The visual effects of “Tears of Steel” have nothing to envy big sci-fi film productions from major cinema companies that collapse theatres worldwide. However, this shortfilm was not produced in Hollywood but in the Netherlands, was developed through open software and has not follow an usual circuti of distribution for this kind of productions, instead, can be found entirely online and purchased on a DVD with extra content.

This 12-minutes shortfilm, online released on September 2012, is the fourth open movie production by Dutch studio for open 3D projects Blender Institute. An independent production financed by its online community through crowdfunding and the support of the Netherlands Film Fund, Ginegrid consortium corporate sponsors such as Google.

The project was an incentive to develop a free and open source pipeline for visual effects in film industry, which uses the creation software Blender 3D, developed by this institute. Following the philosophy of a true open movie, the final production and all the material developed on the filmmaking process is released under Creative Commons licences, so other filmmakers can study and reproduce the details of the creation process. Continue reading →