[Bf-marketing] Press release BBB

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi guys,

Start nitpicking! :)

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Joint press release of Blender Foundation and Creative Commons  
Netherlands

Amsterdam, March 19, 2008

(Title)
Premiere 3D animation film Big Buck Bunny
(Sub title)
- open movie made with open source software - Thursday 10th of April  
Amsterdam

The Amsterdam based 'Blender Institute' announced today the premiere of  
the short 3D animation movie 'Big Buck Bunny'. After a production  
period of over six months, the short film will premiere with a grand  
party on Thursday 10th of April, in the hip new Amsterdam cinema  
'Studio K'.

“The main intention of the movie was to stimulate the development of  
open source 3D software” said producer and Institute director Ton  
Roosendaal, “But the result equals on artistic level as well as on  
technical ingenuity the quality of what you would expect from large  
animation studios”.

The movie differentiates itself mostly by its totally open character.  
Not only open source tools such as the 3D suite ‘Blender’ were used to  
create the movie, but also the movie itself - including all materials  
as used in the animation studio - will be freely accessible for  
everybody to reuse, to learn from it or just to enjoy it. 

This open concept is one of the main goals of the Creative Commons  
organization. The very popular Creative Commons license is mainly being  
used by individual artists or musicians on the internet, but  
increasingly being applied now for video, film and animation projects.

Blender Institute in Amsterdam is one of the first companies worldwide  
exploiting Open Content professionally and commercially. Currenty 14  
people are working full-time in the Institute, partially wrapping up  
Big Buck Bunny, and partially working on an Open Game based on the  
characters from the movie.

‘Big Buck Bunny’ is a (dark) comedy with as main character the  
well-tempered rabbit “Big Buck”, who finds his day spoiled by the rude  
actions of the forest bullies, three rodents. In the typical 50ies  
cartoon tradition Big Buck then prepares the rodents a comical revenge.

The creators of the movie were brought together by the Blender  
Institute from all over the world, including the USA, Denmark, Italy,  
Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Australia. The music has been  
composed by Jan Morgenstern, who also provided the sound track for the  
previous Blender production; “Elephant's Dream”.

"Big Buck Bunny" will be released on 35mm film format, on HD and on  
DVD. The latter will be available by the end of April. Shortly after  
the DVD release the film will be freely downloadable for everyone.

Project team:
Script and direction by: Sacha Goedegebure (Netherlands)
Art direction: Andreas Goralczyk (Germany)
Lead Artist: Enrico Valenza (Italy),
Animation: Nathan Vegdahl (USA), William Reynish (Denmark)
Technical directors: Brecht van Lommel (Belgium) en Campbell Barton  
(Australia)
Music by: Jan Morgenstern (Germany)
Produced by: Ton Roosendaal (Netherlands)

Big Buck Bunny: http://bigbuckbunny.org         


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Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton at blender.org  
http://www.blender.org