Ever counted the number of people listed in the credits of a motion picture?

There are hundreds, even thousands of names.

The most typical ones are of course the screenwriter, the director, the producer and so on. But after the actors the long list begins. First of all we have sound people, the helping hands of the cinematographer, stage designers, location managers etc. These are the people who were working when the film was shot. But usually a major part of the filmmaking takes place somewhere else than at the time of the actual shooting.

Before any shooting begins lots of work is done in the pre-production phase. This includes numerous designs, drawing storyboards and animatrics to visualize shots, finding actors and production crew. The work on animation and modelling also starts at this time.

When the film has been shot the post-production phase kicks in. This phase of production has always been an important part of the process, but in the digital era it has grown to almost colossal propotions. Things that were out of reach for the old school filmmakers can now be achieved. Mistakes in the shots can be corrected, scenes and actors replaced and shots recreated.

When one starts to think about this it is no wonder that the budgets of films reach easily tens of millions euros. And unfortunately this is also where some great ideas usually stop. When the story is not certain to sell for the average Joe, any sensible producer will scrap the production immediately, or insist for a complete rewrite to make the story appeal the tastes of a larger audience. And that's why we see the same films done again and again.

But this is where the revolution begins.

The digital tools have opened new doors for creative filmmaking. What it less considered is the fact that with these new tools the work can also be easily divided among talented people, because these tools are affordable and easily available to almost everybody. With the approach copied from open source software movement talented people around the world can come together to realise even complicated film projects.

The first stage remains, however. The story must sell. This time it need not attract the multimilloin producer, but arouse the interest of a group of Open Source Filmmakers. From this point onward the work can be divided globally with artists working on the editing, music, digital effects and so forth. Usually the artistic responsibility stays with the project coordinator, previously known as director/producer. But it need not. With the script the story can have several incarnations in the hands of enthustiastic production crews around the world. Or with the shot footage capable editors will have a field day creating their version with own taste and rhythm.

Open Source Filmmaking opens new possibilities for artists in every field of filmmaking. There are no barriers. Even location shooting can be devided on different continents where some actors are shot in studio in India, others in Finland and background slates somewhere else. The final shot comes together at the editing station in Rome.

SwampJedis production was one of the first to implement the Open Source Filmmaking philosophy. At present we have people working on background digital mattes and music. We are still looking for people in character animation and spaceship animation.

More information on OSF and ongoing OSF productions can be found at the www.opensourcefilm.org site.