Press release – premiere

by - 2012/09/24 36 Comments Production

I’m very proud to announce the premiere of our 4th short film – Tears of Steel.  The online release will be on this website, around 17h UTC, this Wednesday 26 September.
A theatrical premiere will be friday evening in Los Angeles – hosted by ASIFA-Hollywood.

As a result of this crowdfunded project, Blender now covers a full pipeline for vfx artists – starting with camera tracking and roto, all the way to color grading. An official release of Blender is expected early October.

You can download the complete press release here.

Or get the  full press kit, including press release and high resolution graphics. (250 MB).

I would appreciate it if you would give our project attention on your website or in your magazine. Please tell your users that we still sell the DVD box! We still have bills to pay, and there’s a lot of work on Blender to do as always!

Best regards,

-Ton-

  1. Drak says:

    In the previous open movies, the DVDs were sent first before the online release. Why the change?

    • ton says:

      For Sintel we alse released it very soon after we finished the film. Works better than waiting for dvds to arrive everywhere… for some countries it is 2 days, for others 2 weeks or more. The dvds have VERY cool extras though :-)

  2. sortvik says:

    “17h UTC, this Wednesday 26 September.”
    My body is ready.

  3. MrNoodle says:

    So what ‘s the next project ?

    • ton says:

      Next is Blender Conference, then do several Blender stable releases, fixing up old UI stuff in Blender, and of course the dreaded dependency graph! I also want to have time off :-) And then … a feature!

      • S J Bennett says:

        The feature film (still codenamed Gooseberry?) is going to be huge. Looking forward to hearing more about it when the time comes. :)

      • mark says:

        Wow!! Really!!

        I so hope you get the funding for that!! And why not!!

        Can’t wait till Wednesday!

      • anon says:

        GAME GAME GAME GAME!!! :)

        Yo Frankie would have rocked if it had started with GE, rather than with the Cystal Space engine.

        Having a content team focus on improving rapid level creation features ( using library of items, snapping, instant physics, export to hand-held devices eg Android ) would be very cool to see, and the improvements of fast scene editing ( as they would have to create many levels ) would benefit all users.

        Having some of the coders focus on real-time graphics techniques would probably be very interesting for them, to temporarily take their minds off rendering techniques for a bit – maybe even have some overlap that benefits both!

      • 3dementia says:

        Sounds wonderful. Can’t wait for a feature film, you have certainly earned it. Of course, once you are a hot shot director/producer, I assume you will be always flying around in private jets and soaking in jacuzzis with supermodels.

      • AgitAngst says:

        I wish for the next project to be particle-heavy movie…:-)

  4. Jogai says:

    On crowdfunding, are you thinking/have you tought about crowdfunding via indiegogo or kickstarter?

  5. JulianHzg says:

    One question that I find difficult to find an answer to: Will the complete movie be rendered, released in 4k or is that limited to single-frame renders and the filming/production pipeline?

    Also: Very much looking forward to the release.

    • ton says:

      The pipeline is 4k, until we render, then it is HD. Mostly to save render time, frustrating slow file IO and of course – we cannot preview 4k!

      • JulianHzg says:

        Ok, thank you for clarifying that.

      • Donnerland says:

        So is there any chance to get a 4k version anytime?

        • ton says:

          We will upload all the original 4k footage files. So you can re-render it all in 4k if you want. Estimated render time… 200+ computerweeks (8 core 3 Ghz).

          • Josh Duncan says:

            So, if I understood that correctly, you aren’t rendering in 4k at all? Or you mean, you’re rendering in 4k and just releasing frames? It’ll be sad if you don’t release 4k frames as I was looking forward to putting together a demo pack for Sony’s new TV’s! :( Oh well :P

            Josh

  6. Big Fan says:

    Will you have 720p available too? and roughly how many MB would that be to download?and how many MB/s to play?
    I am keen to see this movie in the largest size I can view it but I have consider my hardware isn’t that fast and make sure I don’t use all my monthly bandwidth in one hit.
    Should be awesome though. Roll on Wednesday. :)

    • ton says:

      We will open up with pushing everyone to youtube first. That will keep our site running :)

      In the meantime .mov .mkv and .mp4 versions get seeded to mirrors for download or for torrenting as well.

      • lol768 says:

        Can we mirror the files to enable users to download them more easily and take some of the strain away?

  7. Ranjith Siji says:

    Wow Awesome. Waiting for the move very eagerly. Also waiting for the next blender plans.

  8. jan the freeze says:

    At what time does it go live?

  9. JamesNZ says:

    Awwwwwwww!! I’m so excited :D

  10. My Connection is ready…

  11. Carsten says:

    I think also it is time for a open-game now again ;-)

    Target: Deliver a game for Android! ;-) (and of course to have a pipeline to do so)

    Carsten

    • zanzobro says:

      Setting up a pipeline isn’t something you do overnight, just because it has a label of “open source” on it. I think people need to have a more realistic view of projects like this. It’s a bit naive. Never minimize the importance of tools that don’t have an “open source” label on them.

      There was a lot of blood, sweat and tears involved because of the software used. Congrats to the team for working through it.

  12. Wes Burke says:

    Congrats guys! Pretty excited to see this and be sure to get some sleep after the party of course! ;)

  13. bendo says:

    Any real advantage of using Blender for end-to-end versus using other tools that may have been more efficient or better, in the long run? I’m all for Blender and open source. I just wonder if the negative aspects of Blender versus the competition will ever come to light in a discussion about this film. For large opensource projects like Blender to be taken seriously by the community as a whole, the bad needs to be discussed along with the good so people know what they’re getting in to.

  14. Kirado says:

    Congrats on the release guys! Very impressive.