At the beginning of this month, what some claim is the first fully open source full length movie was released on the internet. Boy Who Never Slept written, directed, and starring Solomon Rothman and made for almost no money has now been viewed around 200,000 times. Every aspect of the movie is available online including: the raw footage, the finished product, the audio track, and script.
The Boy Who Never Slept is the story of an insomniac who begins an online relationship with a teenage girl. The story takes a turn from romantic comedy to a darker more tragic love story. Rothman’s goal was to create a full length movie with the resources he had. It’s not a bad movie considering the budget and the amateur actors and creators, but the interesting thing is the free nature of the work. The full complete film is available under a type of Creative Commons license that allows free use for non-commercial use while the source files Creative Commons licenses allows changes and use.
Rothman’s film is unique in that there are very few films that allow there source files to be picked apart and used by people on the internet. Elephant’s Dream is an animated short from earlier this year that was made with all open source software. The finished product and the production files are available for view and use under Creative Commons. This film may have been this first of its kind.
There are a growing number of legally free movies available. A lot of older films make it on to the web after their copyright runs out. Add these to hopefully more films like Elephant’s Dream and Boy Who Never Slept and perhaps users will beat out Hollywood in the online video market.
Article comments
1 - Peter
It is *not* the first full-length Creative Commons movie.
The first open source movie was the German "Route 66 - the movie".
http://www.route66-der-film.de/
2 - Peter
Actually the guys who made the "Route 66" movie are currently working on the worlds first open source *HD* movie: "Die letzte Droge"
http://www.vebfilm.net/
3 - Phillip Winn
Peter, your comment reads as if the article claimed this *is* the first full-length Creative Commons movie, which it doesn't. Neither does it claim that this is the first open source movie, only pointing out that some people claim so.
I can't read German. Does Route 66 come with raw footage for re-editing? Being released into the Creative Commons is a good thing, but not necessarily the defition of "open source" when the label is applied to films, which is kinda silly anyway.
I suspect that the folks claiming that *this* movie is the first are suggesting that raw footage is required to make the claim. Since OSI won't certify movies, it'll be up to whomever screams the loudest, I suspect.
4 - Victor Plenty
Raw footage for re-editing fits the open source ethos quite well. Consider what's already been done with at least two re-edits of The Phantom Menace which have been circulated to an avid underground, but are hard for the average person to acquire.
What might be possible if the raw footage, sound effects files, visual effects data, and other source materials were freely available for talented editors to tell the story of Anakin Skywalker in a less hammerfisted style than George Lucas tends to use?
Many of the results would be worse than the official version, of course. But some could be significantly better. Many report at least one of the "Phantom Edit" versions was much better than the official version. Making that kind of improvement possible is the whole point of the movement toward open source.