Apr
23

The use of violence in open source productions

Posted in Events, Random Fluff by Sacha Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

The day after the BBB premiere Ton was a member of a panel at a conference called ‘Economies of the Commons’, where topics as ‘financing open source and open content projects’ were discussed. Before the panel started Ton gave a presentation during which he also showed material from BBB. During the panel discussion there was a question from an audience member for Ton.

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Apr
22

Becoming a TV star!

Posted in Blender Institute, Production by Ton Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

ton_sacha.jpgYesterday 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-

Apr
19

Newspaper clippings

Posted in Blender Institute, Production by Ton Saturday, April 19th, 2008

parool1.jpgHere’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.parool2.jpg

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-

Apr
15

Photos premiere!

Posted in Events by campbell Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

Photos: William Maanders / CC-BY 3.0

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Apr
13

The Peach Studio Disk Edition

Posted in Blender Institute, Production by Ton Sunday, April 13th, 2008

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.

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Apr
12

DVD & online release planning

Posted in Blender Institute, Production by Ton Saturday, April 12th, 2008

Now the first reports from the premiere get posted (check videos on Blendernation) almost everyone now is banging on oBBB_poster_smallur 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! :)

Apr
11

big big buck bunny

Posted in Random Fluff by andy Friday, April 11th, 2008

big_big_buck_bunny_small.jpg

Apr
10

Premiere Big Buck Bunny today!

Posted in Events, Production by Ton Thursday, April 10th, 2008

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-

Apr
03

Woosh, the deadline passed! Or, how everything that can go wrong does…

Posted in Production by Ton Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

lastday2.jpgMomento; 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…)

Apr
02

Dolby mastering

Posted in Media Gallery, Production by Ton Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

cm-dolbylogo.JPGWe wouldn’t deserve the a score and soundtrack from Jan Morgenstern if we didn’t have at least the 35mm film provided with official Dolby Digital (5.1) sound! Although this isn’t really an “open standard”, it at least does have an obvious quality benefit… not to forget that the only (free) alternative would be simply analog stereo (or in Jan’s words: “it will sound like a crappy 70ies or 80ies movie then”).

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