Apertus December 2012 Newsletter
25 views
Skip to first unread message
flavio soares
Dec 20, 2012, 4:52:43 PM12/20/12
to ape...@googlegroups.com
Apertus December 2012 Newsletter
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of our monthly newsletter!
The dawn of the Apertus Year
At the end of 2011, we named 2012 as “the Apertus Year”. At that moment, we believed a worldwide crowd funding campaign for the development of Axiom would have been ready by now. The campaign hasn’t occurred yet. On the other hand, many steps have been taken to make it possible in the near future - the most important of them can be recalled below, at the bottom of this newsletter. May 2013 be nicknamed “Development Year”, because that’s exactly what we intend to do!
Everything in its right place
Now, what would be the most proper way to bid farewell to this cycle in an Open Source Cinema community? Perhaps, by showing the teaser to the first digital cinema narrative film ever made with the open hardware camera Elphel, linux and free software?
Our Brazilian-based staff have been actively working on ‘Floresta Vermelha // Red Forest’ for the last 9 months or so – their base research dating for 2 years. They gathered a team of around 30 people to record a 19-minute fictional film shot at 2.3k RAW Anamorphic (2304x960). Shooting was done for 5 days in October and editing, titles, post production, sound design and original soundtrack were then all made in November.
On a Friday, November the 30th, the result was shown to 130-150 people at a party in Sao Paulo. The band Mamma Cadela performed the soundtrack live in an event that can be considered more a happening, Velvet Underground style, than a traditional cinema projection. Now the film is going to enter some international festivals and exhibitions, but will eventually be published online with a Creative Commons license for everyone to see, probably by mid-2013.
Linux football team: hammering
It doesn’t end there. The Linux guys have been hammering this year! The ever-present crew from the Kinoraw project (Spain) have made a short 720p HDV film during their Open Source Cinema Workshop, hosted in Telenoika, Barcelona. Below, you can check their Elphel-based recording setup and resulting movie.
(click on the image to be redirected to the movie)
Biel MacGyver Bestué, also continued his research on an Elphel-based system that resulted in a nice moody short movie. Low natural light, pixel binning summing and streaming datarates – they all fit together in La Garrotxa.
(click on the image to be redirected to the movie)
Hollywood style
Project Hollywood is also up and running. Following the interview with Blender’s founder Ton Roosendaal in October, US-based Tobias Deml has made an extensive talk with Bob Primes, ASC, a seasoned 73-year old cinematographer and professor at the American Film Institute.
In Austria, Sebastian Pichelhofer entered the jazz by interviewing Kurt Brazda, one of the founders of the Austrian Association of Cinematographers and where he served as association president for more than 25 years, and Alexander Boboschewski, Director of Photography and Steadicam-operator, whose credits include winning an Academy Award in 2008.
The year reviewed: the most important things we saw in 2012
In January, we announced 2012 would be a very important year, “the year of Apertus”. We asked people to contribute on the creation of a new logo and published the automated workflow for Elphel linux users. By then, it had become clear to us that we should start a worldwide crowd funding campaign to go further.
The first steps towards explaining the Apertus Project came in February, with the release of a video by Sebastian Pichelhofer. This was the first great community effort of the year, for the video gained subtitles in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Catalan. Community members Nathan Clark and Winnie Yang also blew us away with their Apertus rig for stereo 3D cinematography.
The discussion on the new logo had reached almost 9,700 views and 216 replies by March, so we created a dedicated workforce for the issue. ElphelVision started being coded to Android and we announced the conceptual plans for an application called Open Cine designed for processing/developing DNG sequences. The second great community involvement came that same month, with the collective taskforce to write the subscription to Prix Ars Electronica 2012: International Competition for CyberArts.
Having organized our newsletter by 2011, we expanded our channels of communication in April, giving birth to an official Twitter and IRC channels. Community members Carlos Padial and Simón Vialás started appearing on the news with their Kinoraw project, dedicated to create a workflow for Elphel 353 footage based on Blender. Later that month, we announced officially the plans to create “an entirely new, complete digital cinema camera” - this was Axiom being presented to the world (even though its name was still a secret), with Dynamic Perception as our partners.
By May, we had won an Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica in the Digital Communities category, a 5,000 € money prize. With our plans to develop Axiom, we started discussing the creation of a non-profit legal entity called, at present, the Apertus Foundation. Sebastian participated in the Linux Week Vienna, held in Austria, and the members of Kinoraw were hosting monthly meetings at Telenoika, Barcelona - they had also successfully ended a crowd funding campaign for their research project.
In June, the Floresta Vermelha // Red Forest team, based in Brazil, hosted the first of two talks related to their project - the creation of the first narrative film done with an open hardware camera and free software. Their workshops happened in the Centre of Spanish Culture in São Paulo. As part of their research, they published a reference article called "A somewhat comprehensible guide to using Elphel as a Digital Cinema camera".
July was a very special month. Sebastian Pichelhofer and Sasha Cohen held talks at The Libre Software Meeting, in Geneva, that took place between July 7th - 12th. But this was just part of the fun: Geneva saw the first ever meeting of Apertus members in person, Axiom’s name and specs were also publicly announced at this event, with Apertus and Dynamic Perception's stage-one dolly receiving a lot of good exposure. As Oscar Spierenburg, Apertus’ founder put it, “at dinner, Sasha 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.”
At the end of August, Sebastian, and Oscar attended the Prix Ars Electronica Festival to receive the award of distinction that our project was awarded in May. They delivered a presentation at “THE BIG PICTURE – Everyday Rebellion/Prix Forum II – Digital Communities”.
By September, we were having a long discussion on ‘How open can Open Hardware truly be’? Whilst Axiom appeared on our horizon, it brought with it some concerns over how to best protect it whilst opening up our designs same time. As we wrote in the newsletter, “since we are attempting to establish an open-hardware business, we will need to operate above a certain income threshold if we hope to cover the costs of future hardware development. We want our soon-to-be-formed company/organisation/association to manufacture and sell Axiom units (amongst other Apertus designed open-hardware), for a very fair price in the open hardware spirit. What concerns us is which Open License can best suit our business model?” At the same time, Kinoraw announced they were going to deliver a presentation at the Open Source Hardware Convention in Madrid and the Centre of Spanish Culture in Sao Paulo released a video documenting the Floresta Vermelha // Red Forest project.
In October, Apertus’ members Carlos Padial and Simón Vialás attended the Blender Conference 2012, in Amsterdam. They established an awesome landmark, having created a fully functional workflow for editing JP4 RAW files generated by the Elphel camera in Blender. They also met Cédric Demiddeleer and Philippe Jadin there for an interview with Blender’s founder Ton Roosendaal for the new born Project Hollywood - a documentary film that will explore the revolutionary possibilities that an Open-Source camera can bring to the film industry.
The Apertus Association saw the light of day during that month. Sebastian dealt with all the paperwork and based it in Austria. We also took the chance to publicize our two channels for donations: Paypal & Flattr. In an election amongst the members, Sebastian was elected for Chairman, Oscar for Vice Chairman and Philippe Jadin & Flavio Soares for the unofficial Interim Advisory Board Council.
November was full of interesting developments. Oscar had finished the script for his début feature film, titled Vanitas, currently in pre-production phase. The Elphel company announced the plans for a new camera design: the Elphel 393. Floresta Vermelha // Red Forest finished successfully a crowd funding campaign, shot their short movie and were editing/post producing it. Apertus participated in the 'How Do You Do' event, in Ghent, Belgium. The dedicated graphics design group created in March - Nathan Clark and Pete Flanagan - released the new Apertus Logo and Branding. Finally, Sebastian wrote an extensive analysis called “Why Kickstarter moved closer to Axiom and at the same time further away”, raising our concerns with Axiom’s planned worldwide crowd funding campaign, to happen in 2013.
Discuss this newsletter in this link.
Stay tuned,
The Apertus Team
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of our monthly newsletter!
The dawn of the Apertus Year
At the end of 2011, we named 2012 as “the Apertus Year”. At that moment, we believed a worldwide crowd funding campaign for the development of Axiom would have been ready by now. The campaign hasn’t occurred yet. On the other hand, many steps have been taken to make it possible in the near future - the most important of them can be recalled below, at the bottom of this newsletter. May 2013 be nicknamed “Development Year”, because that’s exactly what we intend to do!
Everything in its right place
Now, what would be the most proper way to bid farewell to this cycle in an Open Source Cinema community? Perhaps, by showing the teaser to the first digital cinema narrative film ever made with the open hardware camera Elphel, linux and free software?
Our Brazilian-based staff have been actively working on ‘Floresta Vermelha // Red Forest’ for the last 9 months or so – their base research dating for 2 years. They gathered a team of around 30 people to record a 19-minute fictional film shot at 2.3k RAW Anamorphic (2304x960). Shooting was done for 5 days in October and editing, titles, post production, sound design and original soundtrack were then all made in November.
On a Friday, November the 30th, the result was shown to 130-150 people at a party in Sao Paulo. The band Mamma Cadela performed the soundtrack live in an event that can be considered more a happening, Velvet Underground style, than a traditional cinema projection. Now the film is going to enter some international festivals and exhibitions, but will eventually be published online with a Creative Commons license for everyone to see, probably by mid-2013.
Linux football team: hammering
It doesn’t end there. The Linux guys have been hammering this year! The ever-present crew from the Kinoraw project (Spain) have made a short 720p HDV film during their Open Source Cinema Workshop, hosted in Telenoika, Barcelona. Below, you can check their Elphel-based recording setup and resulting movie.
(click on the image to be redirected to the movie)
Biel MacGyver Bestué, also continued his research on an Elphel-based system that resulted in a nice moody short movie. Low natural light, pixel binning summing and streaming datarates – they all fit together in La Garrotxa.
(click on the image to be redirected to the movie)
Hollywood style
Project Hollywood is also up and running. Following the interview with Blender’s founder Ton Roosendaal in October, US-based Tobias Deml has made an extensive talk with Bob Primes, ASC, a seasoned 73-year old cinematographer and professor at the American Film Institute.
In Austria, Sebastian Pichelhofer entered the jazz by interviewing Kurt Brazda, one of the founders of the Austrian Association of Cinematographers and where he served as association president for more than 25 years, and Alexander Boboschewski, Director of Photography and Steadicam-operator, whose credits include winning an Academy Award in 2008.
The year reviewed: the most important things we saw in 2012
In January, we announced 2012 would be a very important year, “the year of Apertus”. We asked people to contribute on the creation of a new logo and published the automated workflow for Elphel linux users. By then, it had become clear to us that we should start a worldwide crowd funding campaign to go further.
The first steps towards explaining the Apertus Project came in February, with the release of a video by Sebastian Pichelhofer. This was the first great community effort of the year, for the video gained subtitles in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Catalan. Community members Nathan Clark and Winnie Yang also blew us away with their Apertus rig for stereo 3D cinematography.
The discussion on the new logo had reached almost 9,700 views and 216 replies by March, so we created a dedicated workforce for the issue. ElphelVision started being coded to Android and we announced the conceptual plans for an application called Open Cine designed for processing/developing DNG sequences. The second great community involvement came that same month, with the collective taskforce to write the subscription to Prix Ars Electronica 2012: International Competition for CyberArts.
Having organized our newsletter by 2011, we expanded our channels of communication in April, giving birth to an official Twitter and IRC channels. Community members Carlos Padial and Simón Vialás started appearing on the news with their Kinoraw project, dedicated to create a workflow for Elphel 353 footage based on Blender. Later that month, we announced officially the plans to create “an entirely new, complete digital cinema camera” - this was Axiom being presented to the world (even though its name was still a secret), with Dynamic Perception as our partners.
By May, we had won an Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica in the Digital Communities category, a 5,000 € money prize. With our plans to develop Axiom, we started discussing the creation of a non-profit legal entity called, at present, the Apertus Foundation. Sebastian participated in the Linux Week Vienna, held in Austria, and the members of Kinoraw were hosting monthly meetings at Telenoika, Barcelona - they had also successfully ended a crowd funding campaign for their research project.
In June, the Floresta Vermelha // Red Forest team, based in Brazil, hosted the first of two talks related to their project - the creation of the first narrative film done with an open hardware camera and free software. Their workshops happened in the Centre of Spanish Culture in São Paulo. As part of their research, they published a reference article called "A somewhat comprehensible guide to using Elphel as a Digital Cinema camera".
July was a very special month. Sebastian Pichelhofer and Sasha Cohen held talks at The Libre Software Meeting, in Geneva, that took place between July 7th - 12th. But this was just part of the fun: Geneva saw the first ever meeting of Apertus members in person, Axiom’s name and specs were also publicly announced at this event, with Apertus and Dynamic Perception's stage-one dolly receiving a lot of good exposure. As Oscar Spierenburg, Apertus’ founder put it, “at dinner, Sasha 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.”
At the end of August, Sebastian, and Oscar attended the Prix Ars Electronica Festival to receive the award of distinction that our project was awarded in May. They delivered a presentation at “THE BIG PICTURE – Everyday Rebellion/Prix Forum II – Digital Communities”.
By September, we were having a long discussion on ‘How open can Open Hardware truly be’? Whilst Axiom appeared on our horizon, it brought with it some concerns over how to best protect it whilst opening up our designs same time. As we wrote in the newsletter, “since we are attempting to establish an open-hardware business, we will need to operate above a certain income threshold if we hope to cover the costs of future hardware development. We want our soon-to-be-formed company/organisation/association to manufacture and sell Axiom units (amongst other Apertus designed open-hardware), for a very fair price in the open hardware spirit. What concerns us is which Open License can best suit our business model?” At the same time, Kinoraw announced they were going to deliver a presentation at the Open Source Hardware Convention in Madrid and the Centre of Spanish Culture in Sao Paulo released a video documenting the Floresta Vermelha // Red Forest project.
In October, Apertus’ members Carlos Padial and Simón Vialás attended the Blender Conference 2012, in Amsterdam. They established an awesome landmark, having created a fully functional workflow for editing JP4 RAW files generated by the Elphel camera in Blender. They also met Cédric Demiddeleer and Philippe Jadin there for an interview with Blender’s founder Ton Roosendaal for the new born Project Hollywood - a documentary film that will explore the revolutionary possibilities that an Open-Source camera can bring to the film industry.
The Apertus Association saw the light of day during that month. Sebastian dealt with all the paperwork and based it in Austria. We also took the chance to publicize our two channels for donations: Paypal & Flattr. In an election amongst the members, Sebastian was elected for Chairman, Oscar for Vice Chairman and Philippe Jadin & Flavio Soares for the unofficial Interim Advisory Board Council.
November was full of interesting developments. Oscar had finished the script for his début feature film, titled Vanitas, currently in pre-production phase. The Elphel company announced the plans for a new camera design: the Elphel 393. Floresta Vermelha // Red Forest finished successfully a crowd funding campaign, shot their short movie and were editing/post producing it. Apertus participated in the 'How Do You Do' event, in Ghent, Belgium. The dedicated graphics design group created in March - Nathan Clark and Pete Flanagan - released the new Apertus Logo and Branding. Finally, Sebastian wrote an extensive analysis called “Why Kickstarter moved closer to Axiom and at the same time further away”, raising our concerns with Axiom’s planned worldwide crowd funding campaign, to happen in 2013.
Discuss this newsletter in this link.
Stay tuned,
The Apertus Team
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages