It is no secret that movies take a long time to create. It’s also no secret that a movie is also very expensive to make.
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
Not many movies are developed and released on the Internet for free, however Orange (AKA Elephants Dream) decided to go this route.
The only movie of recent memory released for everyone under a Creative Commons License was Star Wreck. The creators of that movie have already named their second project, “Iron Sky.” Since that particular team is able to go from one movie to another, their model of releasing the movie freely and merely selling DVD’s with bonus features as well as other fan material appears to have worked out well. The Finnish film was a parody of popular TV series ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Babylon 5’.
As of the 16th of May, there was an announcement in their blog that all pre-ordered DVD’s are have arrived to people everywhere. According to the Creative Commons License, “You are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work” – this typically means the work is available to file-sharers as well.
While the original plan was to release the movie onto the Internet under an similar license, the movie has yet to be released (but it was said that the release will be soon when the encoding is complete.)
As a teaser, the Original score, composed by Jan Morgenstern, was released under an slightly more restrictive license. The soundtrack offers what any typical high budget original soundtrack has to offer. Already, the movie promises a lot.
The movie was created using the open source software ‘Blender’ as well as a well constructed team. With high quality pictures released, it appears as though this may be one movie no file-sharer would want to miss.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.