ThreeWire Productions

Update (of some sort)

2007-05-03T21:20:00.000+01:00

Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem

It's been a while since my last post, nope we haven't given up yet, alhamdulillah. Just been very busy with exams and uni stuff which is driving myself and Baba up to California soon inshaAllah.

We haven't really mentioned anything about the real essence of what we're planning to do yet, but soon inshaAllah things will become more clear.

So as they say, watch this space!

My Neighbour

2007-04-02T18:11:00.000+01:00

Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem

SubhanAllah my memory was triggered yesterday - I have a filmmaker/graphic designer/editor as a neighbour!

Things, alhamdulillah, seem to get better. So I went and had an informal meeting about our project with my neighbour. We spoke about cameras, mics and sound, editing, Macs, PCs, software and some other stuff.

The message I got was clear: a Mac was key. Yes we have to start somewhere we agreed, but we also have to make a decision - do we want to do youtube/home movie stuff indefinitely or gradually move on to professional documentary standard for broadcast. Definitely the latter inshaAllah. Of course people differ on the issue of the Mac and PC and their respective capabilities, but coming from the mouth of a professional, the Mac was priority. I was reminded that the PC is a false economy - yeah we'll save money in the short term but, as we'll probably need to switch to a Mac at a later stage, we'll need to buy software all over again.

So that brings the Mac back onto the agenda. Looks like we gotta go look harder in our piggy banks.

Feedback from the Filmmaking Event

2007-03-31T23:49:00.000+01:00

Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem

I went to the one-day filmmaking event and, alhamdulillah, there was space so they let me in.

The speakers were good. They spoke about the specifics of sound recording and its importance. They mentioned that people tend to notice sound only if its badly done or if there isn't any. So the message was: "good sound is unnoticeable sound."

They went on to talk about auteur theory. I can attempt to explain what this means but Wikipedia does a better job: "auteur theory holds that a director's films reflect that director's personal creative vision, as if he or she were the primary "auteur" (the French word for 'author'). This got a bit boring as the room got heated with debate - not the sort of debate I'm into.

The Q&A was more interesting - I had the chance to ask my questions. I explained to the guy that we were starting off and were thinking about buying a camcorder (I mentioned the XL2 of course - what a great piece of kit that is). He stopped me in my tracks and said that for what we want to do (that is make documentaries), we should get hold of a half-decent handheld camcorder and play with that for the time being. The message was practice different shots and angles, play around, see what you can do - eventually you'll realise when you'll want to move up to a prosumer camcorder. But more importantly, if you are going to spend money on anything, invest in a good mic (the shotgun type he mentioned) - because sound is key to good film.

So that was helpful. There was a networking event after the talks with directors, scriptwriters and sound engineers, but I couldn't stay for that. I made some contacts anyway, so alhamdulillah if I need any more assistance they said they'll be more than happy to help. They also do good courses in different aspects of filmmaking, the downside being these courses cost quite a bit.

So on with the show. Will let you know when we get a mic inshaAllah.

Free Filmmaking Event

2007-03-31T01:44:00.000+01:00

Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem

I was browsing the net and came across a one-day free filmmaking event - you can imagine how excited I was about that. The day is lined up to include presentations from film theorists, freelance sound engineers, as well as tips on advanced scriptwriting.

Although the event was fully booked by the time I stumbled across the website I gave the organisers a call (you never know how far a "call" can go) to see if there was any way I could get in. "We'll try our best to accomodate you" she said, so seeing as the venue is just round the corner from where I live (now how convenient was that alhamdulillah) I'll pop down inshaAllah.

The Pursuit of Thrift

2007-03-30T15:46:00.000+01:00

Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem

I've been looking around and trying to find good reasons to buy a MacBook Pro (elegantly displayed below).

I am reminded by Baba only too often that I actually don't need one. Yes it'll be nice to get one of these - since traditionally most film and creative stuff are done on macs - but we can't have it nice all the time can we. So I have come to realise that what I have - an AMD 3500+, 1GB RAM, 300GB SATA Hard Drive, ATI Radeon X800XL Graphics - will suffice (with upgrades here and there) for editing and anything else I need to do.

The key is use what you have to its limit now, and buy only when you really need something, not just want or desire. You'll always need to buy necessities down the road somewhere which you hadn't thought of earlier, so by saving now, you'll have the funds when you really need it inshaAllah. Simple concept yeh. But not so simple in real life.

So Alhamdulillah, with the golden find of a camcorder in my house and my decent PC, we truly are getting this show on the road inshaAllah. Just the filming to do...and software to buy.

Oh yeh, another plus point, Adobe lets you download free trial versions (30 day) of many of their software (http://www.adobe.com/downloads/) - we'll use this till it expires. Important point here - only download this when you feel you are ready to start editing - or you'll find yourself with an expired piece of software by the time you're ready to edit! I can just imagine the heart-ache that that would cause.

Ready to roll... (well, ready to make a start at least)

2007-03-30T01:22:00.000+01:00

It turned out that Habib had a decent Sony Digital Handycam (DCR-TRV255E) sitting at home unnoticed.

It looks simple, yet it has 20x optical zoom, image stabilisation (albeit of the electronic variety), 350k pixels resolution and, most importantly, DV out (FireWire) so we can plug it into a PC to edit footage.

Although we'll still need to get something like the Canon XM-2 or XL-2 (discussed earlier in this blog) for any serious shooting, the piece of kit you see above - along with an old tripod of mine - enables us to make a start now and test out the various concepts and ideas we have. This way we can make good use of our time whilst we're saving up to buy better kit.

Of course, we'll need something better than the standard Windows Movie Maker to do what we want to do, so what remains now is to get the student edition of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium (around £250) which will give us all the software we need for serious editing.

We'll also need to budget for some hardware upgrades; we need to make sure we have enough RAM as well as a decent graphics card, and we'll also need a dedicated 7200rpm drive for editing (Adobe actually specifies this as a requirement for its software), though these shouldn't cost us much.

So, alhamdulillah, we're getting closer to making this a reality. You should see something on YouTube in the near future inshaAllah.

Spiderman: Imagine us all climbing around!

2007-03-29T16:36:00.000+01:00

Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem

I know this blog is not for posting anything, but if you'll allow me please. I came across this article at uni. I think it's amazing - who knows give it a good few years (ok maybe a bit longer) and we'll all be climbing, how crazy would that be...

"An Imperial postgraduate student with designs on Spiderman’s superpowers has reached the final of a national ‘science-idol’ competition. Nicholas Harrigan, who is studying for a PhD in quantum physics, wowed the judges of this year’s NESTA FameLab competition with a three-minute talk on how spiders cling to walls. NESTA FameLab is an annual competition to find the new voices of science and engineering communication in the UK. Entrants have to deliver an entertaining and informative presentation on a science topic of their choice in front of a Pop Idol-style panel of judges. Nicholas’s talk explained how the thousands of minute hairs on spiders’ legs allow them to stick to vertical surfaces by exploiting the molecular ‘pull’ between the molecules in the hairs, and the molecules in the wall. He explains that in theory we might one day be able to develop technology to allow humans to scale walls in the same way: “It would be really exciting if we could build some gloves, covered in tiny hairs, which would allow a person to climb walls like Spiderman,” he says. “The thing that stops us being able to do it without special gloves is the irregular surfaces of our skin and of walls, which mean not enough of our skin molecules are close enough to the wall molecules at any one time for the molecular pull to be strong enough.” Nicholas joins the winners of heats from across the country in a grand final taking place on Saturday 9 June at the Cheltenham Science Festival." (Taken from www.imperial.ac.uk/reporter - Issue 175)

There's an interesting article here "The Tiny Miracle Behind Spiderman" - http://www.harunyahya.com/articles/32spiderman.php

The ThreeWire Story

2007-03-29T16:29:00.000+01:00

In the Name of Allah, the Most Benificent, the Most Merciful

Assalaamu'alaykum,

Right my first post, ever thought how we managed to come up with the name ThreeWire? Lets look back at how it all started. It was a joint effort all the way from the start. The first name we came up with was "XM-3 Productions". XM-3? I know it sounds crazy but let me give you the reason. We are planning on buying a camcorder and the one we most likely are going to buy is called the Canon XM-2, so we just decided to extend this idea to XM-3 considering there were three of us involved in the project. I know, I know, it sounds really boring, but it's hard trying to think of a name when you trying hard to think of a name, you know what I mean?

Anyway, another title we came up with was "Traveller Productions" and we also considered the arabic word for traveller and came up with "Musaafir Productions". The reason behind this was because all three of us consider ourselves travellers in this world and thought it might be a good name, we thought about it more and decided not to keep it.

We also thought about "GreenLight Productions". The reason behind this was because there is a TV Network online called Current TV and users can give the greenlight for videos they enjoy watching. However we thought that this would be limiting our name to an idea that is used by Current TV.

Are you guys still awake? Told you it was a long story, anyway there were many other names, here is a list of some of them:

1. Milestones Productions
2. Shiny Steel Productions
3. Blackwood Productions
4. Redwood Productions
5. Coolvent Productions

We liked some of the names, however we found out that they had already been taken.

Some time had gone by and I looked at the wires that were connected to the ceiling projector in our lecture theatre and came up with the name "ThreeWire" as there are three of us who are wired into bringing our ideas into production! So there you have it, a short version of how we came up with the name "ThreeWire Productions".

Choosing a camcorder... the road to the XM-2

2007-03-29T02:03:00.000+01:00

It was slow, difficult and agonising, with many compromises made along the way. And that was just choosing a camera.

Now, if we were loaded, we'd have gone for the Canon XL H1 (pictured below), no discussion.

Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of money and, to be honest, we don't need that kind of quality (not yet anyway). So we had to come down a few rungs. Habib, of course, wanted to go for the well-known Canon XL-2...

Now, this is a great camera at a great price. Unfortunately, for at least £2,100 new (and not much less if we get it from the US), the great price is not low enough for our tight student budget.

This led us to Canon's mid-range camera, the XM-2 (pictured below).

This is where the compromises came in. At around £1,300 new the XM-2 is within our range, and maintains many of the XL-2's professional features. I reasoned that we didn't need the XL-2's 800k pixels (broadcast quality) and that the XM-2's 470k pixels (near broadcast quality, but not quite) would do us just fine. Of course, it was difficult convincing Habib of this, but we got there in the end (at least I think we did). What swung it for us were a couple of films we saw on the net filmed with the XM-2 - which were; "Those Bloody Mechanics" (www.aza-n-dee.net/trapped) and the films on the Janssen Herr website (www.janssenherr.com).

Now we need to decide, should we buy new or used? We're looking at around £1,300 new, but could save up to £500 if we get it used. The difference is, of course, getting a full warranty versus getting little or no warranty. Is it worth the risk?

The Team

2007-03-29T00:22:00.000+01:00

Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem

Assalamu’alaikum,

Right, the team. By the grace of Allah we are a team of three. Myself, Mohammed (aka Baba) and Imran. Baba is the technical geek, from the nitty gritty of video cameras (I mean what does Vari-angle Optical Image Stabilization mean? Ask Baba) to controlling our budget (not that we have one yet) he is the man mashaAllah. Imran is the bro who knows how to get things done. Put him on a project and you will see results alhamdulillah. Imran is also a Computer Scientist as well as a Hydrologist! What an eccentric combination, but it works well!

We have been looking for a camera to buy. Now what's the right camera? I'm thinking the Canon XL-2 or even the XL-H1, but I'm fiercely tamed by Baba "we aint got that kinda money".

Will let you know when we get something inshaAllah.

I Think Now's the Time

2007-03-29T00:02:00.000+01:00

Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem

Assalamu’alaikum,

Wow, first post ever. Where shall I begin? Right, as you may have guessed I’m interested in film making and yes, I am a complete beginner, with no experience in filmmaking whatsoever. I’m actually doing a degree in Maths and Management. Filmmaking-maths, filmmaking-maths, no there isn’t a link.

Well, a lot of people consider me to be quite a creative chap who has an eye for professionalism. Well, I won’t disagree about the professionalism bit, but I think you’d need to rethink on the creative part. I’ve always been very keen for professionalism, and I love working with 1) like minded people and 2) Adobe Creative Suite. Like wow. Adobe Creative Suite seems as if it was made for me – that’s what it feels like. Anyway, enough about that.

So Filmmaking? I’ve always been interested in drama – I actually graduated from the National Youth Theatre in 2002 alhamdulillah. But eventually I gave up on that – mainly due to religious reasons (ask me if you want to know more). I remember it was around 5 years ago, way before I started university and before my A-Levels when I started to write my first script. I know a lot of people start writing a script, but soon after get very bored and get put off the whole idea altogether, especially when you can’t see the light at the end of that long tunnel (I’m sure those who’ve done this before know what I’m saying). If you don’t see an end in sight – there is no end in sight – well that’s what many think. As you can probably guess – I put off the idea, and I thought that it was best if I concentrated on my studies, since this writing thing was bleeding me dry of time, patience, and all the rest that comes with it. So relegated into the realms of darkness, it was.

So why now? I’m part of the Imperial College Islamic Society and was one of the organisers of our most recent event, ‘An Evening with Ali’. MashaAllah, Baba Ali is a solid bro, and it was his character that made me want to revive (too strong a word maybe) what I’ve always wanted to do. You gotta go to his site if you haven’t been already (www.ummahfilms.com). Only with sincerity like his does one begin to realise the efforts of hard work. May Allah give us sincerity in all our actions inshaAllah. Ameen.

Another thing that bro Ali mentioned was that it was paramount to get a good set of people working with you, people who would stand by you and continue even in the worst of storms. With something like filmmaking it is very easy to pack it all in and go do something else. So alhamdulillah my initial idea has fleshed into something bigger only with the help of two other solid bros (They are posting on this blog too).

I should stop writing now. I think this post is getting a bit long for a first post – you can see that I’m a novice, inshaAllah with time I’ll get used to this “new environment”.