Sintel 2

Hey guys, check out this fan made fund raiser for a second Sintel movie. Come help us out.

Yeah. Good luck with such a detailed explanation of why should I support this project :))

Not to mention what previous work you have worked on / organised… Organisation on this level is important for the success of the project.

If I were you I would check with Ton & the Blender Foundation before you do something like this. Not that I think they would take any legal action against you but I doubt they would want some random unaffiliated dude to create the “sequel” to one of their most popular movies.

Also as others have said, what are your previous projects that you have put together? People will not trust you with their money unless you are a reputable source, especially not with a project of this size.

Step 1_ Prove your worth

Step 2-Get team

Step 3 - Make your own short

Step 4, Ton tells you no

Step 5 make your own dent in the world

Step_6 collect underwear.

I am 90% sure that Ton would be fine with it… He was fine with the chinese school recreating ToS https://mango.blender.org/uncategorized/chinese-version-of-tears-of-steel/

this is really shameful imo.
blatant attempt to use sintel as fundraiser that will never meet goals.
bordering on fraud.

Not to be a wet blanket, but for the amount you are asking I’m not seeing much (any?) detail. Certainly not enough to get $250K…

  • Who are you & what is your experience?
  • Who are the members of your team & what is their experience? Artists, musicians, director, voice actors, etc.
  • Where is a trailer or demo of what you/your team can do?
  • Have you cleared any trademarks (such as the name Sintel) with the Blender Foundation?
  • How long is the film going to be?
  • What is the breakdown/budget of the films costs going to be ($X for music, $Y for animation, $Z for rendering-farm, etc)?
  • Given you are likely to be using Open Content, the “complementary download of the movie” is not really an incentive - ANYONE will be legally allowed to share it.

And so on.

So, this is something I’ve often wondered about. What exactly does “Open” mean in the context of a movie? When I first heard of it I was thinking that the assets were shared and everyone would have access to them and use them freely. But, I don’t know if that’s the case. If it is, then, would’t anyone be able to download the assets and make their own little Sintel movies for free?

I guess I’m just asking what an “Open” movie is.

Thanks.

There’s no problem with this. It’s exactly the kind of thing that releasing everything under a Creative Commons license allows for.

Yes. That’s the whole point. It’s why most (all?) of the open movie projects have been used in some capacity for advertising other things (both on television and at tradeshows like NAB… screens all over the show floor have open movies as part of their demo loop) or for test subjects in graphics research and things like that. And, creatively speaking, you want to do a different story (or even the same story) using assets from any open movie project, you can. That’s why it’s there. You just need to give attribution to the original work.

There is nothing wrong with the legal side of this. But using Sintel - or any other open movie for that matter - as a calling card to gain the credibility needed to raise those kinds of funds is flawed logic at best and ethically questionable in the worst.

251K for a KS project already launched with no following, no real promotion etc,. shows me a completely flawed and unrealistic estimation of effort.

That followed by the fact that none of the assets have even been used to make a trailer, teaser or anything.

No one can argue the legal/financial side of this.

But I’d say that one of the main core purposes of an open movie is to share information so it can actually be used. And so it can actually be gained from in some way. Not excluding financial gain of course. But certainly not completely and utterly dependent on it.

Seems to me whoever these people are, they have not thought this through well enough.

The movie itself and all of the assets pertaining to it are available to you to be used, learn from and then gain something by actually doing something with them.

My strong - and certainly unsolicited advice lol - would be…

If it is not too late, simply contact KS and can this project.

Then go back and use the assets provided and on spare time - or around whatever commitments you have - and do something with them. Make a trailer. Make storyborad, concept art etc.

Then once this is done, spend about 6 months to a year working social media to build a following. And even then you will find that this is no easy task.

But if you can get through that and find you have enough followers and you are ready. Then launch a KS project and hit your followers with updates and emails etc.

I really know for a hard fact that the current tack being employed is not workable. It is something I spent a good deal of time - and money - researching.

If you are not willing to go through the logical and tried and true steps to making a successful crowd funding movie you are just wasting your time.

Take this advice or leave it. Up to you.

This is the most unbackable Kickstarter I’ve ever seen. For that amount of money, you want a stronger pitch than just “Woo! Sintel sequel!”

Specifically who is confirmed to be working on it and what work have they delivered in the past? Aside from a 3D animation enthusiast, it’s a complete mystery. Who’s putting their names on the line? One guy, the aforementioned enthusiast. That’s a huge red flag.

What’s the premise of the sequel’s story? Unknown. Any concept art, indications of what to expect visually? No. Any ideas to get backers excited at all? No. Just a pie graph of how the money gets spent.

One of my workmates once joked about doing a Kickstarter pitch with little more than a budget in it, saying success was assured based on his superior Malaysian business acumen. I can’t believe someone went and actually did it for real.

And have the organisers backed anything themselves in the past? No. This and the expected total suggests they’re not part of the Kickstarter community at all, just mysterious strangers who don’t appear to know what they’re doing.

Running a Kickstarter is emphatically not a “keep your cards close to your chest” situation. You want to share your dream as vividly as you can. You want to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the only thing standing between you and that dream is money - not talent, not experience, just the time it takes to complete the project. Then and only then can you inspire people to come along for the ride.

Saying you want to go for a whole trilogy makes you look naively ambitious which is even more off-putting. It screams “I don’t know what I’m doing”. And therefore “I don’t deserve your money”.

With all that said, a good crowdfund pitch is hard. If this is your first one, don’t beat yourselves up. Go and look at the successful ones and figure out what they did right. In the meantime, think about cancelling the campaign and coming back to it when you’re actually prepared. Give yourself a fighting chance.

For some funny reason I keep thinking today is the 21 July 2015, but after looking at that kick starter page it has to be 1 April.

that really looks like fraud to me. I hope nobody falls for that…

This is The first and probably only post of this joker on this forum. I agree with karim eich and others that this looks like fraud. Hey mcla3d, welcome to the forum, you really made me laugh out loud with your ridiculous proposal, LOL!!!

A scam this is.

There is not nearly enough organization or effort into this to be a scam or a fraud. To produce a scam or fraud it actually takes work and ingenuity. Neither of which have been displayed thus far.

Again, I did not say that there would be any legal issues. I said that Ton & CO probably wouldn’t want some random dude calling their unaffiliated fanfilm a direct sequel to one of their most loved creations. So anyone who would like to do that should consult them beforehand.

But again that is the entire point of the Creative Commons license. So that argument goes nowhere. You don’t have to ask for permission to make derivative works, (sequels included) even as a polite gesture.

It is one of those things that you can not have both ways. It is either an open license or it isn’t. If it is open, people can do with it as they wish as long as they keep within the guidelines of the license.

If you release an intellectual property under this kind of license you can not come back and get upset if people actually use it.

For the record: there is nothing legally wrong with this. The Creative Commons license that Sintel (and all the other Blender Open Movies) is released under explicitly allows for things like this.

I don’t claim to speak for the rest of the Sintel team, by I at least am not the least bit offended by this. I think it’s extremely unrealistic, and I see zero evidence that the person doing this has the skills or resources to pull this off, but I’m not offended.

If someone succesfully makes a sequel to Sintel, more power to them as far as I’m concerned. Even if it ends up being awful, I still think it’s really neat that someone would make the attempt.

The only thing that would bother me is if they tried to make people think it was an official Blender Institute film. In other words, I feel strongly that people should be able to distinguish fanfic from canon. But I see no evidence that mcla3d is trying to mislead anyone in that respect. He could probably make it a bit clearer on the Kick Starter page, but I don’t think he’s intentionally trying to obscure anything.