NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Elephants Dream

Elephants Dream is a computer-generated short film made primarily^[1] using free software applications and premiered on March 24, 2006, after about 8 months of work. Beginning production in September 2005, it was developed under the name Orange by a team of seven artists and animators from around the world. Its name was later changed from Machina and renamed to Elephants Dream (named after the way in which Dutch children's stories abruptly end).^[2] Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (960x540, 79 KB) Summary File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Elephants Dream ... 3D portrait Ton Roosendaal is the lead developer of the free 3D application Blender, and chairman of the Blender Foundation. ... Cas Jansen (born Casper Jansen) is a Dutch actor born on 24 June 1977 in the Netherlands. ... Tygo Gernandt is a Dutch actor born 7 April 1974 in Amsterdam. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays full 2006 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Computer-generated imagery (commonly abbreviated as CGI) is the application of the field of computer graphics (or more specifically, 3D computer graphics) to special effects in films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media. ... Short subject is an American film industry term that historically has referred to any film in the format of two reels, or approximately 20 minutes running time, or less. ... Clockwise from top: The logo of the GNU Project (the GNU head), the Linux kernel mascot Tux the Penguin, and the FreeBSD daemon Free software is a term coined by Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation[1] to refer to software that can be used, studied, and modified without... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... is the 83rd day of the year (84th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays full 2006 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Overview

The film was first announced in May 2005 by Ton Roosendaal, the chairman of the Blender Foundation and the lead developer of the foundation's program, Blender. A 3D modelling, animating, and rendering application, Blender was the primary piece of software used in the creation of the film. The project was joint funded by the Blender Foundation and the Netherlands Media Art Institute. The Foundation raised much of their funds by selling pre-orders of the DVD. Everyone who preordered before September 1 has his or her name listed in the film's credits. The bulk of processing for rendering this film was donated by the BSU Xseed, a 2.1 TFLOPS Apple Xserve G5-based supercomputing cluster at Bowie State University. It reportedly took 125 days to render, consuming up to 2.8GB of memory for each frame [1]. The completed film is 11 minutes long, including 1 minute and 30 seconds of credits. Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... 3D portrait Ton Roosendaal is the lead developer of the free 3D application Blender, and chairman of the Blender Foundation. ... The Blender Foundation is a non-profit organization responsible for the development of Blender, an open-source program for three-dimensional modelling. ... Blender is a free software 3D animation program. ... is the 244th day of the year (245th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... In computing, FLOPS is an abbreviation of floating point operations per second. ... A small Xserve cluster with an Xserve RAID. Xserve is the name of Apple Computers Macintosh 1U rackmount line of server computers. ... Bowie State University (Bowie State), located on 338Â½ acres (1. ...

The film's purpose is primarily to field test, develop and showcase the capabilities of open source software, demonstrating what can be done with such tools in the field of organizing and producing quality content for films. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1920x1080, 282 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Elephants Dream ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1920x1080, 282 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Elephants Dream ... Open source software is computer software whose source code is available under a license (or arrangement such as the public domain) that permits users to study, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form. ...

During the film's development, several new features such as an integrated node-based compositor, hair and fur rendering [2], rewritten animation system and render pipeline, and many workflow tweaks and upgrades were added into Blender especially for the project.

The film's content was released under the Creative Commons Attribution license [3], so that viewers may learn from it and use it however they please (provided attribution is given). The DVD set includes NTSC and PAL versions of the film on separate discs, a high-definition video version as a computer file, and all the production files. The Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others legally to build upon and share. ... The references in this article would be clearer with a different and/or consistent style of citation, footnoting or external linking. ... Television encoding systems by nation. ... High-definition (HD) video generally refers to any video system of higher resolution than standard-definition (SD), i. ...

The film was released for download directly and via BitTorrent on the Official Orange Project website on May 18, 2006, along with all production files. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1920x1080, 2985 KB) Summary A frame near the end of the the film: Elephants Dream. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1920x1080, 2985 KB) Summary A frame near the end of the the film: Elephants Dream. ... BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) communications protocol. ... is the 138th day of the year (139th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays full 2006 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Plot and explanation

The movie was made mostly as an experiment, rather than to tell a certain story and therefore has a strong random and surrealistic atmosphere. It features two men, Proog (the elder and more experienced) and Emo (the younger and more nervous) living in a miraculous construction referred to only as 'the Machine'; Proog tries to introduce Emo to its nature but the latter is reluctant and argues about its purpose. The creators originally intended for the movie to show the abstraction of a computer.

The final message is not easy to see due to the abstract nature of the movie and therefore some viewers criticized it as pointless and random, and worthy of attention only if seen as a demo. Other people have widely different interpretations of its meaning. This slashdot comment for example describes the viewpoint that Proog represents the logical half of the brain, while Emo is the creative half. Proog cannot abide imaginative, unpredictable fun in his so carefully crafted and isolated logical world, which is why he tries to dominate Emo and eventually attacks him. Another theory is connected to the theory of evolution, with Proog and the Machine representing multicellular life and DNA, wheras Emo represents a single mitochondria and cannot grasp the complexity of the Machine. Multicellular organisms are those organisms containing more than one cell, and having differentiated cells that perform specialized functions. ... The structure of part of a DNA double helix Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is a nucleic acid molecule that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms. ...

Bassam Kurdali, Director of Elephants Dream, explained the plot of the movie by saying [4] :

The title 'Elephants Dream' is also ambiguous and random, unrelated to the story or the film. The original title was to be Machina but was dropped due to pronunciation issues. One motivation for the title regarding the story was the concept of an Elephant in the room, referring to the (unspoken) fact that Proog's precious world only exists for him. The elephant in the room (also elephant in the living room, elephant in the corner, elephant on the dinner table, elephant in the kitchen, etc. ...

Descriptive storyline

The movie opens on a small bridge between two nearly endless walls. The old man, Proog, shoves the younger and less experienced Emo down onto the ground to save him from being mowed down by a barrage of jack plugs that whir back and forth between the two massive, 1930-40s switch-board-like walls. The plugs rush back and forth, oblivious of the two, endlessly channeling streams of bizarre sounds and data. After the whirring, squealing plugs move on, Proog makes sure that Emo is unharmed and then urges him onwards through a crack in one of the plug-walls, saying that "it isn't safe" and that they should go.

They walk through the narrow hall into a massive room that fades away into blackness on all sides. Only one path is visible, suspended in mid-air that runs between thousands of dangling electric cables on which sit crowds of robin-like robotic birds. As Proog and Emo enter the room, the birds begin to wake up and notice them. Realizing the danger, Proog grabs Emo by the arm and yells to hurry.

They run along the increasingly bizarre path as the birds begin to swarm. All sound is blocked out by the birds which are making the same noises as the jack-plugs, garbled screaming and obscure sentences and static. Then the path dead-ends, stopping in the middle of no-where above the infinite drop. Proog turns around as the birds reach them and begin to dive-bomb the two. At the last possible moment, Proog takes out an old candlestick phone and the bird dives into the speaker piece.

Proog stands at one end of a room, suspiciously watching what is probably the same candlestick phone. It is ringing. Emo watches from the other side of the room. The phone continues to ring. After a while Emo approaches it to answer it, but Proog slaps his hands away, Emo asks why he can't answer it, and Proog picks up the phone gingerly and takes the ear-piece off the hook. As soon as the ear-piece is activated, the speaker grille slides open revealing, tangled in with the wires of the phone, a seething mass of clawed, fleshy polyps which scream and gibber obscenely in the same mechanical, staticky voice that everything else in the Machine speaks in. Proog warns that Emo could die if he's not more careful next time. There is a solemn silence, then Emo laughs in disbelief.

After another interlude, it opens with the two entering another massive black room. There is no path, the entry platform is the only structure that seems to be there except for another exit lit distantly at the far side. Proog takes a step forward into the void, and his feet are suddenly caught by giant type-writer arms that rocket up out of the blackness to catch his feet as he dances across mid-air. Emo follows Proog with somewhat less enthusiasm as the older man leads the way and all the while lectures Emo about the dangers of the Machine, stating it could grind them into pulp. When Emo tries to reason around the probability of dying, Proog interrupts him by shouting 'pulp!' with greater and greater fervor until Emo gives up and lapses into silence.

They reach the end of the room and go through a hall into a small compartment. Proog presses a button, and the door shuts. It is an elevator. The elevator lurches suddenly as it is grabbed by a giant mechanical arm and thrown upwards, rushing up through an ever-widening tunnel. When it begins to slow down, another arm grabs the capsule and throws it even further up.

As it moves up, the walls unlock and fall away, leaving only the floor with the two on it, rushing higher and higher. Proog tells Emo to close his eyes just before the platform exits the tunnel and sails into a black sky. As it reaches the peak of its arc, Proog asks Emo what he sees to the left and the right, and Emo says he sees nothing.

The elevator begins to drop down another-shaft, finally coming to rest as it slams into the floor of another room, fitting into a hole in the ground and bringing the two to a level stop.

They are in a large, dingy room filled with strange, organic looking generator-like devices and dotted with boxy holographic projectors. One of them is projecting a portion of wall with a door in it right beside them. From behind the door comes light music. The door seems harmless enough, but when Emo asks if they can go in there, Proog says, once again, that it isn't safe. He refuses to answer any more questions, and instead presses a button on his cane, which changes the holograph to another wall.

The next scene begins with Proog finishing the wall, and boxing them into a Safe Room, out of the view of anything outside. When this is finished, he turns and confronts Emo, asking why Emo can't see the beauty and perfection of the Machine--in spite of the danger--and Emo replies that it is because it isn't there, and he doesn't see any of the things they've been going through, so why should he trust his life to something that isn't there?

Proog slaps him, trying to bring him to his senses, but Emo calls him a sick man, storming away down the length of the room towards a wall he apparently cannot see. Proog watches in horror as--instead of Emo walking into the wall--the wall begins to move, extending the length of the room to accommodate Emo's belief that none of it is real. Proog yells after him that it's a trap, and Emo turns around and begins to taunt him.

Emo: "It's a trap. (scoffs) At the left side you can see... The Hanging Gardens of Babylon!... How's that for a trap?" Gardens of Semiramis, 20th century interpretation Hanging Garden, Assyrian interpretation The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (also known as Hanging Gardens of Semiramis) and the walls of Babylon (near present-day Al Hillah in Iraq) are considered one of the original Seven Wonders of the World. ...

As he speaks, the walls begin to discolour and mechanical roots start tearing through the walls to his left, moving forwards towards Proog. In spite of the old man's pleas to stop. Emo continues.

"Oh, and at the right side you can see... Well, guess what! The The colossus... of Rhodes!" The Colossus of Rhodes was a huge statue of the Greek god Helios, erected on the Greek island of Rhodes by Chares of Lindos, a student of Lysippos, between 292 and 280 BC. It was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. ...

The rest of the safety wall crumples away as a pair of massive hands heave out of the ground and begin to attack. As Proog is knocked down by the shockwave, Emo turns and begins to walk away, waving his finger around his temple in the 'crazy' sign, completely unaware of everything that's happening. In a last effort, Proog extricates himself from the tentacle roots, and cracks Emo over the back of the head with his cane. As Emo collapses, everything falls away, and Proog and Emo are left in one tiny patch of light in the middle of blackness.

As the screen fades to whole black, Proog whispers to the prone figure of Emo that "it is there."

Cast

Tygo Gernandt is a Dutch actor born 7 April 1974 in Amsterdam. ... Cas Jansen (born Casper Jansen) is a Dutch actor born on 24 June 1977 in the Netherlands. ...

Crew

3D portrait Ton Roosendaal is the lead developer of the free 3D application Blender, and chairman of the Blender Foundation. ... A film producer creates the conditions for making movies. ... An animation director is the director in charge of all aspects of the animation process during the production of an animated film or animated segment for a live-action film. ... The term art director, is an overall title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games. ... The definition of an artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of activities to do with creating art, practising the arts and/or demonstrating an art. ... The definition of an artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of activities to do with creating art, practising the arts and/or demonstrating an art. ... The definition of an artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of activities to do with creating art, practising the arts and/or demonstrating an art. ... The Technical Director or Technical Producer (TP) is usually the most senior technical person within a theatrical company or television studio. ... A composer is a person who writes music. ...

Software and tools used

Blender was the main program used in creation of the film. The other software was used for pre/post-productions and management of the files. Ubuntu was the Linux distribution used. KDE and GNOME were the desktop environments used. Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Blender is a free software 3D animation program. ... cinepaint CinePaint is a computer program to paint on and retouch bitmap frames of movies. ... The GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is a raster graphics editor application with some support for vector graphics. ... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... Inkscape is a vector graphics editor application. ... KDE (K Desktop Environment) (IPA: ) is a free software project which aims to be a powerful system for an easy-to-use desktop environment. ... OpenEXR is a high dynamic range imaging image file format, released as an open standard along with a set of software tools created by Industrial Light and Magic, released under a Free software license similar to the BSD license. ... Python is a high-level programming language first released by Guido van Rossum in 1991. ... Seashore is an image editor based on the GIMPs technology, but written in Cocoa for Mac OS X. It is released under the GNU General Public License. ... Subversion (SVN) is an open source version control system. ... An example of a Reaktor 5 ensemble Structure Reaktor is a graphical modular software sound studio developed by Native Instruments. ... Twisted is an event-driven networking framework written in Python and licensed under the MIT licence. ... Ubuntu (IPA pronunciation ) is a predominantly desktop-oriented Linux distribution, based on Debian GNU/Linux but with a stronger focus on usability, regular releases, and ease of installation. ... Verse is a networking protocol allowing real-time communication between computer graphics software. ... A Linux distribution, often simply distribution or distro, is a member of the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems comprising the Linux kernel, the non-kernel parts of the GNU operating system, and assorted other software. ... Information in this article or section has not been verified against sources and may not be reliable. ...

Notes

An example of a Reaktor 5 ensemble Structure Reaktor is a graphical modular software sound studio developed by Native Instruments. ... Mac OS X (IPA: ) is a line of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. ... Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ...

External links

Categories: 2006 films | Computer-animated films | Dutch films | Open content short films | Creative Commons-licensed works Image File history File links WikiNews-Logo. ... Wikinews is a free-content news source and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. ... Image File history File links Commons-logo. ... The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ... This section needs additional references or sources to facilitate its verification. ... (Redirected from 25th May) May 25 is the 145th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (146th in leap years). ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... This section needs additional references or sources to facilitate its verification. ... (Redirected from 19th May) May 19 is the 139th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (140th in leap years). ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays full 2006 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... (Redirected from 18th May) May 18 is the 138th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (139th in leap years). ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays full 2006 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... New York Times article (26 February 2005) about Gary Brolsma and the Numa Numa dance. ... In contemporary usage, a parody (or lampoon) is a work that imitates another work in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke some affectionate fun at the work itself, the subject of the work, the author or fictional voice of the parody, or another subject. ...

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