[Bf-marketing] ED press release

[Roland Hess]

I liked Tom's restructuring, and did a little of my own to his edits...

One additional thing that I think would add to it: 'twould be nice to  
include a quote in the paragraph that begins "The short film is  
unique in its exclusive use" from someone on the Orange team about  
how an open resource like this will help along fledgling animators,  
cure spina bifada, etc. Probably shouldn't be Ton, though, as he's  
the contact.

**********************
Elephants Dream, world premiere of the first 3D 'Open Source Movie'

Contact:
Ton Roosendal
Director, Blender Foundation
Phone:
Fax:
Email: ton at blender.org

Mar. 22, 2005
For Immediate Release

Elephants Dream, world premiere of the first 3D 'Open Source' Movie

(Blender Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands) - The 3D animated short  
'Elephants Dream' will premiere at cinema Kethelhuis in Amsterdam on  
Friday, March 24th. The short is the culmination of Project Orange,  
an 'open source movie' sponsored by the Blender Foundation and the  
Netherlands Media Art Institute. The project was conceived to help  
develop and establish the capabilities of open source tools such as  
Blender 3D for the creation of cinema quality animation.

The short film is unique in its exclusive use of Open Source tools  
for animating, texturing, and rendering, as well as the release of  
the movie and all of the files used in its creation under an open  
source Creative Commons license.

The film tells the story of Emo and Proog, two people with different  
visions on the surreal world in which they live. Viewers are taken on  
a journey through that world, full of strange mechanical birds,  
stunning technological vistas and machinery that seems to have a life  
of its own.

'Elephants Dream' features the voice talents of renowned Dutch movie  
actors Tygo Gernandt and Cas Jansen, as well as an original score by  
German composer Jan Morgenstern. The short brought together the  
talents of a team of artists from countries as diverse as Syria,  
Germany, Australia, Finland, and the Netherlands. In addition to the  
performances of the cast and creative efforts of the lead artists,  
Elephants Dream has had the assistance of hundreds of individuals  
across the world who contributed a variety of work such as  
programming additional functionality for Blender 3D, creating  
textures used in some of the scenes, and providing international  
translations for the upcoming DVD release.

After the premiere of 'Elephants Dream', the movie and all of the  
files used in its creation will be published under a 'Creative  
Commons' license which will allow individuals the world over to learn  
from, copy, edit, create, and even sell their own animations based on  
the original data files used to create the movie. The tools used for  
creating the movie, such as Blender 3D for model creation, animating,  
rendering and compositing; the Gnu Image Manipuation Program (GIMP)  
for texture map creation and editing; Python for scripting; and  
Subversion for version management; are also available for free under  
open source licenses.

The files will be released on two DVDs with the movie in PAL, NTSC  
and HD formats, a making-of  documentary, and all of the studio  
files. The DVD is expected to ship in the first half of April 2006.  
Shortly after, the movie and database of source material will be made  
available for public download as well.

Studio Orange team:
Director: Bassam Kurdali (Syria /USA),
Art Director: Andreas Goralczyk (Germany)
Lead Artists: Matt Ebb (Australia), Bastian Salmela (Finland), Lee
Cocks (Australia)
Technical Director: Toni Alatalo (Finland)

The team will present their work Saturday and Sunday, March 25-26, in  
The Netherlands Media Art Institute, Keizersgracht 264. The movie  
will be shown daily there between 13.00 and 18.00 for two weeks  
following the premiere.
For more information:

http://orange.blender.org
http://www.montevideo.nl

Press inquiries can be sent to Ton Roosendaal, ton at blender.org