I’m leaving for Houston, TX tomorrow on a project. It’ll be nice to experience some “Hosnatality”

Below is a list of topics I’ll be blogging about in the near future. I also want to use this opportunity to ask YOU what topics YOU want ME to blog about here. Post it in the comments and lay it out!

Topics to keep your eyes out for in the future:

• Follow up post w/ video on my use experience with the Canon FS100
• What makes for awesome cheap lighting

Topics I’m contemplating blogging about:

• My research and study on “music”
• Negotiating your “worth” when getting contracts for video work
• Production ethics

So go ahead and let me know what you think I should blog about in the future.

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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!

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These past couple months I’ve been looking into means of upping the production value of videos I’ve been producing while decreasing cost in terms of time and money. After attending a couple seminar lectures and reading a few more books on the subject I realized that if I’m to up my game I’m going to have to learn Adobe After Effects or find some people who know the tool.

I did find some people who know the program but the factor of financial resources to compensate for time became an issue. Finally when boredom on current skills set in I took the jump. If you saw the post about iwannagetmarried.com video, The effects were done mainly in Adobe After Effecfs. I was quite suprized at the results it gave.

There were two main skills that I’ve leared with the last project:

• Text effects
• Converting a still image into 3D

With those two elements alone there is so much that one can do in terms of the creative potential.

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Earlier this week I had released a teaser video which you may have seen over at facebook. Last night I delivered the final video to the folks behind The Marriage Revolution.

The text and graphics were done in Adobe After Effects and the Video with Shaykh Yaser in it was shot with my Canon FS100. Enjoy!

Below is the story on the development of the video…from idea to delivery

Development

A couple weeks ago I got a call from a friend wanting to see if I’d be interested in making a video for a project that he and Shaykh Yaser had in mind. Personally I’m always interested and open to new challenges. Much detail wasn’t given to me except that there would be a video needing to be made for a marriage project that’s in the works.

About a week goes by…

Friday, July 18; a friend and I go watch The Dark Knight after which we drove over to NYC for Shaykh Yaser’s Code of Scholars AlMaghrib seminar. I personally wasn’t attending the seminar, but I figured it would be a good opportunity to meet with Shaykh Yaser.

I met with him after the Friday sessions were complete and he basically laid out what he had in his mind. I got a call from another friend who I later learn is also part of the team that is behind this project. We scheduled a date early next week to meet and figure out exactly what they’re gonna do.

Saturday, July 26; I’m volunteering at the Evening of Inspiration event sponsored by Islamic Relief. I was basically “Artist Care” for Ali from Ummah Films. Ali blogged about his experience. Toward the end of the day I get a call from Sharif (one of the guys behind the project) telling me that he’s emailed me a script and wants to know if I can request Ali to be on screen for the promotion of this project.

Later that night I let Ali in on what’s going on and he agrees, but only to have the recording of his video be cut short because I ran out of battery and I didn’t bring the plug for my Canon FS100, therefore that recording didn’t happen.

Wednesday, July 23; Shaykh Yaser, Sharif and I met up in Long Island and from 9:30am to 11:30am, sat down and wrote out the script for the entire project…

Production

…Once we had all out material put together on paper, we decided to shoot it, only to realize that I forgot to bring my microphone. We decided that we’ll meet the next Friday before Jummah prayer and knock off the recording.

Sharif and I headed over the Pinata, a Mexican grill and had one of the best burritoes I’ve ever had!

Friday, July 25; I met up with Shaykh Yaser in midtown manhattan (51st and 7th) at the Sheraton where he was staying. We took a walk down to a quiet(er) place and met up with Sharif only to be requested to leave by security due to the fact that we didn’t have permission to record video the permisis. The security guard was kind enough to direct us to a public area where we could continue with our work

We setup the camera and mic and did our recording.

Editing & Delivery

Saturday, July 26; Considering this project was on a very tight schedule (they wanted to launch the project Sunday night) I decided that I was going to take a different approach to the visuals. I spent most of the evening gathering my materials for editing like graphics, audio, sound effects, and the audio/video recordings I did.

Sunday, July 27; I decided to have a backup delivery plan incase I couldn’t finish in time.

I loaded up Adobe After Effects and started searching for some tutorials. I came upon VideoCopilot.net and with neat tutorials on text effects and other stuff. I layed out the introduction of the video with some cool spark effects and delivered that as a “teaser” to show people until I got the full video done. I emaild Sharif the video with the text at around 5:00pm and loaded that on Shaykh Yaser’s facebook page.

I got back to editing. One portion of the video I decided I would out up the screen with a few thousand silhouttes of people as part of the visuals. I loaded up Bryce, and created the objects I needed. I took me about 20 mins to setup the key frames for the animation and begin rendering, after which I hit the bed.

Monday, July 28; In the morning I wake up to find that the rendering process for 1000+ objects on screen takes 20+ hrs. Nothing I can do to speed that up, so I let the system render while I worked on other projects.

Tuesday, July 29; I spent most of my day getting the visuals done. I must say that After Effects gave me quite a headache in the render process. Numerous times my keyframes weren’t cooperating. That’s perhaps I’m new to the program.

Wedneday, July 30; Finally editing was done…only to find that encoding to MOV with the H.264 codec was going to take about 3 hrs. I figured I’ll blog about my experience in the mean time

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Many of you may have heard of or seen the media coverage surrounding Imam Siraj Wahhaj and the recent ad campaign that is yet to launch in Ramadan from 1 877 Why Islam. A lot of negative news coverage has been going around about it and how “terrorists” are behind the campaign. This is just the type of ignorance the campaign is going to eliminate inshaAllah.

For more info on the “You Deserve to Know” NYC Subway ad campaign watch the video below.

Comment and stumble if you like it.

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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.

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A couple weeks ago I made a post about the Canon FS100 and HF100, one of which I reviewed. Read about it here:

• Canon FS100 Review and Process

After going back and forth I was undecided on which camera to purchase. Here’s what I had going for each camera when compared head to head:

–

Canon FS100 Pros:

• Cheap! Close to $300
• I could add extra accessories like the Steadicam Merlin and Lavaliere Microphone for the extra cash
• Easy editing

Canon FS100 Cons:

• No manual audio gain control
• No HD (not really a con at this point in time)
• No lens attachment feature (I fixed this with a lens adapter)
  

–

Canon HF100 Pros:

• Has HD (but wont be using it really)
• Had manual audio gain control
• Can add lens to it without and fiddling

Canon HF100 Cons:

• $600+ causing me to go out of budget with other accessories

–

So what did I purchase?

–

Canon FS100

–

Transcend 8GB & 16GB SDHC Flash Cards

–

Lens adapter with 52mm to 37mm step down ring

–

Audio Technica ATR-35S Lavaliere Mic

–

Tiffen Steadicam Merlin Camera Stabilizer

–

I’ll be posting about my experiences with this camera and how well the steadicam merlin performs after this weekend. I’m also planning on doing a head to head comparison of the Merlin with the $14 steadycam I built and tested here: http://www.leechon.com/14-steadycam-9.htm

If you have any questions of comments to share go ahead post them before the end of the weekend.

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The following video is a song that brothers from the group called “Travelers” did at the entertainment session at ICNA2008. The song they did was titled “Every Night and Every Day” by Metus Curtis, but they instead of using instruments had very well done beatboxing.

enjoy

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• ICNA Day 01
• ICNA Day 02
• ICNA Day 03

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Shirien explain more about the background of the development of this PSA on her blog post titled, “Why do you wear that rag on your head?”

When one of my good friends Ahmed read the formatted PSAs, and decided to make the videos. He went out filmed and editing the videos and the following was the result!

This PSA is only the first of three. There are two more to come (which haven’t been produced yet) so stay tuned

Also, I want to say a HUGE jazakallahu khairun for all people on and off screen to make this PSA happen. After the taufeeq of Allah-swt YOU made it happen. May this be on your scale of good deeds on the day of judgment. Ameen.

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