The Blender Foundation have brought their third Open Movie Project (working name: Durian) to a successful conclusion. The production is a short movie called "Sintel. It's available as a free (in both meanings of the word) download and as a DVD.
As usual, those pre-ordered in time got their name in the movie credits. Unfortunately I failed to pay attention, so I was not one of those people. I did pre-order, but a few days too late for the official credits. Still good enough to get my name mentioned, though. The DVD case contains 4 discs and provides the movie in several formats, commentary tracks, a documentary, tutorials, all source material and "much more". All without CSS of course. It's a shame that most of the extra videos are not in a free format (e.g. Ogg Theora). A slight annoyance about the movie DVD is that the menus aren't as readable as they could have been: white text on a glaring background has not a lot of contrast. But that's peanuts compared to the pesky unskippableness of big production company DVDs. Also, I don't see the use of the 40 seconds of black after the credits.
The movie itself was not what I expected. The original setup for Durian was "100 % action, 0 % story". Yet the story turned out to be pretty good. I've watched it almost a dozen times now and I was still touched the last time I saw it. The storyline does leave a bit wanting here and there, but the documentary and commentary tracks partially make up for that. Everything looks great, apart from a few details (the falling board at the start and the walking people in the marketplace spring to mind). The music is awesome, sound effects are very nice, Sintel's voice suits her, but could have done with a bit less of an accent.
The documentary is certainly one to watch. It follows the creation process of the movie, with project member interviews and a look behind the scenes. You'll have an extra appreciation of the movie once you've seen it. It's a bit of a shame that not all project members are in it (an Angela gets mentioned a few times, but we don't get to hear her talk). The commentary tracks also give some information about what was involved in making the film, but some are more useful then others (I find it hard to concentrate when the comments are not actually about the scene that is displayed). I definitely recommend listening to the one about the music and sound. The rest of the extras and data are interesting, but not really my cup of tea, as they are more targeted to Blender users.
I'm glad I pitched in again to make the Open Movie Project happen. I'm a bit less happy that when the DVD release was announced I had forgotten that I'd already ordered it and so ordered it again. That resulted in great enthousiasm when I found 2 Blender Institute envelopes in the mail, which quickly subsided upon discovering I had also paid for it twice. I'm sure they'll use the extra money to achieve more greatness. Now I'm figuring out what to do with my spare DVD case. The two options I've come up with so far are: donating it to the local library or making it a (gNewSense) bug bounty. Other ideas are welcome.
