News from Germany: authoring company Imagion completed work on the Blu-ray version of Big Buck Bunny! They’ve created a stunning HDTV (1080p 24fps) version of our movie based on the original HDR frames of the movie. The master has been sent to the factory for duplication last friday. This will take about 4 weeks, so we expect the discs here end of july. Visit the Blender e-shop to purchase a copy!

Although it’s a closed format still, Blu-ray is most likely going to be the HDTV film disc format of the next decade. So, even when it was only for archiving reasons, it’s important to have BBB on this format available as well. Not to mention that the HD version of BBB is simply breathtaking to watch.

As bonus, apart from the extras copied from the video dvd, Imagion agreed to add Elephants Dream on the disc as well!

-Ton-

Wheee, my first blog post. Sorry that I’m late to the party :) The complete score is now online for your listening pleasure. It consists of 10 tracks, including the bits I did for the DVD menus, and is available both in MP3 and high-quality Ogg Vorbis formats. Grab it while it’s hot:

MP3, ~192 kbps VBR, 16.2 MB ZIP

Ogg Vorbis, ~224 kbps, 17.8 MB ZIP

The isolated score is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivativeWorks 3.0 license. Thanks to Andy for the neat cover image. Enjoy!

We have shipped everything to Europe and rest of world last tuesday, May 20th. Some close Europe countries might arrive already this week friday or saturday. Dutch orders are being shipped today, and arrive friday. (Well, there’s rumours the Dutch Mail will strike…)

So, we hope almost everyone can their own home-cinema premiere during the next 10 days. In the mean time we’ll build a large network of http mirrors, torrents, and streams to make sure we can do the public movie launch on May 30 or 31st. Keep tuned!

In anticipation of the DVDs, we’ve upgraded the gallery with a couple of final frames from the movie. Also check the press section for a great story about BBB in today’s Netherlands largest quality news paper.

Finally: please mark in the Frappr map below when you get the DVD. Makes it a review of our shipping company as well. :)

http://www.frappr.com/?a=constellation_map&mapid=137440549214

The dvd gold masters were sent in time to the printer, with as aim the may 15 release. Of course the day after we sent the discs some errors were detected…  like stereo sound in the ntsc movie, where 5.1 was more appropriate! New gold masters were sent, but it means that the printer needs extra days too. That means the discs get delivered here now on  tuesday May 20th (confirmed date by printer). We then will ship all of them the same day.

The online release of the film will then happen 10 days later, May 30 or 31.
We’re already lining up great mirror websites, sufficient for everyone to watch or download the film the same day!

Really curious to learn your reactions… :)

-Ton-

(BTW: May 17 or 18  is Blender 2.46 release. We’re going to get a good website traffic test!)

Yesterday morning, the talkshow producer from “De Wereld Draait Door” (DWDD, or “The world revolves”) phoned me if we were interested to be guest in the monday show. Surprise!
It especially was good news for our project and for Blender because the show is very well known in the Netherlands. It’s prime-time from 19.30 and 20.30, broadcasted on the quality public TV channel. Usually it hosts a varied mix of entertainment and information. Items typically don’t last more than 5-10 minutes. About half to a million people watch it daily.

The nice thing was also that the studio is literally around the corner, a few minutes walk away from the Blender Institute. So, we were there in time, got our make-up, drinks as much you wanted and excellent dinner. As groupies we could get Margreet, Campbell and William in.

Apart from getting surrounded by the obligatory Dutch tv celebs (the show host, a famous radio DJ, a political commentator, some actors), it was interesting to see how smooth and well organized it all went. For a daily show that already runs a couple of years quite logical though!

On the moment supreme it all went so fast that I’m still surprised a bit… it was overwhelming to suddenly have the talkshow host and cameras turning to you, and firing the first question to Sacha while you expected a movie fragment to be shown. You also clearly feel that the program makers are in extremely tight control, you’re merely a puppet that acts when they want you to say something… and please don’t be boring!

If you click on the image above you can watch the interview with subtitles on BlenderNation.

Thanks!

-Ton-

Here’s the first major newspaper article about the premiere. It’s the #1 newspaper here in Amsterdam, with mostly Amsterdam related topics. You can find most of this also on their website here:

“Big Buck schudt filmwereld op”
(”Big Buck shakes the movie world”)

The images:

First clipping is from page 8, right-bottom corner.
Second clipping is in the weekend supplement.

Note that they consider the “gratis” aspect most interesting! But, the “free software” concept is pretty well covered in the text.

Other news: currently the dvds are being authored… end of april it should be at the printer’s still. Expected release is May 15. But… you know how it goes when you announce dates! Let’s try at least. ;)

-Ton-

In the past years I’ve been asked a couple of times by companies to make the original renders if Elephants Dream available. They sent me a usb hard disk, and I just copied all of the OpenEXR files over. That made us think (great idea Campbell!) to just put a entire copy of our studio backup in the e-shop, on a 250 GB usb disk. Everything! All Creative Commons of course.

(more…)

Now the first reports from the premiere get posted (check videos on Blendernation) almost everyone now is banging on our doors to get the film as well! So… here’s some answers about what do now and what the intended schedule is.

• People who pre-ordered the DVD were our investors!

This is an important aspect we should never forget. We were able to make BBB thanks to the generosity and confidence we received from people who ordered and paid for the DVD set. The deal we made was that they would get the dvds first, and only after that the files get released (which will go automatic, because the dvds are “CC-by”, open content).

• You can still help us by purchasing a DVD!

To be able to wrap up the project and continue work in the Blender Institute and get ready for a new open films we depend on DVD sales still. This is a special hint for everyone who’s screaming for the downloads btw! :)

• (more…)

Nothing news really… apart from that all goes fine now. It’s even going to be awesome weather here today, great start of spring season.

The three film copies have arrived safely. We even had a chance to sneak preview it yesterday in the theatre of Amsterdam Film Academy (wich turned out in a sneak preview event for the students of the vfx department!). So yes, we can confirm the film has images in it! Today in the premiere cinema of “Studio K” composer Jan Morgenstern will do a final sound check, and make sure the volume knobs are precisely as he intended it!

Work on the dvd also progresses steadily. We have this time excellent goodies to share, of which we’ll give a preview tonight as well.

Hopefully we can post here soon images and videos of the event, but for hot news you better check blendernation.com or blenderartists.org.

Laters (and wish us luck!)

-Ton-

Momento; no worries! The master film+sound disks are ready, packed, sealed and were picked up by the courier. (All will be OK, airplane personnel strikes, bad weather alarms and Norway sliding into the Atlantic notwithstanding).

For your pleasure and probably to learn from (do we ever!) here’s the disaster list of all that went wrong last night, causing Andy + Sacha + Campbell + Brecht to skip sleep… (more…)