20 May 06
Open Source Movie Released Film
I'm a fan of Open Source. I have commented on Mozilla Firefox on many an occasion, and OpenOffice among others. But this is the first OpenSource movie I have ever watched. Elephants Dream is the world’s first 'open movie', made entirely with open source graphics software and with all production files freely available.
Elephants Dream is the world’s first 'open movie', made entirely with open source graphics software and with all production files freely available.
Elephants Dream is the somewhat confusing story of Emo (an elderly guide) and Proog (a confused loner). The two of them are stuck in bizarre a world of their own, a bleak wasteland with a tangle of cables and other alien landscapes, a living typewriter, an enormous elevator shaft, and especially a lot of very strange birds.
Made quite considerably with the open source 3D modeling and rendering program, Blender, the film's purpose is primarily to showcase the capabilities of open source software, demonstrating what can be done with such tools in the field of organizing and producing quality content for films. Apparently an OS X cluster was used to render the final production, just like Pixar.
The site got Slashdotted, so you may have issues getting to it. The movie is free to download, share, and do whatever the hell you like with.
On a side note, on the same day that this movie was released, Jonathan Murray, (the vice president and chief technology officer of Microsoft Europe) made claims that open source was not reliable or dependable;
"Some people want to use community-based software, and they get value out of sharing with other people in the community. Other people want the reliability and the dependability that comes from a commercial software model."