Sintel, the Durian Open Movie Project

We’re just back from the final-final-final 35mm scope screening with dolby digital, and I’m still glowing from pride, excitement and emotion. All pieces have fallen together, and with Jan’s soundtrack this is truly incredible good stuff!

So much thanks to everyone – also to you reader – and so much gratitude for all the great work I’ve witnessed in the past year! <sob!>

The online release date has to be finalized yet, but aim is before or on October 1st. DVDs then should also being printed, and ship 1-2 weeks after. Stay tuned 🙂

-Ton-

With Murphy’s law happily working (studio server died, no network), Pablo and Soenke pulled an all-nighter to get all frames properly graded and transferred to DPX on a USB drive. Each and every frame got a double check, and a dozen or so frames needed a re-render even. A test screening at film lab Cineco yesterday showed it all was just perfect!

Meanwhile Jan Morgenstern went to Hamburg for a 2-day final mastering session in Konken Studios. They made us their excellently equipped dubbing stage available, allowing Jan and Stephan Konken to finalize a true theatrical master for Sintel.

Today Cineco Amsterdam prepares everything to get it printed on their Arrilaser, so we can get official Dolby SR-D cinemascope 35mm film copies. First copy screening for us is tuesday. Wednesday the copy goes to the Netherlands Film Festival.

That also means we can start now on DVD mastering, a NTSC and PAL disc (with film, 60 minute documentary, out-takes, 4-split version, extra credits, subtitles), a 8 GB DVD-ROM video disc (the film in various formats, tutorial videos, other extras) and a 8 GB DVD-ROM data disc with all the relevant files and docs to examine our work and allowing to re-render it all.

Officially today is also last day to order the Sintel DVD box in our store, if you want your name to appear on the DVD!

Thanks!

-Ton-

Hoi! (now you know how to wave in Dutch!)

Sintel Cover

So! exciting times here at the Blender Institute, today is our very-really-thistimeforsure last rendering day, next to some color grade we need to do still, but then is time to grab those big .EXR files and convert them into friendly DPX’s for the guys at Cineco to do magic with it and turn them into 21312 stills of 35mm chemical glory.

That means we’re getting close to our (real!) Premiere, so in order to help us make some noise, 3D World is widely covering Blender topics on October’s issue, Sintel will be on cover + interview time with Ton (Producer), Colin (Director), and William (Animator), and even BBB got a column in “A list of the all the Best CG shorts out there” 🙂

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With a pre-screening copy we are already submitting to festivals, the first approval now is in, for Siggraph! Here’s a snippet of their email:

We are very pleased to inform you that your submission “Sintel” has been accepted to Animation Theater of the SIGGRAPH Asia 2010 Computer Animation Festival.

Our International jury, a diverse group of leading animation experts, selected your piece from among the hundreds of entries for the festival due to its high quality, interest, and impact on the SIGGRAPH Asia Community. Congratulations!

Siggraph Asia will be in Seoul, South Korea, from 14-18 december. I probably will have to go then! 🙂

-Ton-

(Added Asian styled Sintel mockup from David !)

Hi all!

Here’s the names of artists we’ve used character models and/or animations from, for the market scene.
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We’ve delivered 2 minutes of dpx files, straight from Blender sequencer, to the film lab Cineco here in Amsterdam. The first digital projection in their grading room looked brilliant! (Gigantic new Barco projector). It’s now being moved to the Arri Laser to make 35 mm film, anamorphic 2.35:1 aspect. In a few days we’ll get a screening. Exciting!

Thanks to Blender’s linear workflow now, we should be able to give them perfect linear DPX files, for them to convert to wonderful film colors. However, it’s never as simple as it seems!

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Based on all feedback sent to the shop at blender.org address, the credit list has been updated. Please visit the page to check if this has been correctly handled. The list for people who bought the DVD after sept 15 last year will be posted here mid september.

I also need everyone’s help to get the credit for modelers corrected. We are not going to add nicknames in the film credit, only real ones. Below is the complete list of people we’ve used props from, mostly modeled during the modeling sprint. I’ve asked the blendswap.com maintainer to help as well 🙂
Post remarks about this below, or mail me (ton at blender org).

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