[Bf-marketing] ED press release

[Ton Roosendaal]

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

Contact:
Ton Roosendaal
Chairman, Blender Foundation
Email: ton at blender.org

Mar. 23, 2005
For Immediate Release

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

(Blender Foundation, Amsterdam, the 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 movie' produced by the Blender Foundation and the Netherlands 
Media Art Institute. The project was conceived to help develop and 
establish the capabilities of the Blender 3D open source tool 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 the open 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, 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 for modeling, animating, rendering 
and compositing; the 2D paint program GIMP for texture map creation and 
editing; Python for scripting; and Subversion for studio data 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 
Salvemini (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, Amsterdam. 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