Apertus August and July Newsletter

[Apertus - open source cinema]

Welcome to a very special edition of the Apertus Newsletter! We're very excited with the announcement we're about to do, and we also have an emotional collection of the good times we had at the Libre Software Meeting (LSM).


Axiom camera announcement
The project of the new camera has evolved to an actual public announcement. Axiom will be the new objective the whole community will be headed to.

The Axiom Camera is an open 4K Super 35mm camera with global shutter that will be able to record high speed video at up to 15 f-stops of latitude. It will be able to output uncompressed raw in the CinemaDNG format.

We are committed to reach a target price below 10.000$. In order to collect all the funds for development we are preparing a crowd-funding campaign which will be announced once we're ready (please be patient). Here is a first concept render of the Apertus Axiom camera head:



if you're not into watching huge renderers with few words, what about official announcements with many words in the website?

LSM booth and the public face of Apertus
The 13th Libre Software Meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, has been quite remarkable for Apertus. But instead of a boring recollection of what happened, let us quote Apertus founder Oscar Spierenburg:

“I arrived a bit late on Sunday in Geneva at the LSM with Minske, my girlfriend and film producer. The Apertus booth was about to be moved from this big ball room, to a large university hall, so jumping in to help out packing and carrying things around was the first thing to do. Philippe Jadin, who lives in Brussels and is a good friend for years already, was there. But this was the first time I met Sebastian in real life after six years.

Yes, he is as crazy as imagined, and I guess I'm as crazy as he imagined. Sasha Cohen was also present, and at diner he asked me: "It must be a very special experience for you to have started this project years ago and finally meet everyone in real life?" Strange to say that the answer is actually 'no'. I guess it's because Apertus is indeed something special and the bond and friendship has always been real from the start. A few days later, Juan Biain and Ina arrived and it was the same thing: as if we 'really' knew each other already for years.

The convention itself was nice, Apertus and Dynamic Perception's stage-one dolly got a lot of good exposure. We met some interesting people, had diner with some of them.”

The booth was a meeting place with a long list of potential allies and partners for the future: The folks from Ubicast and cinemagis, the EBU (European Broadcaster Union), the people developing an aerial video drone using Elphel cameras, and many more projects and people. But the most important was the Apertus members meeting in person, it was the first time we met face to face and... oh well, let us quote Sebastian about that meeting:

“The Apertus project was born six years ago and for this entire time most of the people working on the project have never met each other before in person. The distribution of members around all parts of the world (from Brazil to Russia and from Australia to Europe) has of course done its share to keep us far away from each other but finally in July 2012 the Apertus core & Community met for the very first time in the heart of Europe.

We had no idea how the meeting would turn out or if we would like each other. There was a chance that we would all hate each other on sight and resort to physical violence but fortunately that was not the case! We worked together, cooked together, ate and drank together, celebrated together and created the basis for long lasting personal friendship beyond our virtual presence.”

if you're really into what happened at the LSM, you cold always check the LSM blog from the Apertus website... right here

Presentations by the Apertus members
Sebastian Pichelhofer and Sasha Cohen, both Apertus members, have made presentations at the “13es Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre”.

Sebastian gave a presentation about Apertus and its community and the projects goals and objectives. He made the first public announcement about Axiom, our new camera (shortly afterwards the website traffic sky-rocketed with lots of news sites and blogs writing about it). Then he talked about the lost freedom with the digital cinema revolution and how we at Apertus intend to regain it. He also explained the cooperation with Dynamic Perception and showed some video examples.

Sasha Cohen gave a talk about “the community as power source” where he analysed how digital communities interact with each other and what “nodes” and channels need to be present for the community to collaborate and grow successfully. He used the Apertus project as example in order to explain how these key points work.

a workshop and a movie being shot in Brazil
Project member Flavio Soares will soon start shooting a movie in Brazil using a very special Elphel rig. He and his crew will be shooting a couple of shorts in order to test the camera and the workflow before diving into the big movie project, the first is named: “Cada sorriso é um flash!” or "Every smile is a flash!". There are already some photographs of shooting the first scenes available in flavio's blog here. They will also present first footage on the website soon.



At the same time he and his crew are making presentations about "Digital Cinema with Free Software on Open Hardware" using the movie they are working on as case study, explaining the workflow and other aspects of their digital cinema journey.



You can read the full story in this forum thread.

The forthcoming gala at the Prix Ars Electronica
Before we finish, we would like to remind you that at the end of August, Oscar and Sebastian will attend to the Prix Ars Electronica Gala. They will receive an Award of Distinction that the Apertus Community won in the “Digital Communities” category.

That's all for these two months, see you next month!

Discuss this newsletter here.

The Apertus Team