Reprise the Fun!

In the times of big-budget studio films, see what a bunch of folks can do with almost no budget, free software and lots of talent!

For links to our films and other information about the festival, see the buttons in the sidebar on the right side of the page. We are presenting four short films for your enjoyment and to showcase the open film movement. Instead of our usual serious educational videos, we're presenting these entertainment films just for the fun of it. We have a very large and capable media platform, we occasionally use it for extracurricular entertainment. Enjoy!

Illudium Film Society's Online Film Festival

Last year, we conducted our first Online Film Festival on March 6-8, 2015. The festival was presented in cooperation with the Illudium Film Society. During the festival, our visitors viewed the films we presented and voted for the awards presented by the Governors of the Illudium Film Society.

The film festival was a great success. During the run of the two-and-a-half-day festival, we fielded almost seven-thousand requests to view the films being presented.

We are reprising the film festival just for the fun of doing it again and to provide some online entertainment for our students and visitors.

This is a totally online festival. We are presenting the festival's films via high-quality Adaptive Streaming Media Services. Details can be found via the buttons in the sidebar to the right. All you need to participate is a broadband connection and a web browser.

Our online film festival is FREE and open to anyone as a public service.

In the times of big-budget studio films, see what a bunch of folks can do with almost no budget, free software and lots of talent!

The Films Being Presented

Four of our films are from the open-source film movement and are short subjects from 10-15 minutes in duration. They are multiple award winners from other international film festivals. The four open-source films we will be presenting are:

We proudly present all five films in our first online film festival. To screen the films, click on the links above or use the buttons found in the sidebar.

All four films and all of the software used to make these films are free, open-source or very low cost. Also, the four of the five films being presented as well as all of their work product are also open source and freely available without licensing fees. The films are free to display anywhere.

The fifth film is "From Little Acorns" (2010), which has been carried on this website for the last three years as a reference test of our Adaptive Streaming capabilities. For the film festival, it has been re-mastered and re-encoded using our new media platform. It is shown here as a reference sample of the capabilities of our new platform for our current students who have seen this sample from our old platform (which was very good but has been surpassed by our new one.)

Festival Awards

Sunday night, March 8th, after live viewer voting closed, we awarded the Festival Governors Award and the Viewers Choice Award. The Governors' Award was granted by the Governors of the Illudium Film Society who are all film buffs, film historians or film curators. Votes from viewers cast during the run of the festival decided the Viewers Choice Award. The straight number of file views determined the Most Viewed Award.

Voting for the awards is now closed. The awards from our first Online Film Festival are as follows:

The Governors Award – “Sintel”
Viewers Choice Award – “Big Buck Bunny”
Most-Viewed Award - "From Little Acorns"

Just Have Fun

Originally, we are presenting the online film festival just for the fun of hosting it and as a full-scale production test of the new media platform and content delivery network (CDN) we just finished implementing. We used the traffic from the festival to get operational data from the performance of our media platform. However, all of that was behind the scenes. We simply wanted our users to enjoy the films being presented.

We do our own professional media production for this website, and that means that we are filmmakers too. We love film as an art form and appreciate the creative work of others. We are delighted to present these films and will enjoy them as much as anyone.

Note from Ton

As a standard courtesy, I sent a note to Ton Roosendaal, Chairman Blender Foundation and Producer of the four Blender films we're showing, to apprise him of the use of his films in this film festival. I received the following note back from him:

Hi Bill,

Thanks for letting me know, it always makes me happy to read about people being able to use our free/open work. I hope our work inspires people to become creative with technology as well. So many stories to tell, so many discoveries to be made.

All the best,

-Ton-

Significance of the Films Being Presented

The four short films being present are significant because they are some of the best examples of the emerging open-source film movement. There simply aren't that many purely open source films. The open-source film movement is young, only about twelve years old. In that time, only a handful of films has been released. Of those films, the Blender Foundation has made four of them; the four being presented here.

Because these films fall under the Creative Commons license, we can show them online in this festival. We simply aren't able to show online any of the many commercial films because their copyright holders would never allow it. These online source films present one of the few opportunities to conduct an online film festival.

Please Consider Making a Donation to Blender

The Blender Foundation receives no fees for displaying their films. If you enjoyed them, please consider making a donation directly to the Blender Foundation. Blender is currently working on their next film that will be a full-length feature. Any donation, even a small one, will help them achieve their goal. If you are interested, click here for details.

First Online Film Festival - March 6-8, 2015