Hello, I was just thinking about - why Blender Foundation doesn’t make commercial movies like Spring but full-length to show in cinemas? It would greatly increase income to Foundation.
What do you think?
That’s not what the BF does. They promote open movies occasionally, but they are not in the business of making commercial things. That being said - check out Next Gen on Netflix – commercial feature length film made with Blender.
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Main reason is because one need 70 milion USD on average to make an animated feature. Imagine how fast blender would be developed and how many new features we would have with that amout of money would be spend of improving the software.
There are plans to make agent 327 feature in the future but it needs a lot of funding.
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If you finance it, may be will make…
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Several reasons I can think of…
- It would take far too long to finish a single film.
- They’d have to pay a full crew and cast for up to four years which would cost far more than the BF could afford.
- Films would have to be released in theatres to earn back their budgets and there are a few problems with that:
- the BF is not a big enough name to be taken seriously by distributors,
- open source movies may not fit the criteria laid out by distributors, and
- without at least one star doing a voice, no feature-length animated film gets distribution.
So, the upshot of all this is that the BF would be at a huge disadvantage when it came time to negotiate a distribution contract. That means they’d never earn back their budget and the BF would go broke.
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It is an excellent idea in a lot of ways. Currently they are planning to make a feature as has been mentioned.
But what it comes down to is having a story that is able to be told on a budget. In theory, there really isn’t any reason why they could not do that. But it would really cone down to finding great, but simple story. Simple as in a max of 3 characters.
Then there is the crap shoot of the distribution and so on. Anyway it is a nice idea. But it would take a lot of forethought and planning to pull off without allowing it to get out of hand.
Or why not even one for Youtube or something??
From my understanding the point of making “short” movies by the Foundation is to help the developement of Blender in some form of production instead of doing it in dark by the developers.
Those shorts require a small team of Artists & small fortune which they can collect in various ways but for a full length commercial movie then the scope is much much bigger it’s not just financially but also proficient teams (Produces, Leads, Supervisors,Designers…etc) just take a look at the end credits of any animated movie and you’ll see hundreds & hundreds of people.
So for the Foundation to do it by themselves is almost impossible especially that they don’t make any money, they’ll have to get some Company or Studio who are actually using Blender to help them with everything.
The idea is nice conceptually but for open source/ Blender then what’s the goal, is it to help the development or for making revenues from the movie or both?
I think Blender is past short films now. They are past the point of making cute little shorts to show the world “The Little Engine That Could”.
Blender is moving necessarily into another level. And the plan now is to get the Blender Institute more funding and grow to be a much larger operation to the point it can play in that arena.
There is no way Blender development will ever raise to the level of producing feature length films - at the same level as, say Maya - unless the Blender Institute actually starts making feature films.
And that is the current plan. It will take longer but they are working on it as we speak. But Hollywood being fickle as it is…
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To do that they need to make connections with the streaming services like Netflix, Amazon… otherwise where do you think they’ll get that kind of funding? and like i have said they need people with working experience in this kind of large scale production with Blender as their main Software.
I don’t know. Why don’t you ask them? I didn’t make these plans.
They have met with writers and agents in Hollywood. And I have lived in Hollywood long enough to know that does not mean jack. This could be a years long project, just to line up the funding, finalize a script and so on.
But I do think Netflix is a good place to shop it. A quality international film is right up their alley.
Anyway, Ton has talked about this a lot. I would say to answer your questions search around for interviews and such.
The information is all out there. But please anybody correct me if I am wrong about any of it.
The shorts were always community funded and a way to advance Blender development and try out new things. So from a development process I would guess the short format works the best as it’s a quicker turn around time and much smaller budget. Funding and launching a feature is a far far … far bigger and more complex proposition and time and staffing outlay than producing a short.
Cosmos Laundromat was envisioned to be the Foundations first full length and community funded open feature. So I guess not a commercial release in the normal sense but it was still supposed to be feature length.
It was supposed to have been a multi chaptered film but one continual story throughout. All of the chapters being in different animation styles and made with Blender based studios and creators world wide. Each chapter having the individual identity’s and esthetics’ of the studios involved.
I still think it’s sad it didn’t work out. I met up with some of the guys setting up the London branch about getting involved at the time. But there are now plans now to continue it with the next originally planned chapter funded mainly thorough the cloud.
Also now Agent 327 is being aimed at being the first full length commercial animated feature from the Foundation. The short was a proof of concept if I remember right and it’s still the plan to get it produced as a full feature made by the Foundation and in Amsterdam.
But several full length commercial animated features have now been made, and are being made with a Blender pipeline from other studios. Such as Netflix’s ‘ Next Gen ‘ from Tangent and the Oscar nominated ‘ I Lost My Body ‘
All the best to everybody. Stay safe. Take care.