Releases and Recommendations
/ by Matt
As the DVDs are making their way throughout the globe and the web release draws nearer and nearer, it’s time to give a little update.
DVD Mailing
The DVDs seem to have made their way across nearly all of Europe and the UK. The first DVDs in the USA were reported arriving in New York and it seems a few more are popping up around North America. I haven’t heard anything yet from South America, Africa or Asia yet, and I have a feeling I still will be waiting a little while down here in Australia :). ‘Steve’ has started a map group on Frappr called Orangewave where in theory we’ll be able to see how the DVDs are spreading. You might want to add yourself and the arrival date to the list when you receive yours, it looks like fun, especially if we get all 2000 there!
YouTube
Yes, we know that some eager fellow has already ripped the DVD and uploaded it to YouTube. The general consensus within the team is that we have no problem with it (it’s creative commons after all) but we recommend that you do yourself a favour and wait a few more days for the official release. It’d be a shame to let your first impressions be tarnished by the small, jumpy, low-res, blurry, poorly sounding and synced YouTube version - it doesn’t really do justice to what we created, intended for HD projection with 5.1 audio.
Web Release
We’re working hard to get the web release out within the next couple of days. Video is (slowly) encoding on my system as I type this post out, but even after the different versions are all finished and checked, they need to be uploaded and mirrored before the onslaught, so we can’t guarantee exactly when it will be available. The aim is to provide a few different formats (H.264, MPEG4, OGG Theora, etc), at at least 3 different sizes each, but we’re still experimenting with different codecs so that list may end up changing slightly. Jan has made some audio mixes in various formats, in both stereo and 5.1 - we hope to provide 5.1 wherever possible. All (or at least the majority) of what we release should be playable with open source video players, such as VLC Media Player, so if you want to get prepared early, you may as well go and download it now (in fact do it anyway, since it’s a fine app).
Waiting, Waiting
I bet you’re getting itchy waiting for either your DVD to arrive, or for the web release - so am I! But until that comes, you can satiate your desires buy watching some other great movies. We compiled a list of some of the movies we watched late after hours while we were working on the project in Amsterdam, some of them more recommendable than others. Read on to check them out and for bonus points, see if you can spot any influences or references in Elephants Dream.
