Free feature films?
Free feature films? Well, yeah, sure - The Pirate Bay, right?
A lot of people have asked us if BloodSpell is the first Creative Commons feature film, or the first Machinima feature film, or even the first feature film released for free on the Internet. Whilst we like being first as much as the next guy, actually quite a lot of lunatics actually not only make entire feature films for no money, but then release the bloody things on the Internet for free - and we're proud to be amongst them.
Some of them are a bit rough, some of them are clunky - but they're all original, they're all interesting, and they're all free.
Can't say fairer than that.
Here are five of our favourites - including BloodSpell, of course! :
One of the poster children for indie animation on the web, Broken Saints is actually rather more than feature length, at 12 hours in total. Half way between a film and a comic book, it tells the story of four people - a Shinto monk, a radical Moslem, a hacker and a mysterious girl - drawn into the supernatural and government conspiracy. It's great modern-supernatural stuff, reminding me a lot of the comic series "The Invisibles" by Grant Morrison, crossed with a bit of David Lynch and Neil Gaiman - a little slow, but a great watch if you're into that style.
There's also a DVD available to buy from their site
BloodSpell is a “punk fantasy adventure”, the action-adventure story of a world where people are infected with magic in their blood. The hero of the tale, Jered, is a young monk sworn to hunt down the “Blooded”, who goes on the run after his own Blood Magic is revealed, and has to survive gladiatorial arenas, double-crossing adventuresses, and eventually the Church of the Angels who he once served.
We're in Buffy territory here - an epic fantasy movie, but one with more of a sense of fun about it - but simltaneously taking the story seriously - than the usual bloated orchestral-soundtrack-and-guys-with-posh-English-accents nonsense that Hollywood produces.
If you're into fantasy, and particularly if you're into Whedon-esque epic fantasy, we think you'll like BloodSpell. Obviously, though, we're biased, because we made it, so here are a few random reviews that go over the film in more detail. Enjoy!
One of the first Machinima feature films, Anachronox the Movie is adapted from the cutscenes in the game of the same name. You might think that would make it, well, a bit dodgy, but in actual fact this is a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek space opera with film noir touches, which won the first Machinima Film Festival in 2002.
High production values, professional voice acting, a strong and entertaining storyline with a lot of great set-pieces: recommended.
The director, Jake Hughes, released a DVD some time ago, but it appears to have vanished from the Web. I'd love to see it again.
It has to be said, there's a fairly geek-heavy theme to most of the movies which are released online, which makes something like this even more of a refreshing change. Made by a group of students in Manteca, California, it's a gentle, quite moving (kinda) coming-of-age story about a troubled boy, his family and friends. We're very much in conventional indie movie territory here, the same territory as "Sideways" or "Little Miss Sunshine" (although with a significantly different tone).
There are a few technical issues with the movie - the audio's not perfect, and whether you'll like the handheld camerawork is very much a matter of taste - but it's definitely worth a watch.
Done The Impossible(Bittorrent)
You may be noticing something of a theme here - three of the five films on this list have gone on to get commercial distribution of one form or another, disproving the theory that a film released for free will never go any further. This one's available on DVD as well as free .torrent.
This one's actually about another film - the movie Serenity, directed by Joss Whedon after the collapse of the TV show Firefly. It's aptly titled - it should be more or less impossible for a movie to be based on a failed TV series. This extremely professionally-produced documentary tells the story of how it happened, including interviews with cast and crew, plus a whole lot of the fans who made it happen.
Exactly how free this film is is a bit of an open question - it was released on Bittorrent initially, but the official site makes no mention of that. Still, the torrents still work! If anyone knows more, please do email me - info at bloodspell dot com.
Bonus Features
Here are a few other films that are free and fun:
Seven years and a whole load of obsessed Finns made this 45-minute Star Trek parody - which has now been picked up by Universal.
Feature-length Star Trek fanmovie made using the voices of the cast, from various places. Cool stuff.
Awesome free 3D animated film made using the Open-Source tool Blender.
Pretty much the poster child for fanmovies, this 47-minute Star Wars movie might not have Oscar-winning acting, but its production values are incredible.
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