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Creative Commons Video Challenges Hollywood's Best
Supercharged_Z06 writes "A short film entitled Sintel was released by the Blender Foundation under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (YouTube link). It was created by an international team of artists working collaboratively using a free, open source piece of 3D rendering software called Blender. No Hollywood studio was involved in its making. Pretty remarkable what can be generated these days with open source software and some dedicated, creative talent. If a short film of this quality can be produced without Hollywood right now, imagine what will appear a few more years down the road."
Holy crap!
Is this really that different from Elephants Dream?
Well they replaced over-repeating the name "Emo!" in dialog with over-repeating the name "Scales!" so that it grates in your ears hours later.
But seriously, this one had the best story in the ED/Big Buck Bunny series.,, though it took a little while to get going and I wish the "twist" was a little clearer. Even a line like "My God. How long have I been..." trailing off would have made it more understandable.
That said, I think it was a technical and creative triumph. There's some real talent out there and I look forward to the next one.
Will it Blend?
Is this legal? I thought the MPAA cartel automatically owns the copyright to everything. These pirates should pay some sort of fine for attempting to subvert our capitalist democracy. Maybe send them to gitmo.
And this film is different from the dozens of award winning independent films produced outside of Hollywood every year how? Hollywood has a monopoly on "dedicated, creative talent" these days or something? Thats news to me, most of the stuff they make is crap IMO. Kudos on making it with open source software, double kudos for licensing it under CC but otherwise its nothing special.
Funny, I had to go back to that scene to see the scar you mentioned. I think the GP is right, the story gives no idea of the time scale.
After you realize it, she does look older in the final scenes, though.
You minimize the ways in which it is different with your hard to take seriously "kudos". I can share Blender Foundation movies with everyone I wish. I don't recall being able to share copies of Hollywood movies or most independently made movies without risking litigation. When the Blender Foundation makes their movies they improve Blender and show off its capabilities to inspire others to use the program. Few Hollywood movies have that result for FLOSS. The Blender Foundation raises its money from us, the viewing public, who is inspired to buy their stuff because they treat us so well. There is no such similar inspiration for Hollywood movies or independent features; I'd like to contribute to more documentary filmmakers but movie makers that let me share the work (even verbatim and non-commercially) have set the bar high enough where I can quickly exclude the vast majority from receiving a donation from me. On the other hand, I'll be ready to buy a credit or a gold sponsorship for the next Blender Foundation movie depending only on my personal finances. Blender Foundation has developed a reputation for helping our community in significant ways. These are big efforts in themselves and should be sufficient to answer your question.
Digital Citizen
Have you considered that you might be the problem? Maybe you're a little too dependent on Hollywood spoon-feeding to be able to actually pay attention to something?
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Pretty remarkable what can be generated these days with open source software and some dedicated, creative talent.
Yes, yes... but what can be generated with open source software WITHOUT any dedicated, creative talent? Isn't that the more important question here? Creative people can produce works of genius with no technology to speak of, so who cares about that. ;-P
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I own and operate a movie theatre. I wonder if these folks have considered making a 35mm version of their short for theatres to play before the main features.
It would be a way to gain a lot more exposure and publicity than they will get otherwise.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
The question here is that talent alone cannot create anything without the right tools. Artists shouldn't have to sell their souls to buy their supplies.
Van Gogh had to make his own paint because he was so poor he couldn't afford to buy it. Blender is Van Gogh's paint.
There is need to imagine, because at that link, I only get the information that this video is not available in my country.
Unlike the Sintel video, which is available, and even in HD.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I'm pretty sure many of those details are up there on the site. I know that Blender actually has some built in stuff for video editing, so a lot of the editing may have been done in Blender. Check the site for more details, they tend to be pretty open about what they're using.
Without the scar, there's nothing to differentiate this dragon from any other. If you didn't expect the results by the time the fight paused we get a big hint it's her dragon when he sniffs her. Even then we might not be sure it's her dragon until you see the scar. *shrug* I think they pulled this one off really well. Maybe it wasn't a GREAT tragedy, but it was certainly decent, especially given the time frame. My props to the team. I liked this movie a lot better than Big Buck Bunny or Elephant's Dream - that one would've been a lot better had one of the characters not been named Emo.
They're going to be distributing not just the movie, but everything you need to re-create the movie (or a derivative work). The movie itself is only 14 minutes long, but the full distribution takes 4 DVDs! All under a CC license. Hard to see how you could call this anything but an open source movie!
it so happens that most artists just aren't willing to donate their free time for some illusory cause.
Funny, that's what they used to say about programmers! And, of course, no musician has ever put on, say, a benefit concert for charity. Everyone knows that true artists are motivated entirely by money and nothing else.
Did all the network packets generated during the project really only pass through free software servers and switches? Were the mics based on unpatented designs and built in-house? THESE THINGS MATTER!
Imagine if some packet went through a Windows server. The whole project, tainted. Might as well just rm -rf it.
It's like if you said "I wrote this program all on my own" and then it came out that you didn't do the materials science needed to mine the metals you used to build the electronics that is your computer, and then wrote the OS and the compiler and the editor yourself. Clearly, your program wasn't anything special, I'm not even sure if it could be called 'written by you'.
But what software did they use for the editing the video sequences? What software did they use for the music composition? Did they edit the script in OpenOffice? Did they manage the project using OpenProj?
Blender was used as the non-linear video editor, compositor, color correction tool, and all other 3d and video related aspects. The music was done in various proprietary software. Script don't know, probably openoffice and MS Word (It was worked on by different folks, I think the BI folks probably used Blender but the outside writer likely used MS Word). For project managment they used the OO spreadsheet and notecards, and paper, etc.
What wasn't completely obvious was the time frame. Although they tried to make her look older, one has no way to gauge how much time had passed, she looked like a plastic doll throughout the whole film.
When the big dragon caught the small dragon in flight, it was pretty clear that it was the parent getting the child back.
Perhaps that was the whole idea, but looking at it from her perspective the whole story is stupid. Obviously, she would know exactly how long ago it had been since her dragon had been snatched away from her. Did she think her little dragon wouldn't grow up?
I needed to be spoon fed because the main character was mentally handicapped. I can't sympathize with brain dead characters' problems. In this case the hero was obviously a retarded nut job.
She walked across a desert, jungle, mountain range and grassland. Now I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and say that just those 4 things would take at least 2 months. Fine, fine she "Lost Track of Time" but she must have known that at least 2 months had passed. Hell she must have realized that at least 2 weeks had passed.
If Big Dragon snatches Little Dragon you can assume that Big Dragon is going to eat Little Dragon within a week. The Little Dragon is dead meat probably by the end of the day. Alternately someone who understands the concept of children and adults -- or aging -- would realize that maybe, just maybe Little Dragon looks like a little version of Big Dragon because it's a child.
So at the end of this quest our Hero should either find Baby Dragon with Mommy Dragon or bones. Alive baby dragon being held for snack is not one of the options. So even if the Hero lost track of time, if she had an IQ above 30 she should have realized that Little Dragon is a child of the Big Dragon and not food. The damn thing was even in a nest. The 'best case scenario' in this instance was the Hero was going to kill what she thought was her baby dragon's mother. The time scale is a red herring. If it's been a week or 20 years it makes no difference it's painfully obvious to even the lowly earth worm that small version, not being eaten, is offspring not food.
Now there are a few ways the writer or director could have turned this shit show around and at least brought it in for a clumsy landing. For instance if she found what appeared to be the skeleton of the Baby Dragon then she would have had motivation for revenge. If she found no baby and just fought the dragon for revenge it would have made a smidgen of sense. Maybe the baby then shows up after she kills her friend to emphasize the time passed. I don't find incomprehensible actions tragic I just find them incomprehensible. Tragic would have been letting her vengeful rage lead her to make a rash emotional decision which results in the death of her friend.
The hero deserves to be jailed and strung up by her ankles. She's a menace to society and too dumb to be trusted to walk free amongst us.
Also what on earth is a bandit doing on a random mountain ridge. Are there a lot of travelers at that time of year to rob? Isn't there a better road somewhere that isn't on a random cliff in a huge mountain range? Where does the bandit live? What does he do the other 364 days out of the year when someone doesn't happen upon his mountain peak? Is he a cannibal? Is there food up there anywhere? What does the old man eat? How did the old man get up there all by himself? I have a lot of logistical questions regarding that entire encounter.
An interesting point you bring up.
However you have to understand that things don't happen overnight. projects like Vyatta provide open source software for routing between open private networks, and closed public networks. in the not too distant future, I expect to see FPGA's become more and more popular, potentially even to the degree that people are able to build some basic ones at home. (likely a WAYS off, but one can dream)
without open source software, there would be no desire to move to open hardware. progression, it's what get's us through our lives.
More of a time/budget issue than anything. Pixar has an enormous staff of tool coders to make stuff like footsteps in the snow work just right. This project had 2-3 coders helping out, but they split their time between various thing like rendering, simulation, etc. There was certainly no time to have one person tweak snow deformation (you can read the Sintel blog to learn about what went into making cloth simulation work for the dragon wings). So yeah they used tricks, but that is common to all lower budget movies. Also note that this had a 6-8 month time line -- which included script writing. Pixar has a 3-4 year time line for such things. They have separate crews working on various projects so they can knock one out every 2 years or so.
So yeah with only so much budget you can shake the camera and probably should if needed. Unless you like unfinished projects.
Also what on earth is a bandit doing on a random mountain ridge. Are there a lot of travelers at that time of year to rob? Isn't there a better road somewhere that isn't on a random cliff in a huge mountain range? Where does the bandit live? What does he do the other 364 days out of the year when someone doesn't happen upon his mountain peak? Is he a cannibal? Is there food up there anywhere? What does the old man eat? How did the old man get up there all by himself? I have a lot of logistical questions regarding that entire encounter.
DM rolled an 84. That's a "Human Warrior 4".
There are a few things I expect from a movie. Sadly, Hollywood does not provide them.
Other things I would like:
Basically, I don't care a bit about the latest special effects and celebrities. I don't care what kind of TV commercials they have. I would much rather spend $30 on a simple film that meets my needs than $2 on some over budget eye candy that doesn't. Furthermore, I am not effected by fancy advertising. I likely couldn't even name one single movie currently in theaters, but I can name at least three that have little to no advertising. As for distribution, I can burn my own CD. Basically, the only cost there is that of hosting the torrent (and the initial seeding). I'm probably a minority, but I think there are enough of us out there to present a market for cheap films.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
Perhaps feature wise they are close but having
used both, it is clear that Photoshop’s interface
well not perfect, is vastly more thought out and
user friendlily than Gimp’s.
Comparing Gimp to Photoshop is like comparing
Sintel to Pixar’s Ratatouille. Yes, Sintel shows
promise, but it in no way challenges Hollywood’s
best.
On Gimp:
If you want Gimp to gain ground, why does it still
feel like it is aimed at code-heads? I do not like
compiling my own programs and like apps to
install easily with a good simple installer or by
drag and drop. I do not wish to hunt around for
open source libraries which, for some reason,
are not included but are needed to run.
Why is there not a user-friendly mac build that
installs easily and uses a native mac UI?
If http://www.pixelmator.com/ can do it, why
not gimp?
It’s all well and good that it can open PSDs
(whose file format I hear is a bit of a nightmare),
but can it work with smart objects?
Can I use it to open and edit Camera Raw files
as a professional and not feel limited by the
technology?
I know photoshop is not perfect. In fact I am
finding less and less reasons to upgrade. But
I am sorry, Gimp is just not usable for me yet.
- Joel
I'd guess for digital cinema projectors. They're based on horizontal resolution of 2048 or 4096, and 2.35:1 is a common aspect ratio.
So you like fantasy films about the unbelievable, the supernatural, genocide, murder, homophobia, misogyny, magic - hollywood gives you that but not necessarily in one film.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Uh, Photoshop supports all the stuff he listed.
Or, are you talking about the past? Sure, 15 years ago we didn't have 16-bit color, raw digital images, or any of that stuff. Can it be done? Of course. Is that the current state of the craft - no.
This is like arguing that the features in Blender are irrelevant because in 1982 you didn't need digital rendering software to make an animated movie. Of course you didn't - and you still don't. However, if you want something like the subject of this article, then you need it.
You can always settle for less, and in many cases this is a better use of resources. However, appealing to the past isn't the way to win this argument...