Promote Gooseberry Somewhere Else

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

It stays only two weeks to help Gooseberry Project by doing active promotion for it.
But I only saw articles about Gooseberry on Blender and CG forums and social networks groups about CG.

It is a project about an open movie made with a free open source software (able to produce games and 3d prints).
But it seems that no site about movies or about free open source softwares is talking about it if it is not directly Blender or 3D related.
And there is probably less publicity about it on games and 3D printing forums.
For example, no article on Libre Graphics World about Gooseberry fund raising or Blender Cloud.
It seems that press is waiting end of April to talk about it.

Probably, lots of journalists of libre graphics are occupied at Libre Graphics Meeting.
But it is urgent to diffuse information that Gooseberry exists.

A full length feature film made of computer generated images.
And when people asks you how is it made; you answer : “with a Free Open Source Software.”

I will not talk about people who already know Blender and the Blender Cloud.
i only want to say that Blender Cloud and free open content of an open movie can interest a huge amount of people.
I mean : a mesh is mesh. It can be used for a movie animated character, be converted as a nomal map for a game character and be 3D printed.
But I don’t think that a huge amount of people know Blender.

I know there are thousands of people, everyday, on Blender sites according to statistics.
But are statistics able to say how many are there by errors, searching a robot to make smoothies ?
How many people are coming on blenderartists to only obtain the answer about their unique blender project of the year ?

it is not because we are considering ourselves like artists that we are disconnected to the rest of the world.
Blender is used by kids, their teachers, scientists…
Is it illegitimate to talk about Gooseberry elsewhere ? Of course, it is not !

So, just do it !

2

Whilst I understand quirking an eyebrow at the lack of promotion in open source software venues, the lack of coverage at movie venues is somewhat understandable. Gooseberry is not yet a movie. It is a proposal to crowd-fund the development of one. A proposed movie without a well-known script writer (or even script?). A proposed movie without well-known stars. A proposed movie without (at this time) a well-kown publisher or distribution company. A proposed movie that isn’t even in a genre that generates cult interest (like horror or sci-fi).

As far as movie venues are concerned, all there is to Gooseberry is a short (confusing to some) trailer and “please donate to me” video. The coverage of crowd-fund efforts in the movie venues I visit tend not to get started until the funding campaign succeeds or looks that way. The better is goes over it’s initial budget, the more coverage it gets… and even then it depends on the audience of the film (interestingly enough, Spike Lee’s crowd-funding effort got less column inches than the Veronica Mars campaign, for example).

To grab attention in movie venues, you need to either be a name or have something that’ll grab select audiences. For that, I think this fake trailer (done in Blender) would probably have garnered more attention (in movie forums, blogs, and news sites):

It’s better at grabbing the viewers attention, it’s got sci-fi/horror cult hooks, and promises thrills rather than cuteness.

This I can perfectly understand. Gooseberry is not about games and 3D printing. It’s about an Open Film. If you’re not getting publicity in the movie venues for a project that’s focusing on making a movie, you’re not going to get it in venues focused on areas the project is not creating a product in. Gooseberry isn’t creating a game and isn’t even offering rewards of 3D printed sheep figurines. There isn’t much there to grab the attention of people on those forums and posts trying to garner donations from them would likely be considered spam.

Yes, we know that it’ll fund development effort in Blender, but if you go to the Gooseberry website, it’s not talking about game tools & it’s not talking about 3D printing tools. It’s talking about a semi-specialised cloud storage & social network and the movie they’ll be making, sharing, and talking about over it.

Damned good point that. I am kind of surprised the Blender Foundation didn’t setup an interview beforehand to be published at the start of the campaign. Or perhaps they did, in which case I’m surprised it hasn’t run. The lack of exposure in Libre Graphics World is somewhat notable & odd.

3

http://www.meneame.net/story/blender-foundation-esta-pleno-proceso-crowdfunding-financiar-eng

Posted it a few days ago in a really popular spanish reddit clone. Only 32 clicks though.

4

Libre graphics is particularly strange because the Libre Graphics Meeting is going on right now!

5

@ BTolputt, Open Movies or Open Games are very rare, unknown and unexpected projects.

The idea to make an open movie or an open game deserves to be exposed in articles on games and films communities.
I am not saying that it is something simple and logical to obtain an article about an idea of movie.
But it deserves an article about a specific type of movies.

Resources under creative commons deserves an article on any kind of makers community.
Gooseberry Fund Raising is a rare occasion to start a discussion about libre movies, about libre software.

Blender Cloud is not only about income for Blender Foundation. It is also about access to libre content.

Our culture to share open content is underground. We have to teach it , to talk about it, to keep it alive.
Gooseberry site is not able to explain that you can do everything that come to your mind with this open content.

If you can use Audaspace from Blender to command a peachy printer; you can do same kind of crazy stuff in your domain from other open stuff born in another horizon.
I talked about simply printing a mesh from Gooseberry. But we can imagine people filming their 3D prints and putting it in a Gooseberry sequence using node editor and exposing this through a virtual gallery made with BGE.

There is no limit to human imagination. But in our closed world, an open mind needs stimulation to stay as is.

An open movie is open food for open minds. But we can’t expect Gooseberry team to make it obvious on its site’s banner.

6

This reminds me of production/project meetings where the marketing people get annoyed because for some confounding reason, a large part of the population seems to think marketing is as simple as WANTING to promote a project. If you have actionable ideas that’s fine, platitudes are useless as other people have repeatedly tried to tell folks in the other 30 Gooseberry threads.

7

I am not saying that trying to convince people to do something is simple.

But I think that people could argue instead of trying to sell things.
I would like to live in a world where market was supplanted by democracy like in Star Trek but without Spaceships.

8

That is not an adult response to the situation. I’m wondering what the average user age is for this software. People needing to save up to donate 60 bucks and people saying they want the world to be like Star Trek in a discussion of marketing are not the sign of a community with any real world experience.

9

Democratic aspirations is a subject that concerns people of any age.

Market is a barbarian invention that is older than Universal Human Rights Declaration.
We are living one century after World War One. A horror made by Empires in competition.
All UE governments are now sacrificing lives of their citizens to a market that works with same stupid laws made of approximations as in sixteenth century.
In the perspective to keep a dominating place in this market, all social insurances are vanishing into the air in UE.
And then, when UE will have half of its politicians from nationalists parties, what will happen ?

What is the interest to compete against chinese, against americans, against africains ? Winning a medal ? And after what else?
IMO, concurrency is inhumanity.

Article 25 point 1 of UHRD :
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

In what country is it respected ? Is it possible to reach that goal with a market that forces income inequalities instead of erasing them ?
Do you really think that if we approach every thing from the angle of market, we could survive ?

Blender is a little thing that does not ask you from where you come from? how much you have on your bank account ?
Free software like other many initiatives is something that help to keep faith in humanity.

If you try to sell a Blender Project , you will fail.
You have to explain that it is part of something bigger.

10

Yeah. Good luck with that.

11

Moderation note: Let’s steer clear of the politics, folks.

You have to convince people to take money out of their pockets and put it into Gooseberry. That, in essence, is selling. There are actionable things that individuals can do to help with that process. Discuss those.