Well things seem to be moving forwards
You may now freely start complaining as is the tradition that you didn’t get the chance to be considered as the director
Trailer
Support the Project http://cloud.blender.org/gooseberry/
No way! super cool. Seems like an awesome guy for director.
Really looking forward to know more, above all what they would try to push with Blender development, which kind of tools/pipeline.
Director’s vimeo page has also some little curious tests such as this one
a mood test for an upcoming short film entirely made with blender
Huh, does anybody have any idea about what the plot of the movie is??
Nice!
Regarding the details about the film:
Feature 3D animation film
● By network of studios worldwide
(UK, France, Finland, Spain, USA, Argentina,
Brazil, Indonesia, India, Australia, …)
● Main coordination/development Blender Institute
● Made with Open Source, released as Open Movie
● Oct – April: concept/script/preproduction
● April 2014 – Oct 2015: realization
● Announcement at Blender Conference Amsterdam
http://2buntu.com/1382/blender-foundation-announces-project-gooseberry/
AFAIK, nothing else is currently known.
Congrats to Mathieu. If you haven’t seen his movie Franssiss, check it out…
Steve S
Props to Mathieu,
This is going to be an awesome project, calibration from so many great people, studios, developers…
Going to be epic!!!
Looking forward to see the progress of the launch 
Cheers,
~Tung
I like the video test, that is excellent!
I hate to be the one guy that has to come out and say it but… from what I have seen on his vimeo page, he doesnt seem to have any background with full length film direction, in fact it seems like most of his work is abstract and music video like. Not really a good thing in my opinion. I was looking for something that shows more vision, the ability to use cutaways for narrative purposes and transition, something with a bit more narrative rather than the abstract visualizations.
Coming from a film background myself, I havent seen anything that suggests is a good pick for the implied scope of the project. I could be completely wrong though and it works out best. The track record for open movies isnt very good though, and often how bad they are serves as a kind bad marketing, as if the goal was to push people away instead.
Well, the Institute doesn’t really have the money to get a true A-list director such as Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson or even a B-list one, so in one sense, the best choices with the Institute’s budget are those who have done a lot of work in Blender animation.
Though when I look at the Institute’s track record of making shorts that play more like art projects and tech demos than something with true cohesion, I would be left to wonder if Gooseberry will be more of the same, perhaps Ton should delay the project for another year (and use the delay to give more time to work on the plot) because of the amazing features and overhauls that are slated for the early 2.7x days that will make such projects a lot easier (Cycles volumetrics, viewport revamp, depsgraph overhaul, ect…).
Or maybe it’s best for the Foundation to just kick the idea of doing open movies altogether and instead focus on Blender development and the support of movie projects being done in other studios, I could see their track record making it a lot tougher to hit pre-order goals for one thing (especially those from people who don’t use Blender as their main app). I know this is Ton’s dream, but how are we to know that the curtains haven’t already closed on it.
Though looking at Blendernation, it seems like the new director is very popular in the Blender community so the project might gather support from Blender users, apparently his characters are well liked but there might be some complications transferring that to a feature-film depending on the intended genre being targeted.
Wow - while his demoreel are awesome, I wish some of it get cut, specially the scene of that guy running with the shoe
But still, awesome. And to be frank, I don’t care much, just, whoa…
I am inclined to think this project is too ambitious.
Its great that Ton sets a challenge but its just too big a bite this time IMO.
They only do 10-15 mins so far and usually it struggles to make a good story by the deadline.
A 30-40 min movie would be a good stepping stone I think, at least prove out the distributed work first.
Who knows maybe Peter Jackson would like to be involved in a full movie in a couple of years.
His name would help legitimise a Blender project to a wider audience and kick the toy or hobbyist label to the gutter. 
Actually, I think some of the money is going into development, which will make what you are saying to happens. That was almost the case with most open movie. Tools needed to make it are developed while doing it. And they want to develop it while using it, so things are not developed in a vacum. I know it could have been better (the open movies) but since I get Blender for free, and watching those movies for free, can’t complain much.
I think Mathieu seems to be weird enough to make something of real interest. Now only if the script was on the same level. The most movies I like were made by directors that don’t limit themself’s.
This is really exciting. Btw don’t slam a director before he finishes. Plenty of big names moved from shorts or tvc production straight up to movie length.
ain’t they seriously pushing it with preproduction and production. But than again the quality of the open movies has never been high so more of the same than.
Tech demo I guess. But the director mighr bring a long standing project too.
Great opportunity to push collaborative workflow improvements in Blender.
It’s important to remember that the primary goal with these open movies is to push the development of Blender, showcase its capabilities and to create viable production pipelines. Gooseberry will obviously take that idea a step further with the inclusion of multiple studios.
With that said, I can agree that the quality of the productions have been lacking in some aspects. But considering the limited budget and timeframe, one can only expect so much. To be honest though, I’ve always found the open movies enjoyable, much more so than certain A-list feature productions. cough Transformers caugh Smurfs
Also, as 3DPoint wrote, don’t be quick with slamming the director for his previous work. Peter Jackson for instance was directing splatter flicks in the 80’s before switching to mainstream movies.
Too early to dismiss the project based on a look dev test, just way too early for that.
My opinion of the Open Movies is positive.