“Then you win” is a project from a voluntary association based in France called Loin de l’Œil. Using Creative Commons licenses, they are planning to produce three documentaries about Ekta Parishad in India, a mass organization based on Gandhian principles. This is an open content project developed with predominantly open source (libre) software.

It is possible to participate in the project by donating, helping to promote the documentaries, translating from Hindi, Tamil to English/French, and by editing using Cinelerra (a linux based video editing tool). Or you can join in other ways, through partnership, sponsoring and collaboration.

The promotion approach adopted by Loin de l’Œil is very interesting since they provide access to video ads in a variety formats (ogg, Flash) that you can embed in your blog from Dailymotion, Youtube and blip.tv. Here is the ad from YouTube.

Thanks to Creative Commons for introducing this project.

I subscribe to the Creative Commons blog and was recently excited to see two posts on Cinema 2.0. The first post introduces the idea of reusing footage from one film to create a new work with an entirely different purpose through the use of Creative Commons licenses. It is a topic that has been playing on our minds here in the UNU Media Studio as we struggle to produce documentaries under the existing scheme of things (i.e., respecting the copyrights of others) and try to do so in a open way.

The second post presents a collaborative film project in development called A Swarm of Angels. Team producing this film have developed 7 rules for open source media which I think are really useful. I have summarized them here and you can see how by adopting these rules it may be possible to collaboratively build and share digital media. They cover both the development process and the form in which you make your content available. So what are the rules?

1. Freely accessible
Available to stream, or download without a fee.
2. Freely available
Permanently available without DRM. The end user able to share the work without restriction.
3. Freely viewable
Available in multiple formats, and to be converted freely.
4. Giving source files
Source media, such as rushes and raw graphics files should be archived and available for other creators to work with.
5. Allowing remixing
Materials should be licensed explicitly to allow derivative work for at least non-commercial/artistic purposes.
6. Reveal the process
Allowing access to not only the final source media, but work-in-progress material and software files, adding another layer of transparency and documentation.
7. Open contribution
Adding ways to influence and participate in the creation of the original work through various types of community/audience involvement.

This approach is called Open Plus and is discussed more fully at the Swarm website.