SaqibSaab

My First Attempt At A Documentary

In 2007, there was an organized street cleaning and Da’wah event from the brothers and sisters of Islamic Oasis in Chicago, IL. A bunch of Qabeelat Wasat students went to go help out, and Wasat Studios was there to make a mini documentary out of it.

This was actually my first attempt at a documentary. It seemed simple enough, and in post-production, turned out to be simple, indeed. Film some all of the action (B-Roll Footage), and at the end of the event ask a bunch of people to comment on what happened, to use as means of interview in the documentary (A-Roll Footage). Put it all together and voila: instant documentary! Just add water.

I was even able to slightly do a Three Act Structure based on our experiences while volunteering. Stage one, setup of the street cleaning and the Da’wah that was done. Stage two, confrontation from the Christian groups out of church on Sunday. Stage three, resolution as to how we dealt with it and how the event went altogether.

I had two minor issues in all of this. Read more »

YouTube HD Now Even Bigger & How To Upload In HD on YouTube

More YouTube in HD stuff.

YouTube HD Now Even Bigger

First when YouTube “went widescreen,” meaning, when it changed it’s traditional 425×320 pixel viewing size to 640×360, it made the videos a bit bigger looking. Now they’ve taken things a step further. For videos uploaded in HD, 720p to be exact, they now view in a much bigger size, 854×480. That’s huge! See here for yourself.

Besides the minor formatting weirdness of the profile sidebar now being beneath the video, I find the size change Read more »

YouTube Now in Widescreen with 720p Support!

YouTube is finally getting more widescreen friendly, and thus, more HD friendly.

About a year ago, they added 16:9 support, meaning if your video was widescreen, it would automatically add black bars into its then native 4:3 standard screen. Now they’ve made YouTube videos play in a native, wider 16:9 frame altogether.

Also, the new resolution is wider.  It used to be 425×320, and now it’s at 640×360, which YouTube says is supposed to reflect the higher quality videos that have now surfaced.

This is great, as it was long overdue. Many of the other providers, like Google Video, Vimeo (which has HD support, btw), and blip.tv were all in native 16:9 and YouTube was still stuck in 4:3. I think it’s because YouTube had such a huge amount of old school users that “broadcasted” themselves in 4:3 that the transition to widescreen had to be a bit gradual.

It gets better, though. To top it off, Belal gave me the heads up that YouTube now supports 720p! For those of you wondering what 720p is Read more »

Behind The Scenes – Filming The AlMaghrib Ramadan 1429 Shoutout

I work with Wasat Studios, who from time to time records Islamic lectues and other interesting little videos. At the 2008 45th Annual ISNA Convention, we filmed a tiny short Ramadan Shoutout for AlMaghrib Institute. The video was supposed to be a short reminder sent out to all the students of AlMaghrib to give them a little bit of encouragement for the month of Ramadan.

How it all happened

At ISNA this past year, three AlMaghrib instructors were there invited to speak: Yasir Qadhi, Yaser Birjas, and the latest addition to their line up, Imam Suhaib Webb. With all three of these guys there, we decided, “hey, why not get them together and film a lil’ somethin somethin. Nothing long or formal, but like an informal little fun video.”

So we asked the two Yasirs after Maghrib salah on Saturday if they’d be down to shoot something after midnight when Imam Suhaib finishses a late night MYNA session, and they said they’ll see how things go. In all honesty, I personally didn’t think it was going to happen. They looked really tired, and trying to get Imam Suhaib to do something after his own midnight session, things were looking grim.

Read more »