Posted From The U.S.
Welcome to
The Hour Blue, an ambitious experiment in the possibilities of both digital film and the collective power of distributed, open-source work. I've been inspired by the success of projects such as
wikipedia,
Linux, and
GNU, as well as by the revolutionary ideas proposed by
Richard Stallman and organizations such as
Creative Commons. I have also been intrigued by independant animations such as
Rust Boy, the power of blogs (I've been there), and freaky new web phenomena such as
Google Video. The availability of relatively cheap animation software - even open source packages such as
Blender is very encouraging, as is the wide availability of very powerful PC computing hardware at a very low cost (think about what something like a G5 Mac would have cost 5-10 years ago). Good old Moore's Law just keeps cranking away and I hope to ride that wave just a bit more. There is also a lot of digital video on the web - but a lot of it is just low grade junk, porn, or both.
Movies like the Star Wars series, Lord of the Rings, or even well made indie films all take an incredible amount of talent, energy, time, equipment to produce, and most of all piles of money. A top caliber film will easily run today in the $100-200 million range (U.S.) - making all of this a very expensive proposition. I believe that the trends in open source development and computing may enable such large scale projects to occur for a very different cost - maybe even for free. In my model all of the contributors will receive points for their work contributions, and the reward (other than hopefully seeing your work as part of something cool on the big or small screen) will come from those who enjoy the work directly. The model is still sketchy, but I've decided to work it out, as well as all of my other thoughts, in the wide open - so that from the very beginning the entire process involves feedback and contributions from others all over the web.
I'm a member of the World Economic Forum (a 2005 Technology Pioneer) and I was lucky enough to meet some well known and famous people in the business, film, finance, and technology worlds - including the guys who host this blog. I also inadvertantly blogged my way into an interesting debate regarding the mainstream media and the power of one person - and how one idea can grow in a very fast and non-linear fashion. I have started 2 companies, both in technology, and was successful in raising significant venture capital as part of the executive team (as the techie guy). One company developed products which are now used to aid in computer-assisted surgery, while the second is expanding on that theme with the integration of advanced robotics and instruments - that's my day and often night job. In the remaining wee hours I work on recording music in an indie rock band, being with family, and fleshing out concepts such as this (mobile blogging will help).
I see this project as a long-term project (3-10 years), one that will eventually need the help of many, many individuals from all over the world. I will keep posting my thoughts, ideas, scripts, plans, sketches, art, sound bites, and music. My plan is to collaboratively create a large body of work that can be used for the film(s) and related media (games, mobile phone clips, comic books, whatnot). I would like to create a studio out of this adventure - similar to the ones I consider to be great: the original Disney, Lucas & ILM, Jackson & Weta, Pixar, and Hayao MIYAZAKI & Studio Ghibli . However, this studio will be born from the fertile and dynamic ground of the web, and it will be built in a very different way. It will be a distributed studio, and perhaps if this project succeeds (or even if it just fails very well), it should be the beginning of some pretty revolutionary ideas and methods. I have no name for the studio, so let's start out with
NoName Studios and see where this all goes.
An important note is as follows: it does not all need to be worked out right now. The important thing is to pack our bags, get on the road, and start to hack away.
-R
