OpenCut contest

OpenCut claims to be a ‘completely open-source’ film competition designed to encourage people to take professionally shot material and edit it in their own way. It is organised by the Red company, producers of camera systems, and in that light we should understand that the true goal of the contest is to advertise their products.

As there is no “one way” to tell a story, so too can stories benefit from being re-edited and re-told from many different vantage points and perspectives.
The winner of OpenCut 1.0 will receive a brand new AJA IO HD from Silverado. They will also be recognized as the “editor-of-record” at IMDB and will have their cut submitted to multiple film festivals.

Participants can obtain rushes by sending in their harddrives which will loaded and send back. The script can be found online, next to lists of requirements and the rules of the game

Since this is a corporate undertaking it is understandable that it pushes requirements that are inline with the quality of the source material. But advising participants to use Mac, FCP and h.264 can hardly be called open source.
It is a shame that such a nice initiative does not go further in supporting their claims to be completely open. Right now open seems to mean: ‘you can remix our material, as long as you do not use it for commercial purposes’. Red will use the uploaded cuts to showcase teir products. It would be appreciated if the Red company would put its money money where its mouth is, step up and start actively supporting open source film production.

How? A few suggestions for a next round:
* Invest in formulating specifications of a true open source workflow involving open source edit solutions (codecs, software)
* Open the hardware specifications of Red camera’s, call for proposals to bend, change, alter, improve, abuse existing technology.
* Give support to help develop open codecs up to industry standard.

The first call for the film Susannah has been closed, some of the results can be seen on Vuze.

Posted on: Sunday, July 6, 2008 by: in category: Collaborative filming, News