Open Source Cinema - An Open Source Documentary Film about Copyright

This is a parody of Steamboat Willy (1928), which was itself a parody of Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928).

The animation is in sixty-five parts (one per student), each one making reference to one or more events or moments from one year in history, starting in 1928 and ending in 2008.

Produced by the students in COMS274 Intermedia I, Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University, Winter 2008.

Instructor: Matt Soar
Sound design: Owen Chapman
Teaching Assistants: Daniel Laurin, Kennetha Story

Kanye said it, KO re-mixed it, subMedia hacked it

Girl Talk takes it to the STREETS in Montreal during the Jazz fest, July 2007

Lessig's call to arms, during his Final Free Culture presentation, January 2008

Check it out in Full Screen Mode!!!

For my documentary on free culture, I've been studying a lot. More than any other person, I've studied Lawrence Lessig, CEO of Creative Commons, and his contributions to freeing sound, video, and graphics for use in the thriving market of user generated content. This is a mashup of some of his interviews.

A little background. Lessig has given many, many presentations on his ideas about free culture. More than anything else, he celebrates the power digital technologies give to take sounds and images from the culture around us and mix them together to say something.

This animation was created by all the students in COMS274 Intermedia I, Dept of Communication Studies, Concordia University, Fall 2007. Working in Flash, all 64 students rotoscoped 1-3 seconds of video each, over a period of three weeks. (Most of them had never used Flash before.)