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Film Gimp Chalks Up Another Studio 111

Posted by timothy from the hey-fellas-this-one-is-free dept.
Robin Rowe of the Film Gimp project has a piece running on NewsForge (also part of OSDN) that says "Film Gimp has recently been adopted by ComputerCafe, the fourth motion picture studio to use it in making feature films." Check out this recent post about Film Gimp to see some great screenshots of behind-the-scenes use. (And Rowe is also hoping you can get to the Linux Movies Track at Creative Cow West 2003, starting Tuesday in Los Angeles.) Update: 02/17 04:04 GMT by T : Brain rebooted, so I added the missing link.
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Film Gimp Chalks Up Another Studio More

Film Gimp Chalks Up Another Studio

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  • What is Film Gimp? (Score:2, Informative)

    by kruetz ( 642175 )

    Okay, originally I thought Film Gimp might have been a video-editor or something built on top of The Gimp, but here's what it really is (straight from the horse's mouth):

    Film Gimp is a free open source painting and image retouching program designed to be more suitable for film work than GIMP or Adobe Photoshop. Film Gimp is the most popular open source tool in the motion picture industry -- used in Scooby-Doo, Harry Potter, Stuart Little and other feature films. Go Film Gimp! Go!

    • Re:What is Film Gimp? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Wow, I thought it was the name of Forrest Gumps' son!

      +1 Informative

    • Re:What is Film Gimp? (Score:5, Informative)

      by pos ( 59949 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @10:18PM (#5316595)
      Keep reading...

      Film Gimp is based on GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Film Gimp is an independent project, separate from GIMP and GNU.
      -pos

    • no,no,no... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      babelfish describes it as follows:

      In order to decorate the decoration string of the film and from the string or adobe brick Photoshop to be suited for working the film it is the picture of the free was opened source which is designed and the correction program of the image. The decoration string of the film is the potter of the Scooby-Doo and the Harry, the photographic strip industry which a little is used with the film of the and other feature most spread the source equipment which was opened....
    • Perhaps I'm being a bit fanatical, but why are "we" as a community happy about this? The motion picture industry folks are the same ones that are chastising us for using our Tivos, blasting the DeCSS stuff (and not helping with a "legal" opensource alternative to play DVDs) and are generally trying to make the lives of geeks and techies as painful as possible... and yet here we are, applauding and encouraging them to use open source software... /sigh
      • Have "you" heard of independant film?

      • Re:What is Film Gimp? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by damiam ( 409504 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @11:23PM (#5316828)
        The MPAA is the evil part. Companies like ILM, Sony Imageworks, and Computercafe don't have a lot of say in the MPAA's policies. Besides, why does an entity have to be entirely evil? The "motion picture industry" is made up of hundreds of companies and millions of people. Not all of them support DRM and the war against CSS.

      • Re:What is Film Gimp? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by KewlPC ( 245768 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @12:15AM (#5316995) Homepage Journal
        Note to Slashdot Editors: please stop refering to Film Gimp as a tool used by movie studios. It isn't.

        Rather, it is a tool used by VFX studios. While the VFX studios may work for the movie studios, they have nothing to do with the MPAA, Jack Valenti, etc.

        For that matter, neither do most of the people in the movie industry (movie industry != MPAA && movie industry != studio execs), at least not directly, but that is another matter for another discussion.
        • Note to Slashdot Editors: please stop refering to Film Gimp as a tool used by movie studios. It isn't.

          Last time I checked Slashdot editors rarely posted stories written by themselves... also this particular story was quoting another source.

          I'm sure you're right, but aren't we splitting hairs here? ;)
  • The newsforge article is here [newsforge.com]. Or perhaps they are saving the URL to tomorrows dupe about it.
    • ah, the fickleness of the "dupe humor" crowd...

      terrible thing to be called a troll...you hem and haw and gnash and gnaw over the perfect one-liner, only to be lowered to that lowest of all life forms.

      Oh, ye troll, we weep for you.

  • Another Good Example (Score:2, Insightful)

    by neotrex ( 534693 )
    This is another prime example of OSS can work to make software that is competitive if not better the other closed source applications.. Of course adobe will come along and say that they own the patent on anything that edits a layer of an image and try to sue because they cannot seem to compete and let their work answer the challange. Looks as though the gauntlet has been cast down again.

    • Re:Another Good Example (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Are you high???!?!! Competitive or better? Have you USED film Gimp? Have you used Photoshop? There is absolutely no comparing the two from a user interface standpoint. Photoshop an evolving easy to use paint package. Gimp is RSI looking for a place to happen. I work in one of the aforementioned studios that uses film Gimp. I would say the primary reason that Gimp is used is beacuse there is nothing else available for Linux, NOT because it is better. In fact, I had one artist physically move from his 1Ghz dual AMD machine to a 5 year old 175Mhz Octane to use Photoshop version 3 because it was less painful. Think about that, someone conciously chose a slow outdated boat anchor running 7 year old software to avoid using Gimp. It just kills me to see the "it's Open Source so it Must be better" attitude.

  • Link to story? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by _|()|\| ( 159991 )
    Hey, Timothy, did you forget to link to the story [newsforge.com]?

  • OSS/MPAA/CDBTPA/DMCA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by trandles ( 135223 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @11:16PM (#5316800) Journal
    Does anyone else wonder what's on Hollywood's mind when you see stories like this? An open source project like Film Gimp is heralded for all it provides to Hollywood and the film industry and yet this same industry vigorously lobbies for legislation like CDBTPA and DMCA which could potentially make open source projects illegal! I can't be alone in seeing the hypocrisy in this.

    My general opinion of Hollywood is that it's populated by people like Jack Valenti, clueless rich assholes that will stop at nearly nothing to suck every last dime from the pockets of the public. I'll feel some sympathy for poor Jack when the film industry is living in cardboard boxes beneath highway overpasses. They whine and bitch about pirates stealing billions from their pockets when I read stories like this [cbs2.com].

    • Re:OSS/MPAA/CDBTPA/DMCA (Score:5, Insightful)

      by astrashe ( 7452 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @11:39PM (#5316887) Journal
      The film industry is huge, with all kinds of different people working in it.

      The people who retouch frames of films probably make good salaries but not extravagant ones, and for all practical purposes are living on another planet than people like Valenti or the movie stars.

      My very limited contact with that world makes me think that this particular segment is pretty geeky -- movie geeky and technology geeky. Good folk.

      If movie piracy cuts into the bottom line, a certain number of these people will probably lose their jobs.

      (I said it, and what's worse, I believe it, so mod me down! Lobby the /. crew for a new negative category, counterrevolutionary!)

      • Re:OSS/MPAA/CDBTPA/DMCA (Score:4, Funny)

        by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @12:50AM (#5317166) Homepage
        The people who retouch frames of films probably make good salaries but not extravagant ones, for all practical purposes are living on another planet than people like Valenti or the movie stars.

        It's definitely the movie stars and especially Jack Valenti who are living on another planet from the rest of us. (Did you think that Planet Hollywood was just a restaurant/bar chain?)

    • It's all about control with intellectual property (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @12:03AM (#5316960) Homepage
      For copyright holders as paranoid as corporate copyright holders, it's all about control. It has to be, they can't legally decide that "this is enough money" once they make a good profit because even though that might keep their customers happy, it won't satisfy their stockholders. Individual copyright holders can analyze a situation and realize that they have more to gain by letting 75% of their users/readers/views/listeners bootleg their works. Corporations don't have that luxury.

      So that presents a problem. I'm a classical liberal, I believe that freedom from tyranny is more important than wealth, the former begets the latter and that the latter does not reinforce the former. If anything one can look at today's corporate society to see a society where freedom is sacrificed to make a buck. The democratic process control by two parties is in large part responsible for this situation. The only solutions could never be put into effect because monied interests of all stripes control the system. It doesn't matter whether they're labor, capital, environmentalists, "consumer rights" (whatever the hell that is), anti-abortionists, you name it. They're almost all invariably against the public good which is the protection of natural rights.

      There are two solutions I can foresee. One painful, one not so painful. The first is to bar corporations from owning intellectual property. The movie studios for example would "loan money" to steven spielberg to produce a copyrighted work that he would own that the parent corporation would have an exclusive right to distribute, but not own. The other solution is to simultaneously remove anti-freedom nuts like Valenti and give legal protection to copyright owning corporations that allow bootlegging on some meaningful scale to keep their customers happy.

      Strong copyright advocates need to learn that America doesn't have the culture to stomach the laws they want. It never has, those laws fly in the face of hundreds, if not almost a thousand years of Anglo-American customs and traditions. One of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, did not believe that the law should allow for private ownership of ideas. I'm sure almost none of them would approve of our current system. As a very liberal Christian I find it repulsive to allow for patents on anything other than very specific physical product designs. To me, allowing patents on anything else is an affront to God's creation as all knowledge is ultimately the creation of God, not man. Knowledge exists independently from human understanding, it awaits discovery, not creation, by man.

      • The other solution is to simultaneously remove anti-freedom nuts like Valenti and give legal protection to copyright owning corporations that allow bootlegging on some meaningful scale to keep their customers happy.

        Can't do that. Valenti are just symptoms of the root problem. Remove him (illegal as that would be) and another would take his place.

      • natural rights

        What is a "natural right"?

      • The answer to the dilemma is to set clear limits on the copyright monopoly, particularly *time limits*.

        Some have suggested that it's reasonable for the copyright owner to make 90% of the profit. So if the typical book generates 90% of its total profits within the first twenty years of publication, copyright on books should last for twenty years. The 10% reduction in profit for the publisher (compared to perpetual copyright) is more than outweighed by the increased gain to the public from having the book in the public domain after 20 years.
        • ...that would work until the MPAA used their accountants to devise a scheme where they recieve equal revnue over a desired period.

          How? I dont know, say, sell the 'potential revenue' to a Bank (like you can sell a debt) and allow them to give you X% today, Y% over Z Years.

          My point? It will require a much more definate and "radical" method to make the changes necessary. Small, "procedural" style changes will, in time, be made ineffective by future MPAA whores. Like they do today, slowly extending copyright, they will slowly morph your desired change to their own will.

          My suggested answer? Amend your constitution to say "10 or 3 or 1" year. The rule must be simple. No more legislation, and no exceptions save ANOTHER constitution change.

          ...but thats not going to happen, the plutocrats have seized control of USofA'ian democracy and ground it to a halt. There is no more change, there is no more Democracy in America.

      • today's corporate society to see a society where freedom is sacrificed to make a buck. The democratic process control by two parties is in large part responsible for this situation.

        My favorite word: Plutocracy [reference.com]. Used in a sentance: "The United States of America is a plutocracy."

    • Apples & Oranges (Score:5, Informative)

      by tweakt ( 325224 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @12:06AM (#5316965) Homepage
      Your comparing people who make movies with those who's business is to invest, finance, and eventually profit from them. The people using this software only care about quality and creating spectacular effects, and use the best tool for the job be it OSS or not.
    • To decide what Hollywood thinks perhaps there should be a film?

      But which studio, producer, and who should star?
    • Good lord, it's not as if Jack himself manages the efx people. shops are hired for the quality of their work, the money they charge, how fast they can work, not for what fricking tools they use.
  • Although ot out yet for windows, there is a screenshot of the early version here [sourceforge.net].

    <sarcasm>
    Note in the bottom right corner? atiTray. Yeah. Real geeks don't go with nVidia in mission critical assignments. Even if that mission is taking out the terrorists [counter-strike.net].
    </sarcasm>

  • Classic commercial open source (Score:5, Informative)

    by sammyo ( 166904 ) on Sunday February 16, 2003 @11:53PM (#5316929) Journal
    FilmGimp started as a hacked up version of Gimp to solve a particular problem that had no solution. Instead of making that a propriatary product R&H went open source. FilmGimp is more specialized buy very handy for some extgreme image processing. very cool

  • The folks at Rhythm & Hues are really nice... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Hanno ( 11981 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:34AM (#5318001) Homepage
    You won't care, probably, but ten years ago when I didn't yet decide on what to study, I just called R&H while I was in LA as a German tourist, because I tried to find out about the folks behind the Star Trek special effects.

    They gave me, a foreign High School kid, the grand tour of their facilities, showed and explained almost everything I asked for and were really really nice people - considering the fact that I just called them hours in advance and had no prior appointment with them.

    Same with the model shop, btw, who allowed me to see the actual DS9 model. I still can't quite believe that they just took the time for that weird German fanboy that I was...

    While I didn't end up in computer graphics software development, it's nice to know that since I made minor contributions to Linux, some of my code now runs on R&H's computers...

    So anyway, good luck to them. I hope they are still as cool as they used to be.
  • Hi I'm sorry if this sounds a really stupid question. I'm interested in getting Film Gimp up and running on my MAC. I've got X11, and although I'm an independent filmmaker I've got a background in computers. Can anyone recommend a site that explains what I need ? and how I get it up and running ? Ive searched web but all the sites i find about the film gimp seem very Linux/Unix based, and rather more techinical than I'd like. It would be nice if there was a site that explained how to get it going on just a MAC. Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask this. Toadguy

    • Re:Film Gimp (Score:2, Informative)

      by Thaidog ( 235587 )
      www.macslash.com had an article on it... search the old articles for it an the story will point you to the website with details on film gimp on os x
      • And again but with links :
        www.macslash.com [macslash.com] had an article on it... search the old articles for it an the story will point you to the website with details on film gimp on os x [macslash.org]

        The port still requires an X-Server, it is not a GTK OSX [sourceforge.net] app but there seems to be work in progress to make a GTK OSX version of Film Gimp [sourceforge.net].
        Hopefully the high standards of Mac users and developers will help force FilmGimp (and hopefully GIMP) to become more flexible and user friendly.

    • use fink [sourceforge.net] ... install it, log in as root in your terminal and write fink install filmgimp ... another solution is to use the GUI

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