Bagani – First Pinoy Open Movie

This year’s Software Freedom Day was organized by the Computer Professionals’ Union and hosted by the University of Santo Tomas on September 19, 2009 from 8am to 5pm. The Pinoy Blender User Group(referred to as the Blender Users Group in the SFD) took part at the Jam Sessions in the afternoon, after the Morning Session wherein guest speakers talked about several topics.

The morning program started at around 9:30am and lasted until past 12pm. In the afternoon session, the UP Linux Users’ Group provided a film showing of the two Open Movies “Big Buck Bunny” and “Elephants Dream” which were produced by Ton Roosendaal, the person behind Blender 3D. The Blender Users Group and the UP Linux Users Group discussed about Blender, GIMP and Open Movies at the the Graphical Tools Jam Session. At the end of the discussions and the open forum, questions were asked to the audience for special prizes.

The session ended, knowing that the spirit of Software Freedom will spread to more people in the future.

Ton Roosendaal was interviewed at the Winter Camp 09 in Amsterdam and spoke the words “Like a Philippine Blender website.” Watch the Video

According to Ton,

“Blender was designed for people who knows what to do”.

“Blender, though it is an opensource it is not meant for everybody, it is meant for artist

who have the passion for 3d and is willing to spend a lot on it, and get a lot from it.”

At the camp Ton pointed out four keys focus point to build up a good

community.

“The first is to understand and facilitate people’s self-interest, that people want to also

get something out of it or will leave”.

“The second point is to not take yourself too seriously”.

“Point three, set ambitious goals. In Blender’s case this means saying to Hollywood…

“up yours” and produce high quality animations without the dominating Hollywood

business model”.

“Point four is to stop the navel-gazing, to jump out of the ivory tower and get those

feet wet, go where the things actually happen without thinking to much on a abstract

level about who you are and how to do thing different and, and this is the last point,

don’t listen to people who talk, but look at what they do”.

“To prove the power of Open Source software by creating a movie that could match itself with any commercial product.” That was Ton Roosendaal’s vision which he then turns into reality by producing the Orange Open Movie Project, “Elephants Dream.” Another one is the Peach Open Movie Project, the “Big Buck Bunny”. Both movies were made entirely using open source software like Blender and all production files were freely available to use. What is an Open Movie?

Open Movies are films produced and distributed using Open Source Software methodologies. The license, contents and the materials used in the film are available and approved for Free Cultural Works. Everyone can see how the movie is being made, can make changes to it and re-create/re-assemble a movie using the source materials.

We believe in Roosendal’s vision and in accordance with that, we came up with an idea of making the first ever Open Movie here in the Philippines. “The Buko Project” entiled “Bagani” is the first project of PBUG. PBUG is an online community which aims to cater to Filipino Blender artists, local and international alike which started in February of 2008.

Bagani is a movie about our first hero, Lapu-Lapu. It also shows the native Filipino and Spanish culture. Bagani which means hero in English was chosen to be the title because it fits the concept of the film. Since it is an Open Movie, everyone can participate by sharing opinions, suggestions and giving contributions for the development of the movie.