Music Videos Are Short Films Again

What makes them worth revisiting is how openly they were made. The production files, the models and the textures were all released alongside the films, so a whole generation of animators learned their craft by taking them apart.

Watch one on a big screen with decent speakers and the craft is obvious: the timing, the sound design and the colour all hold up years later. Watch it on a phone and it still works, which is the harder trick.

Made in the Open

We screen one at the office every few months. Somebody always spots a detail nobody noticed before, which is the best argument for making things in the open.

• Scored for big speakers
• Built by small, mostly volunteer teams
• Still used to test video codecs
• Every source file was published

Open movies are the only blockbusters you are allowed to take apart.

The Blender Foundation’s open movies have quietly become some of the most watched short films on the internet. They are free to share, free to remix and, more importantly, genuinely good to watch.