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Web Release of the Open Movie Elephants Dream 290

Joe (and many others) writes "This month has seen the internet release of the first 3D 'Open Movie', Elephants Dream." From the site: "The 3D animated short 'Elephants Dream' will today be released as a free and public download. This is the final stage of a successfully completed Open Movie project which has been community-financed, using only Open Source tools, and opening up the movie itself as well as the entire studio database for everyone to re-use and learn from. The movie and production files are licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 2.5, which only requires a proper crediting for public screening, re-using and distribution."
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Web Release of the Open Movie Elephants Dream

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    What we're seeing here is just the free market at work, re-adjusting itself to the distortion of the past 20 or so years. It's clearly obvious to many that a movie star is not worth $20 million per movie these days. They can easily be replaced by high-quality, CG actors and actresses. Thus their real value has declined significantly.

    Projects like this were bound to happen sooner or later. Now that the technology is readily available, the market is able to take care of the problem of overpaid movie stars and
    • by Anonymous Coward
      "What we're seeing here is just the free market at work, re-adjusting itself to the distortion of the past 20 or so years. It's clearly obvious to many that a movie star is not worth $20 million per movie these days. They can easily be replaced by high-quality, CG actors and actresses. Thus their real value has declined significantly."

      Translation into slashspeak: I want free movies. Of course as the saying goes, "you get what you pay for".
      • Of course as the saying goes, "you get what you pay for".

        Do you pay for slashdot?
        Do you think slashdot is worthless?
        Why do morons keep repeating that, when there are soooo many counterexamples?
        the saying just has no meaning in real life.
        Do you pay for Linux?
        Do you pay for GNOME?
        I even didn't pay for my Ubuntu CDs, and I have a great OS!!!

        Of course, you could say that things don't get made for free, magically, and that someone has to pay for stuff, always. But you don't get what you pay for.
        About movies, Da
    • Square didn't do very well with Final Fantasy and Aki Ross, so I'm not sure we're there yet.
    • by geoffspear ( 692508 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:29PM (#15366928) Homepage
      Whatever. The thousands of low budget copyrighted short films produced before this "open" short film didn't kill Hollywood, and neither will this one. If you think Pixar and Dreamworks are worried, you're seriously deluded.
      • Marketing and Tie-ins

        Pixar surely isn't worried but the first time some toy company wants to foot the bill on some merchandise, they'll pay attention.
        • You think some toy company is going to want to market toys based on a short film no one but a bunch of geeks has seen rather than toys based on a movie that grossed hundreds of millions of dollars and was seen by every kid in the country, all of whom will whine to their parents that they want the toys involved with it?

          I'm absolutely shocked that you're not the CEO of Mattel by now, with brilliant thinking like that.

          • Viral marketing will have more play within the next 15 years than traditional methods.

            Mattel won't be the one to squirt out platic for a geek fan movie but those off companies that only sell to SunCoast or other comic shops certainly will.
            At the point that demand outpaces supply, Mattel/Hasbro will listen.
          • You think some toy company is going to want to market toys based on a short film no one but a bunch of geeks has seen rather than toys based on a movie that grossed hundreds of millions of dollars and was seen by every kid in the country, all of whom will whine to their parents that they want the toys involved with it?

            I think its more likely that the toy company would take the movie and promote/distribute it where it can get more eyeballs on it (no development or licensing costs -- well, maybe some of the

      • If you think Pixar and Dreamworks are worried, you're seriously deluded.

        they shoud be. Blender gives the no budget 3d artist access to something that only multiple thousands to buy the low end Lightwave or even more to buy Maya. This movie is solid proof that a full 3d film is very possible and within the reach of garage artists and the poor highschool kid that has enough morals to not pirate a copy of maya or lightwave and do things that the big guys can do.

        Have you even TOUCHED blender? I can do hair l
        • The difference is that Pixar has hordes of great artists, producers, directories, writers, etc. working for them. They have the tools and the talent. Not to mention the marketing, distribution, name recognition, etc.
    • They could have been replaced by human actors as well, many of whom can act better than those paid $20 million.
    • by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:38PM (#15367012) Homepage Journal
      "It's clearly obvious to many that a movie star is not worth $20 million per movie these days. They can easily be replaced by high-quality, CG actors and actresses. Thus their real value has declined significantly."

      Clearly obvious to geeks, maybe.

      The reason that Joe Public goes to see a movie is not for the plot, nor for the special effects, but for the star power. People will see Pirates of the Caribean for Keira Knightly and Johnny Depp, not because it's about pirates.

      Even if we replace actual actors with CGI clones, or purely CGI characters develop, it will cost $20 million to license their image, because star power is what draws people to the movies in the first place. The movie industry is one of the freest markets, and I think it's a tough case to make that the money stars make is somehow distorted.
      • I agree. Being a father, I am exposed to a lot of cartoon/CG movies. I love pixar movies becuase of the writing and the stars that say the lines. I am looking forward to seeing cars. Come'on can anybody replace "Larry the Cable guy" in a role like that?

        However, I have also seen some real crap. The Barbie movies are CG and they suck. I can't stand to watch any of them. Along with the care bears (not cg but cartoon). Its not the medium, it's the story and the actors. Even if it's only their voices. Robin Wil

        • You got that right. My daughter has a book based on one of those Barbie ones. Even those still shots are hard to look at. CG isn't there yet for human actors. The problem is that it's too good, but not good enough yet. We can do cartoony people really well (Incredibles), but not real ones. Why? Because of The Uncanny Valley [wikipedia.org].

          "The phenomenon can be explained by the notion that if an entity is sufficiently non-humanlike, then the humanlike characteristics will tend to stand out and be noticed easily, ge

      • The movie industry is one of the freest markets

        Except for that whole (un)limited time monopoly known as copyright...
      • REally??

        so the hugely profitable and popular TV show "That 70's show" was a failure for not having "star power" but used no name actors.

        And that Mission Impossible III is the biggest complete flop in history because of the retarted moron that is the star of the show but is a "mega-STAR" in every sence of the word.

        How about the fact that "Happy Madison" films almost NEVER use a big name star, but typically use has-beens and ends up the most profitable movie studio on the planet right now?? Yes kids, He is
    • ...Don't the producers know that OSS is neither relieable nor dependable [slashdot.org]?

      Jeez....

    • Half Right (Score:3, Insightful)

      by iamlucky13 ( 795185 )
      CG actors and actresses don't come close to the realism, emotion, or raporte that real ones do. I personally doubt (and kind of hope they don't, because it would be somewhat creepy) they never actually will. CG is a great medium for getting creating fantasy (like with Toy Story or Shrek) or for unique special effects (like the Matrix or Fight Club...but not Star Wars. ILM owned CG in the original trilogy, in my opinion).

      Where you are right is that real actors aren't really worth $20 million or whatever a
      • "CG actors and actresses don't come close to the realism..."

        Various anime come to mind for being very good at conveying a far more 'realistic' sense. CGI is an artistic medium, and as long as you treat it like 'film on a budget', you wont be any more successful than a painter using his paint as 'photographs on a budget'. Once you start using the medium for its strengths, I dont think it's inherently any less expressive than real film.

        "The reason they do get the money though is marketing."

        Actually, the reaso
    • Uh...in a word.....no.

      CG actors aren't even close to replacing human actors for most things. CG actors are great for cartoony characters that humans couldn't do anyway. You try to sell a CG actor, in their current state of development, off as a real human actor people immediately spot the fact its synthetic, start noticing all the little traits that aren't human, it immediately starts bugging the audience, they get distracted and turned off by the whole movie. Animation tools simply aren't there to pull
    • They can easily be replaced by high-quality, CG actors and actresses.

      Not even close. Name one movie where CG actors were good enough to pass as real people. Some movie where you really couldn't tell. Just one.

    • You can try to make a CGI person jump up and down on a couch like a monkey on a daytime talk show, but it will never be quite right. This is why actors are worth $20 mil.
  • by fak3r ( 917687 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:08PM (#15366725) Homepage
    Download the movie AVI, MPEG4 (mp42) / AC3 5.1 Surround

    Only playable in: VLC Media Player [videolan.org] MPlayer [mplayerhq.hu]

  • by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:08PM (#15366728)
    Anyone else have to read that title a few times before it made sense?
  • by Cherita Chen ( 936355 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:10PM (#15366740) Homepage
    There is also the Open Video Project [open-video.org] which sports a very cool library of footage, etc...

  • did someone chew on these words and spit them on my slashdot?
  • by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:12PM (#15366764) Homepage
    OK, so the homepage is Slashdotted, and the Mirrordot link is just the notice explaining the Slashdotting. So does anyone have any information about this movie at all?

    • How long is it?
    • If it was created using a "community process," how did the writing and direction work?
    • Who does the voice acting, if any?
    • Where did the music come from?
    • WTF is it about?
    • by fak3r ( 917687 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:19PM (#15366832) Homepage
      ummary from Motevideo:

              Elephants Dream is a story with quick-witted dialogue, tightly designed architecture and unusual sound effects. The main characters, Emo (a cool young trumpeter) and Proog (a confused - or maybe not? - loner) are each stuck in a world of their own. At a certain moment they cross paths with one another. The oddball Proog cautiously tries to introduce his young friend Emo to his world. When Emo realizes that Proog primarily wants to push his ideas on him, this leads to a conflict between them. But can Emo survive in Proog's world? And can they overcome their conflicts, or will they each go their own way in life? Tygo Gernandt and Cas Jansen create two unique personalities that command the imagination, and carry the viewer along into a bizarre world that consists of 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.

      Also checkout the Wikipedia entry:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephants_Dream [wikipedia.org]
      • by ultranova ( 717540 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @04:08PM (#15368322)

        Elephants Dream is a story with quick-witted dialogue, tightly designed architecture and unusual sound effects. The main characters, Emo (a cool young trumpeter) and Proog (a confused - or maybe not? - loner) are each stuck in a world of their own. At a certain moment they cross paths with one another. The oddball Proog cautiously tries to introduce his young friend Emo to his world. When Emo realizes that Proog primarily wants to push his ideas on him, this leads to a conflict between them. But can Emo survive in Proog's world? And can they overcome their conflicts, or will they each go their own way in life? Tygo Gernandt and Cas Jansen create two unique personalities that command the imagination, and carry the viewer along into a bizarre world that consists of 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.

        In reality, it is two weirdos running through psychedelic landscapes and talking mostly nonsense. The graphics are very well done and quite imaginative, and the big battle at the end is cool - the Colossus rocks, even if we see just a hand.

        But no, this thing has no real plot. Sorry. It just doesn't. It is, essentially, a demo. Perfectly understandable, since the whole point of this project was to see if you can make a movie with free open source tools, and a success as such - but for this very reason the whole script is simply and excuse to show as many special effects as possible. They are very good, and the whole thing is quite entertaining in its own surreal way - but the description you gave assigns it philosophical qualitites it just doesn't have.

        Don't get me wrong, movie makers: your work is truly amazing. However, you if the description given was what you wanted to say, you failed. The reason for this failure was giving too much priority for FX, and failure to give the viewer any frame of reference (maybe you should have shown the two people meeting instead of starting from the middle of their journey ?). This improved somewhat near end, but most of the movie was just too surreal to carry any recognizable meanings.

        So, basically: a huge technological success, mediocre at best in storytelling, characters simply didn't interact enough with each other (or anything else) to develop any personality beyond simple "youth curious, old forbids him" stereotype.

        Nice surreal tech demo, but only that.

        • I couldn't agree with you more. And calling it a "movie" or "film" is just... well.... WRONG. A ten minute psycho-trip with no story, no plot, and uninteresting/undeveloped characters is more like a graphics demo. Perhaps a video hardware benchmark (HD).

          I am impressed at the graphics... and the open nature... but that is about all it has going for it.
        • by suv4x4 ( 956391 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @11:46PM (#15370556)
          Script writers shouldn't render 3D demos, and geeks shouldn't write scripts. That's the moral of the story.

          While the scenery, effects and character modeling were intriguing and really really well done, the character animation was odd and crude.

          The voice acting and dialog not just lack any logic or consistency but were flat out annoying.

          One would wonder why they spent all those resources and time on creating this animation but didn't care to get a decent screenplay at first.

          All in all, it may've used OSS tools, but they followed the good ol' Hollywood paradigm: all effects and the story sucks.
      • by rdmiller3 ( 29465 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @04:10PM (#15368340) Journal
        "Elephants Dream" had wildly complex animation and sound. That much was very impressive. Aside from that though, it was an incoherent mess.

        With no background, the viewer is thrown successively into four or five disjointed sequences where the same two characters move through a ludicrously-impossible "machine" which has no apparent purpose.

        I thought I must surely have only seen the trailer. No, that was the whole film.

        The voice for "Emo" was very wrong somehow, I can't put my finger on it. Might it have been done by several different people? No reference at all to Elephants.

        The "description" in the parent to this article is bogus because half of the things it mentions aren't even in the film! There was no "quick-witted dialog" because there was hardly any dialog at all. Emo is a trumpet player? That wasn't in the film. Proog is a loner? In the film he's always with Emo. Proog doesn't "cautiously introduce" anything, but shouts "Follow me!" before dashing along narrow, railless, flipping catwalks with hostile bird-things swooping about. If Emo feels that Proog is pushing his ideas, well, I can't imagine what those ideas are since the guy doesn't say much of anything except that the machine is "beautiful". These characters don't have any conflicts to work out, except where Emo wants to go through a door with calliope music coming from behind it and begs like a three-year-old.

        This film doesn't "carry" the viewer at all. It drags the viewer, kicking and screaming, through complex scenes with no coherence. One reaches the credits and says, "What was that about?"

        Yah. Must be "art".

    • The whole point of the project was to see if a movie could be created using Blender 3d. It's called the Orange Project and they have a blog about the production. The Orange Project website, however, is currently slashdotted.
      When it comes back you can check it out at: http://orange.blender.org/ [blender.org]
  • NOOOOO (Score:5, Funny)

    by benjjj ( 949782 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:12PM (#15366765)
    YOU CAN'T MAKE OPEN-SOURCE MOVIES!!! Who gets the money??? Who sells shitloads of licensed garbage??? My head is about to EXPLODE!!!
    • Now Marcellus has to get "The Wolf" to help us scrape all those bits of Jack Valenti's brain off the floor, walls and ceiling. It won't be a pleasant day at all...
    • Re:NOOOOO (Score:2, Funny)

      by dasdrewid ( 653176 )

      This can only lead to one thing:

      Open Source fast food restaurants with toys that choke young children because, after including the GPL, there's no space left for the "CHOKING HAZARD" warning...

  • by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:15PM (#15366789)
    > From the site: "The 3D animated short 'Elephants Dream' will today be released as a free and public download.

    Also from the site:

    > 425MB (USA #1)

    Not for long, it won't be.

    (Where are an elephant's genitals located? In his feet. Because if he steps on you, you're fucked. Any parallels between a webserver with a 425 MB .avi file that just got linked on the front page of Slashdot are purely coincidental.)

  • A start, I suppose (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Benanov ( 583592 ) <brian.kemp@member . f s f .org> on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:17PM (#15366810) Journal
    Open movie...open build process, open tools... But...no open codecs.
    • by fossa ( 212602 )

      Truly a shame... especially if the claim of a previous poster is correct "VLC or MPlayer only". Both of these play Ogg Theora for example on Linux, Mac, and Windows. If you're already using a format that doesn't work by default with, say, QuickTime and Windows Media Player, why not go all out and use Theora?

      P.S. It looks like the latest version of Xiph's QuickTime Components [xiph.org] has preliminary Theora playback. And there have been DirectShow (Windows Media Player) filters for Ogg codecs [illiminable.com] for some time now.

      • by FunkyChild ( 99051 ) <[ten.3ekm] [ta] [todhsals]> on Friday May 19, 2006 @09:36PM (#15370202) Homepage
        We tried our best to make a Theora/Voribs file for the release, but weren't able to. I (a Mac user) spent the best part of a week attempting different things to encode versions from 1024 down, analogous to the H.264 ones. I even installed Linux on an old PC in the hope that it would make things easier, but it didn't. Our audio guy was in contact with Ogg Vorbis developers and produced what may be the first 5.1 surround Vorbis file in existence. Currently, after a lot of trial and error, I'm left with an Ogg Theora video file, and a stereo Ogg Vorbis Audio file. They seem both fine on their own, but when I tried to merge them with oggzmerge, the two are out of sync. Along with the encoding of the other files, the release of our new website, our promise to release the videos, and thousands of screaming fans, I didn't have time to keep trying so we released as is.

        Hopefully when the release fuss dies down I'll blog about it and try and get some help. In any case, those who condemn others for not using open formats should actually try and use them themselves. I'm sure Theora would get used a lot more if it were easy, or even at least possible for content producers (i.e. artists, not developers) to actually use. My experience hasn't shown that to be the case so far.

        Cheers

        Matt
  • by fak3r ( 917687 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:17PM (#15366811) Homepage
    30MB MPEG4 [letwory.net] (BitTorrent)

    30MB MPEG4 [blendertestbuilds.de] (blendertestbuilds.de)

    Update Oct 17: Here are some other mirrors and compressed versions made by the community!

    24MB MPEG [thepiratebay.org] (BitTorrent)

    9MB Xvid/Vorbis OGM [ourmedia.org]

  • by icepick72 ( 834363 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:22PM (#15366865)
    I laughed, I cried, it was part of me. Too bad it's still downloading.
  • A little more info (Score:3, Informative)

    by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:23PM (#15366868) Homepage Journal
    Since the link only provides download mirrors and torrent links, here's some background about the project from Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

    "Elephants Dream is a computer-generated [slashdot.org] movie made using open source [slashdot.org] applications [slashdot.org] that premiered on March 24 [slashdot.org], 2006 [slashdot.org]. Beginning production in September, 2005 [slashdot.org], it was developed under the name Orange by a team of seven artists and animators from around the world. It was originally known as Machina, before being changed to Elephants Dream to more closely match the way the script was developed.

    The film was first announced in May, 2005 [slashdot.org] by Ton Roosendaal [slashdot.org], the chairman of the Blender Foundation [slashdot.org] and the lead developer of the foundation's program, Blender [slashdot.org]. A 3D modelling, animating, and rendering application, Blender is the primary piece of software being used in the creation of the movie. The project is joint funded by the Blender Foundation and the Netherlands Media Art Institute [slashdot.org]. The Foundation raised much of their funds by selling pre-orders of the DVD. Everyone who preordered before September 1 [slashdot.org] has their name listed in the movie's credits. A number of companies also donated render farm [slashdot.org] time for the movie.

    The film's purpose is primarily to showcase the capabilities of open source software [slashdot.org] and evaluate it as a tool for organizing and producing quality content for professional films.

    During the film's development, several new features, such as hair and fur rendering [1] [blender.org], were added into Blender especially for the project.

    The film's content was released under the Creative Commons [slashdot.org] Attribution license [2] [blender.org], so that viewers may learn from it and use it however they please. The DVD set includes NTSC and PAL versions of the movie on separate discs, a high-definition video [slashdot.org] version as a computer file, and all the production files.

    The film was released for download on the Official Orange Project website on May 18, 2006, along with all production files.

    "


    Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation [slashdot.org]; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.

    A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License [slashdot.org]".

    Content on Wikipedia is covered by disclaimers [slashdot.org].

  • Project background (Score:4, Informative)

    by bartv2 ( 975941 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:26PM (#15366902)
    I've posted an article on the background of this project: http://www.blendernation.com/2006/05/18/the-worlds -first-open-movie-released/ [blendernation.com] Enjoy!
  • Multi-core (Score:4, Funny)

    by gr8_phk ( 621180 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:28PM (#15366918)
    Now we know what people will do with 4 cores and up. Render their own movies.
  • by pla ( 258480 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:34PM (#15366973) Journal
    "...so please, please remember - when you make "open" movies, you don't just take profits away from some Hollywood fat-cats; You hurt the gaffers and set designers and makeup artists and fluffers and all the rest of the "little guys". Without all of them, the movies you love just couldn't exist!"
  • by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:49PM (#15367132)
    ...was to live on a muddy peanut farm in a world without circuses or pianos.
  • Well... I wonder... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rcastro0 ( 241450 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:51PM (#15367160) Homepage
    I wonder, and I am too lazy to research, whether being open source
    also means that I could download the 3d models they used and create
    my own film stories, TV commercial, product endorsements, pron, etc...

    Is there any "open source", copyright-free 3d model characters out there
    that one could just grab and use ?
  • 311MB (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:54PM (#15367193)
    311 Megabytes. This is going to be a Slashdotting to end all Slashdottings.
  • by Enselic ( 933809 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:58PM (#15367229) Homepage
    I saw the whole thing, and it is obvious that this movie was made by technology geeks, and not cultural geeks. The graphics is easily in par with commercial movies, but the script sounds as if it was authored by a chatbot.
  • How good is it? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hexix ( 9514 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @01:59PM (#15367240) Homepage

    All the comments seem to be focused on the open source aspect, which is cool and very important. However, did anyone actually watch this movie?

    I watched it the other day (I think it was on digg or boing boing or something). I thought it was insanely bad. It was like I came in halfway through some crazy anime. I didn't know what the hell was going on. I couldn't even begin to figure out what the characters were suppose to be feeling or thinking.

    This has a cool factor going for it, but man it was painful to watch. The 3D work was well done as far as textures and models, but the animation seemed really awkward and bad.

    I don't think anyone should be patting themselves on the backs too hard yet. If this is what the open source model can produce for entertainment, then I don't think Pixar has much to fear.

    However, the possibility for movie remixes should be pretty cool.

    • The best explanation I've seen of the movie so far is that the older guy is crazy and trying to convince the younger guy that what he is seeing is real.
    • Re:How good is it? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by reldruH ( 956292 )
      I think the main reason this is important is solely because it's the first open source movie. It's mainly showcasing the fact that such a thing is possible. Just like with any first, you can't really hold it to standards of greatness. Edisons light bulb was probably pretty weak and didn't last very long, but the fact that he did it set the stage for massive improvements later on. Nobody expected him to come up with flourescent lights, but without him (or somebody else doing the same thing) we would have nev
      • Re:How good is it? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Lumpy ( 12016 )
        Everyone is forgetting that Open Source Motion Capture is not here yet. The hardware for motion capture is still quirky and expensive to get working with any of the very few OSS projects out there and it's in it's really early stages for Blender Motion capture.

        as soon as they get motion capture working the "jerkyness" will disappear and end up 100% identical to hollywierd productions as that is all they do.

        REmember, this is people doing it for fun as a hobby. Pixar programmers do it for insane salaries a
    • I didn't know what the hell was going on.

      Well, I liked it. Not because of the animation, but because this short story reminded me of the surrealistic comics made by Marc-Antoine Mathieu. But then again, I like movies, which will drop the viewer in the middle of some strange reality and doesn't explain anything. Let the viewer figure out, how the world in question works and what the hell is going on (if anything). It's intriguing and it will tickle my imagination in the right kind of way.
  • Xine on my FC4 box doesn't have a codec or something, I get "couldn't find demux for Elephants_dream_1024.avi" adn't didn't see anything on their site. Too new for Google to have info i guess.
  • Even if it is so ? For windows has been so since 1995.
  • What? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gannoc ( 210256 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @02:14PM (#15367372)
    > Hello, I am Eliza.
    * Web Release of the Open Movie Elephants Dream
    > Come, come, elucidate your thoughts.
    * Web Release of the Open Movie Elephants Dream
    > Say, do you have any psychological problems?
  • More resources (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dasdrewid ( 653176 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @03:00PM (#15367792)

    If you're interested in some more resources for Blender (or info on the movie), try checking these places out:

    Blendernation [blendernation.com]

    Blendernation article about Elephants Dream [blendernation.com]

    Blender Artists Forums [blenderartists.org]

    Collection of WikiBooks [wikibooks.org]

    Elephants Dream on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] (in case you don't know anything about it, considering the main website is down and the original poster didn't say much of anything about the short itself)

    Blender on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

    Seriously, though, considering how much has been happening with this project, and what a significant milestone it is for those who use OSS and/or CC, I find it almost sad that this is the first story on Slashdot in almost exactly a year [slashdot.org]. And that it took Slashdot editors well over a day since the first story submissions (some with links directly to the torrents to avoid killing the Elephants Dream homepage immediately) to get this up. Maybe I'm biased (I pre-ordered the DVD 9 months ago), but I just think that stories about people doing amazing things within and beyond the community deserves precedence over the latest reports about what the PS3 might cost. Not to anger anyone, just to toss that up for discussion.

  • by Mateo_LeFou ( 859634 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @03:17PM (#15367939) Homepage
    Without copyright protection for life + 75 years, people will not make movies. Everyone knows that.
  • IMDB? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by chochos ( 700687 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @04:11PM (#15368342) Homepage Journal
    Is this movie ever going to have an entry in the IMDB [imdb.com]? I'd like to see a rating before I download 450MB...

    Also, it would be cool to have a downloadable ISO, to burn directly to a DVD and watch on a TV instead of in the computer. It's also an easier way to pass it around to non-tech people who would like to watch it.

    • Ah, I finally was able to enter the site, and I see the DVD is available for sale. But come on, 35 euros? So the future of 3D open movies is no different from the future of hollywood movies? DVD's will be just as expensive, if not more?

      I can foresee the onslaught of comments telling me that this price is justified because of the low expected volume of sales, etc and that I don't have to buy the DVD because I can download the movie in a variety of formats, etc. Please, I was just asking if it was available

  • by Parham ( 892904 )
    I saw it and was very impress (albeit confused at what exactly was going on in the short movie). From what I gather, it was less about the story, and more about how many cool effects they could put into it just to show the general public that it can be done with free tools. It wasn't perfect, because you could notice their movements didn't seem real, even for surreal characters. It's impressive though, not Pixar impressive, but impressive enough for an open movie.
  • Does anyone remember the Why ask why? Bud Dry commercials? My favorite of all time was "Why are foreign films so...foreign?" It made more sense that Final Fantasy, but that's not saying much. The bits of FF I watched made my head implode. Elephant's Dream was more of a huh? type film.
  • I just watched the movie, and I must say I really liked the animation (sans the sometimes jerky character animation). I thought the backgrounds, and other scenic elements were pretty well done. I really dug the dark feel it has.

    Then we get to the plot/story/dialog.

    Being nice...it was incomprehensible. Being not so nice...poop.

    Anyway, I think the thing has some great potential. Is there anyone here interested in perhaps re-writing the story and redoing character voices? I'd be more than willing to help with
  • by nblender ( 741424 ) on Friday May 19, 2006 @04:42PM (#15368594)
    cd movie ; ./configure --pg13 --with-keanu=/usr/local/actors/keanu --with-lindsay=/usr/local/actors/lindsay --disable-product-placements && make && mplayer movie.out

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. -- Thomas Edison

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