Bear Town is now being developed as an "open movie" that will be produced collaboratively online.
Bear Town is back.
I'm reviving my short-lived 2004 Bear Town web series as an open movie that will be produced collaboratively online. Open movies are films are movies that are licensed under Creative Commons Licenses and released along with all of the film's source (footage, After Effects files, 3D models, etc.). Probably the best example of a successful open movie project is the Blender Foundation's recently finished 3d short Elephant's Dream.
The idea of doing some kind of online collaborative puppet film and video based on the open source model has been kicking around the internet puppetry community for a few years. I think most of them have failed to make much progress because while everyone agrees that it's a great idea in principle, everything gets bogged down during the planning stage in discussions about what type of film should be made and how.
A recent article in the Economist about open source projects made the point that successful open source projects need a formal, hierarchical structure with leadership and checks and balances. Bear Town will be collaborative in that anyone who wants to work on it or contribute work can, but it will also have a formal structure like any film with a director, departments, department heads, etc. keep things organized and productive.
There's still a lot of work to be done on this and the project is still in the development stage. I don't expect the film to be finished until late 2008. Check out yesterday's entry in the Bear Town Production Journal for more info and keep an eye on bear-town.com, from now on I'll be updating it frequently once again.
