About Bear Town
Produced using a blend of state-of-the-art computer graphics and traditional hand-crafted puppetry, Bear Town is a serialized online feature film that will consist of twenty-two original episodes.
Bear Town is an "open movie", meaning that both the film and most of it's production materials will be released under a Creative Commons License for others to freely share, distribute, and use for non-commercial purposes. The film is also unique in that it is being produced independently by a team of artists and puppeteers working together collaboratively online.
Synopsis
Three bear detectives named Omle, Hank, and Tumbles fight to save their city from the clutches of an evil gangster named Big Bear who is planning to take it over.
Open Source Philosphy
A key goal of Bear Town is to not only produce the finished film, but also to help demonstrate the viability of the open movie concept. The finished film along with the majority of its production materials will be publicly distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, meaning that anyone may alter, copy, distribute, display, and perform Bear Town and licensed production materials subject to certain terms and conditions. Blender 3D (.blend) files created for the film will be publicly released under the Blender Artistic License.
Bear Town's "open source" mentality extends to many of the tools used to create it. Some of the key software being utilized to produce the film includes open source programs such as Blender 3D, Celtx, Cinepaint, GIMP, and Panda Puppet alongside commercial applications such as Photoshop, After Affects, and the Corel Draw Suite.
Development
The formal development phase of the project commenced in March, 2006 and will continue through the end of the year. The primary goals of the Development Phase are to:
- Complete a revised draft of the Bear Town screenplay.
- Complete designs for all of Bear Town's puppets/characters.
- Storyboard Bear Town's key sequences.
- Begin construction of key puppet characters in the film.
- Begin modelling key digital locations and sets required for the film.
Pre-production
The formal pre-production phase of the project is scheduled for January through October, 2007. The high degree of technical complexity in the film, and the sheer number of puppets required (probably about 100 or so) are the primary reasons for the film's lenthy pre-production period.
Production
Formal production will take place from October, 2007 until February, 2008. More details will be posted soon.
Post-Production
The post production phase of the project will commence in February, 2008 and last aproximately eight months.
Release / Distribution
Bear Town will be released online in a serialized format, consisting of aproximately 22 five minute segments or episodes over a ten month period beginning Fall 2008. Because current channels for online video distribution are in flux, the exact release stratedgy is subject to change, but it is assumed that each segment or episode will be released online via www.bear-town.com and also be submitted to the Internet Archive.
The film will also be submitted - in it's complete, uncut and full-length form - to various film and video festivals internationally, to be followed by a DVD release in mid 2009.
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