Can film makers use principles known from open source software to produce their works and make a living while doing so? That’s the question Tim Baumann set out to explore when he began producing his first feature film Valkaamaa in October of 2006. Baumann published version 1.0 of the movie online this week, where users can now download it for free, ready to watch and remix.

For Baumann, this three-year process wasn’t just about making a movie. He also used Valkaamaa as a testbed for his dissertation in computer science that dealt with ways that filmmakers can utilize open source strategies. So what’s his final take after more than three years of open source film making? Bauman seemed skeptical: “It looks like hardly anyone is going to be able to live off of this, much less build a valuable business.”

Valkaama is based on a forthcoming book by German author Hendrik Behnisch, and it chronicles a quest for a mythical place in northern Finland. The total production budget of the movie was 2000 Euros (about $2800), and Baumann is the first one to admit that we’re not talking a first-class production here. It would be unlikely that anyone would want to add the movie as a DVD to a magazine “due to its production quality,” he wrote in his dissertation.

Limited means made it even more important for Baumann to use open source principles to get Valkaama done. He uploaded a first raw cut of the movie to a FTP server in 2008, and volunteers have been helping with writing and recording the score as well as various post-production issues ever since. This was made possible by using liberal Creative Commons licenses which ensured that people didn’t have to ask for permission first before, say, producing a trailer. All in all, close to 50 people were involved in the production of Valkaama, Baumann told me.

His dissertation analyzed various ways traditional open source vendors are making money, despite giving away their products for free, and contrasted them with the way the traditional movie business makes money. The biggest difference: Windowing doesn’t really work in the world of open source, because the availability of the material is an essential part of its openness. Baumann also analyzed a number of other open film projects ranging from Star Wreck to Elephant’s Dream. His conclusion: Open source film making is possible, and there are some opportunities to make money.

However, making this work in real life seems to be much harder than on paper. Baumann concluded early on that many open source business models really didn’t make any sense for Valkaama. Crowd sourcing is tough, for example, if you just start out and don’t have a crowd yet. Merchandizing and brand licensing also don’t seem to be an option for a one-off production, and donations have so far only brought in a couple of bucks.

Baumann isn’t ready to give up on open film making completely, but he cautioned that it could be hard to finance more cost-intensive productions this way. Still, there might be an opportunity in this process when costs are not really an issue. Baumann wrote in his masters thesis that it open source could be an interesting opportunity for new companies looking for a loss leader to make a name for themselves. Using unorthodox production and distribution mechanisms definitely helps to get people talking — even if it’s just about the fact that this won’t make you rich.

This is an animated short film called Big Buck Bunny created by the Blender Foundation with the free 3D animation software called Blender (see Wikipedia). It is similar in style and plot to Pixar’s short films and full length movies.

Big Buck Bunny tells the story of a giant rabbit with a heart bigger than himself. When one sunny day three rodents rudely harass him, something snaps… and the rabbit ain’t no bunny anymore! In the typical cartoon tradition he prepares the nasty rodents a comical revenge.

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license

www.bigbuckbunny.org

This is an animated short film called Big Buck Bunny created by the Blender Foundation with the free 3D animation software called Blender (see Wikipedia). It is similar in style and plot to Pixar’s short films and full length movies.

Big Buck Bunny tells the story of a giant rabbit with a heart bigger than himself. When one sunny day three rodents rudely harass him, something snaps… and the rabbit ain’t no bunny anymore! In the typical cartoon tradition he prepares the nasty rodents a comical revenge.

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license

www.bigbuckbunny.org

Pikk Jaan selleks aastaks selja taga ja käimas jälle taastumisprotsess, mis kohekohe nädalavahetusega taas meeldivalt untsu keerdub.

Üks parimaid abivahendeid peoväsimuse silmist saamiseks on teadagi nunnud multikad.

Üks selline on siinsamas.

“Big Buck Bunny” on Blender Foundationi lühifilm, mis jutustab sõbralikust hiidjänesest, kes kolme kurja ja kiusliku närilise peale pisut pahaseks saab. Ja nagu vahel juhtub, peab ära vaatama ka lõputiitrid, et nende taha peidetud päris lõpp nägemata ei jääks.

Today, the team that will work on the Durian open movie projet of the Blender Foundation was officially presented on the Durian Blog.

Namely these are the people who where selected from the 150 submissions (or who where already asked before to join the team).

• Angela Guenette (modeling, rigging, animation)
• Ben Dansie (3D generalist)
• Nathan Vegdahl (rigging, animation)
• Lee Salvemini (animation)
• Soenke Maeter (shading, light, compositing)
• Colin Levy (director, 3D generalist)
• David Revoy (concept art)
• Brecht van Lommel (technical support)
• Campbell Barton (technical support)

So congratulation to these people to be selected and to the Foundation for having these people working on the film and Blender.

By the way: They also found a main sponsor, DivX, making it possible to create a high quality rendering of the film (4k).

Now get 2.5 ready, I want to see them working

Como es bien sabido, herramientas tales como 3D Studio o Maya proporcionan un potente software de creación de modelos en 3D, pero por un alto precio (el 3D Studio por ejemplo, ronda los 3000 €). Sin embargo, existe una alternativa gratuita y de código libre a estos programas, la cual ofrece herramientas para la creación de modelos 3D de calidad profesional, animaciones e incluso videojuegos tridimensionales. Esta alternativa es Blender.

El origen de esta aplicación se remonta a 1995, cuando Ton Roosendaal, cofundador del estudio de animación Holandés NeoGeo (el cual no tiene nada que ver con las famosas recreativas), decide que la herramienta 3D utilizada en su estudio está demasiado desfasada como para seguir actualizándola y comienza a elaborar una nueva herramienta, que sería la que ahora conocemos como Blender.

En aquel momento esta herramienta era para uso exclusivo de su compañía, sin embargo, decidido a promover el uso de su nueva herramienta, funda Not a Number, compañía destinada a ofrecer al público general una herramienta de modelado y animación 3D de nivel profesional gratuitamente, con la idea de hacer negocio mediante la venta de servicios y productos relacionados con Blender.

Gracias al gran éxito obtenido por Blender en su conferencia del Siggraph, esta nueva compañía recibe la financiación de varios inversores y comienza a expandirse rápidamente, consiguiendo un gran número de usuarios para su herramienta y sacando nuevas actualizaciones. Sin embargo, el exceso de ambición y varios fracasos comerciales llevaron a los inversores a retirar los fondos de la empresa y detener todo el proyecto Blender, aun en desarrollo.

Aunque el proyecto ya parecía muerto, Roosendaal se negó a dejar que Blender desapareciera y dar la espalda a sus usuarios, por lo que en 2002 funda Blender Foundation, con la esperanza de salvar el proyecto Blender. Tras discutirlo con los inversores, se consigue llegar a un acuerdo: Si logran reunir 100000 €, el código de Blender pasaría a ser libre. Así, en solo 7 semanas, gracias al apoyo de la amplia comunidad de la que disponía, lograron reunir la cifra y Blender pasó a ser lo que tenemos hoy en día, un software gratuito de código libre, permitiendo la mejora y desarrollo de la herramienta por parte de voluntarios de todo el mundo.

Aunque la interfaz gráfica de usuario de este software es famosa por ser poco intuitiva y romper con otros programas similares, ha demostrado que una vez se controla, se pueden obtener resultados que nada tienen que envidiar a los de otros programas de pago. Ejemplos de ello son el cortometraje Big Buck Bunny, con un gran parecido a las películas de Pixar, o el reciente proyecto Yo Frankie!, videojuego en 3D con cierto parecido a juegos de plataformas tridimensionales como Jak & Daxter.

Hay que recordar que Blender es un proyecto activo en la actualidad, y que la Blender Foundation a dia de hoy sigue llevando adelante proyectos y dando soporte a la comunidad, para que entre todos, esta herramienta pueda convertirse en el referente en cuanto a modelados y animaciones en 3D.

Termino con un tráiler de Plumíferos, el primer largometraje que está siendo desarrollado íntegramente con software libre, usando Blender como herramienta principal:

Unai Rabanal

This feature presentation of “Big Buck Bunny” is brought to you by
The Peach Open Movie Project

The “Big Buck Bunny” animated movie is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Which is way cool! You can download the movie for free and buy the DVD at BigBuckBunny.org. It shows how people and small companies are able to show their work without having a huge budget to promote it as the big Hollywood companies do. With new technology and online social communities people can quickly inform and organize others on what interests them. Be it online video sites such as Vimeo and YouTube or social networks sites such as Facebook and MySpace. One can see the upgrades in service and how rapidly the “digital world of mouth” (I just made up that term. hehehe) can spread. Wright a blog post or post a link,.. automatically feed it to your Facebook and all of your 100 plus friends/contacts can see it. If they comment or re-post it then 100+ x 100+ of their friends will see it and so on…

This can be seen in recent events with how online media had a big part the US Presidential election and with the passing of Proposition 8 in California. Where people are able to quickly get information out and organize protests and rallies within a day or even hours. Before it would have taken much longer even when using e-mail because it would have to follow a chain from one person’s address book to another. Now just mention it on a social network and everyone and their friends’ friends can get the message.

I look forward to seeing how new media will be used as tools and effect the future of communication. With main media catching on to podcasting I am afraid they may have missed the mark. Trying to repackage their content into a radio show instead of how the good independent podcasts are able to create loyal audiences with a personal view and relationship.

Being connected to other people around the world is getting so much easier. Which can also be a scary thing when it comes to privacy issues. I don’t think I’ll be on the Twitter band wagon anytime soon. From what I hear it’s fun, but I’m not that fond of stalkers and too much impulse blogging. And don’t get me started on how mobile things are. I mean you can almost do it all from your cell phone and wireless laptop while sitting sitting in a cafe…

Am I getting off topic? Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the film and learned to ACT UP! / stand-up for yourself and those who can’t. Because sometimes the Big Buck Bunnies doesn’t know how strong they really are. Check out the even cooler behind the scenes stuff in “Big Buck Bunny Making of ” below

(c) copyright Blender Foundation | www.bigbuckbunny.org

Ein Animationsmeisterwerk! Ich liebe diesen großen dicken Hasen und ich bin mir sicher ihr werdet es auch tun.

“Big Buck Bunny” ist das Nachfolgeprojekt zum Open Movie Animationsfilm “Elephants Dream” von den Jungs der Blender Foundation. Genauso wie “Elephants Dream” ist auch “Big Buck Bunny” mir der Creative Commons Lizenz versehen, die es erlaubt, den Film weiter zu verbreiten ohne eine Urheberrechtsverletzung zu riskieren. Sogar eine kommerzielle Verbreitung ist damit gestattet, zumindest bei der Art von Creative Commons Lizenz, die die Blender Foundation für “Big Buck Bunny” benutzt. Wer mehr über dieses Thema wissen will, wird hier schlauer: http://creativecommons.org/

An dieser Stelle kann man der Talentschmiede nur danken, der Animationsfilm ist äußerst gelungen und es ist eine wunderbare Sache, wenn dieser Film weiter verbreitet wird! Let´s go!

Eine kleine Randnotiz: Leider liefert YouTube noch keine HD-Qualität und obwohl der Film unter www.bigbuckbunny.org (ein weiterer Internettipp) downloadbar ist, kann man auf WordPress wiederum nicht jede Dateiart einbinden. Es wäre toll, wenn hier jemand einen Tipp für mich hätte. Denn den großen Hasen in HD-Qualität zu schauen, sorgt für doppelten Genuss. Aber jetzt genug der Lobhudelei, seht selbst. Have Fun!

“¿Por qué esta película no puede hacerse en Colombia?… No hay ninguna razón”. (Jon “Maddog” Hall).

De esta manera, después de mostrar este cortometraje animado, Jon “Maddog” Hall, presidente y director ejecutivo de Linux International, dio inicio a la conferencia que dictó en la Campus Party Colombia, sobre cómo hacer dinero, prestar un servicio y al mismo tiempo, mantener el software y los contenidos completamente libres y abiertos.

Big Buck Bunny es una presentación del Peach Open Movie Team, con el apoyo de la Blender Foundation y el Digital Pionners Fund. La animación fue hecha con Blender, un software libre de modelado tridimensional y todos los contenidos están bajo Licencia Creative Commons Atributtion 3.0. La realización del corto es impecable y su calidad refleja un trabajo arduo y dedicado de sus realizadores. El corto fue dirigido por Sacha Goedegebure, la dirección de arte fue de Andreas Goralczyk y el desarrollo del software por Brecht van Lommel. Elephants Dream es la primera producción de la Blender Foundation, también realizada enteramente con software libre y con atribución Creative Commons.

Realmente estoy convencido que es posible producir contenidos de calidad, rentables y sostenibles sin restringir la distribución, apropiación y modificación cultural, a través de los derechos de autor tradicionales. Es posible mantener el conocimiento enteramente abierto. El cambio está empezando y se debe luchar por él. ¡La cultura es para compartirla. C-Libre! Por algo mi laptop ha empazo a correr también bajo Ubuntu 8.04. La cosa va en serio.

Junto a “Maddog” en Campus Party.

Mi laptop con las “calcos” de LibreCultural.org, Creative Commons, Ubuntu y Linux Inside.

Abadía Vernaza

The Blender Foundation is proud to host the 7th annual Blender Conference in Amsterdam this fall.

Expect this to be an exciting and memorable conference again… with so many Blender projects that have been realized, or still are being realized… or think about what is going to be announced!

There is a call for participation, which will end on September 1, 2008 (those who will be presenting will know by the following week).  Registration for the conference will start at the end of the month, and submissions for the Suzanne Animation Festival starts in August.

And, of course, parallel sessions are being organized in other countries as well (hopefully there’s one near me ).

Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.

Big Buck Bunny conta a história de um coelho gigante com um coração maior do que ele próprio. Quando num dia ensolarado três roedores aprontam com ele e… Ele resolve não ser assim tão bonzinho! No típico cartoon que ele prepara uma desagradável e cômica vingança.

Big Buck Bunny tells the story of a giant rabbit with a heart bigger than himself. When one sunny day three rodents rudely harass him, something snaps… and the rabbit ain’t no bunny anymore! In the typical cartoon tradition he prepares the nasty rodents a comical revenge.

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license

bigbuckbunny.org

El Instituto Blender llevaba trabajando en este proyecto desde Octubre del 2007 y por fin ha salido a la luz Big Buck Bunny, segundo corto de animación, tras el éxito de “Elephants Dream”, creado con Blender (programa multiplataforma, dedicado especialmente al modelado y creación de gráficos tridimensionales) como parte de su serie de proyectos “open movie”.

Big Bunny Buck cuenta la historia de un conejo gigante con un corazón más grande que él mismo. Pero un día soleado tres roedores malísimos le atacan y algo ocurre. El dulce conejito decide vengarse de una forma muy poco usual en la tradición de los dibujos animados…

“Big Buck Bunny” ha sido publicada en 35mm, DVD y Blu-ray. Echad un vistazo a este excelente corto (que por suerte para nuestros ojos podemos ver en Vimeo…) y para más información sobre el proyecto visitad BigBuckBunny.org.

The people who saw Elephants Dream know what Open Source Movies are.

If you don’t know… It’s about producing films using open source/free software tools (like blender) and releasing the films in such a license that everybody can watch it without having to pay.

Now a new 9 minute movie is being finished by the Blender Foundation. It is called Big Buck Bunny.
You can either watch it here over youtube or download a higher quality version on their website.

The film is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.
This means:

Source: Netzpolitik.org

Os open movies, também conhecidos como filmes open-source, são filmes produzidos a partir de ferramentas abertas (de código livre) e que possuem todo o seu material produzido disponibilizado de forma aberta, ou seja, gratuita. Nestes tipos de filmes, todo o material produzido, como trechos dos filmes, modelos, texturas e animações podem ser copiados, para que a partir daí sejam criados novos filmes ou montagens de forma gratuita, desde que sejam dados os devidos créditos aos desenvolvedores do material original.

O primeiro open movie lançado foi o curta-metragem denominado “Elephants Dream” (2005 / 2006), cujo codinome era “Orange”. Seu objetivo principal era apresentar um desenvolvimento técnico e divulgação do potencial do Blender (software open-source para modelagem, animação, pós-produção e desenvolvimento de games com engine própria). Seu roteiro, apesar de não ser complexo, apresentava uma história sombria.

Mais informações sobre esse filme podem ser encontrados na Wikipedia.

Após o sucesso de repercussão desse filme, a Blender Foundation inaugurou o Instituto Blender – um setor dedicado a cuidar de projetos relacionados a open movies e games educativos open-sources produzidos a partir de sua game engine.

Com o nascimento do Instituto Blender, foi anunciada também a produção do 2º open movie, denominado como “Peach Open Movie” – codinome “Peach”.

Trazendo um tema mais engraçado e denominado “Furry and Funny” (peludo e engraçado), esse novo curta promete um aspecto semelhante aos das grandes produções da Dreamworks ou Pixar.