of this “hack” below.

Usman’s Pictures: http://www.whoisusman.com/wp/category/pictures/photoblog/

(this is one of the pictures that Usman took)

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What excites me isn’t the technology and geek factor, rather the practical aspect of this. Cameras are getting smaller and smaller these days. How much easier is it getting to shoot a movie on devices so small. Heck…Spike Lee’s been contracted by Nokia to make a movie using Nokia cell phones.

Basil shot some time lapse footage using his Canon Powershot A550. You are going to need VLC Video Player (download it here: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) to view it.

Basil’s Timelapse Footage: http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/05/16/time-lapse-photography-with-chdk/

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If you watch the footage, you will see that they are amazing mashaAllah. I didn’t realize that digicam video resolution has become so high. I wonder what the max resolution for making a timelapse video is (Basil and Usman, I’d like to see some stuff from you guys).

What I’m thinking is get one of these lens attachment adapters for the Powershot and attach a wide angle lens along with a polorizing filter and have it take some awesome shots.

What would be really cool is to rig the camera on top of a motion control unit and end up with some time lapse footage like what photographer Ollie Larkin does.

Below is a video titled “Lapses in Light” by Ollie Larkin.

I highly recommend you see the high quality version on his webiste.