At officially 1:27pm EST Saturday, we heard the BOOM that pushed us over the threshold to achieve real funding. Since Kickstarter pledges are not guaranteed until the target is met, it feels in a way like this is the real beginning. Looking back over the slog of reaching the production mid-point by keeping a low overhead, trading lots of favors and putting anything earned back into Tube, I can only say what a fine day indeed! Mega-thanks to our earliest supporters for their solidarity and incredible backing.

Tube is designed to scale with the resources we have. You can see from the project video that we are hard at work making the movie, in tandem with running its campaign — and we want the result to be amazing. Crucially, further funds will allow us to focus on Tube without interruption, give commissions to our valiant crew and make new hires. Budget permitting, Bassam made this sketch of what other passengers on the train might look like:

In the next few days we’ll post a video update about this week in production, showing some of the cool tools we’ve developed to help us (and you!). Let’s keep momentum building, and make this a totally awesome movie under the clock we’ve set ticking.

AND NOW FOR AN EASILY FORWARDED SUMMARY

Animation with substance. The crowd funds it, the crowd owns it.

Elephants Dream, the original open movie directed by Bassam Kurdali, proved it possible to make high quality 3D animated films using free/libre tools in a studio setting. The Tube Open Movie is a new experiment, this time in distributed collaboration — a love letter to free software and open culture that marks their convergence with independent filmmaking.

Tube is inspired by the Gilgamesh poem, which comes down to us as an incomplete, conflicting set of fragments and variations, the clay tablet remnants of more than a few ruined libraries. The epic centers on the Sumerian king that ruled in ancient Iraq, who for his tyranny the gods teach friendship and loss, and through them, the fear of his own death. In the end, the immortality he achieves is different to the one he first seeks. Nearly five thousand years later, Gilgamesh, a woman and a soldier, rushes into a station in pursuit of a paper blown about by the passing of trains. In an ever-accelerating vortex, her hero’s journey becomes the animation’s own frames.

The finished film and its mountain of data assets will be released under CC Attribution-ShareAlike, meaning that you can use them for anything — even commercial appropriation — at no charge, but you are required to allow others to reuse your work on the same terms.

Your support will enable us to complete a movie in which a passionate volunteer team has invested years of hard labor. We hope you will check it out and spread the word.

http://kickstarter.com/projects/1331941187/the-tube-open-movie

(Production blog at http://URCHN.ORG)

Just yesterday we launched Tube’s first major campaign, with the goal of raising at least $22K as a bare-bones budget for this production phase. After only one day, backing has surpassed our expectations — already we are halfway to the target! And with further funding we can work faster, make greater claims on the time of our amazing crew, hire additional artists, and finish Tube in 7 months with even more impressive results. Big love to everyone who contributed, in whatever form — THANK YOU! If you can, please spread the word and help us turn this campaign into an inspiring precedent.

Check it out at Kickstarter!

WebM version coming soon.