[HN Gopher] The Free Movie: Frame-by-frame, handrawn reproductio...
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       The Free Movie: Frame-by-frame, handrawn reproduction of "The Bee
       Movie" (2023)
        
       Author : gaws
       Score  : 251 points
       Date   : 2025-01-13 00:27 UTC (22 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (thefreemovie.buzz)
 (TXT) w3m dump (thefreemovie.buzz)
        
       | kevingadd wrote:
       | From a few moments of watching, it seems like over half the
       | crowd-sourced frames are just trolling and not actually a
       | representation of the original film. I guess that kind of adds to
       | the aesthetic, but I'm a little surprised they kept those troll
       | frames...
        
         | lukevp wrote:
         | Yeah I agree, there should be a voting system that can kick out
         | bogus frames and have someone remake them, would be really
         | interesting to see what it'd look like if everyone was trying
         | to recreate it. Kind of like rotoscoping I suppose. As it is,
         | there's just a ton of discontinuity because of the troll
         | frames.
        
           | chem83 wrote:
           | I imagine that trolls would eventually band together to try
           | to steamroll the voting system like it happens on r/Place.
           | Maybe.
        
             | nielsole wrote:
             | If votes are attributable, such voting rings should be
             | easily detectable
        
           | pcblues wrote:
           | This is a fascinating idea. Sort of like a wikipedia, but
           | trying to establish the truth of a single movie rather than
           | everything we know.
           | 
           | It would probably end up needing moderators, harassing people
           | for funding, and pay for political purposes as well as its
           | core reason for existing :)
        
         | doubled112 wrote:
         | For at least a few seconds it was an odd game of phallus or
         | frame.
        
         | jsight wrote:
         | Yeah, there really needed to be some voting or other feedback
         | system to encourage consistency over time.
         | 
         | This is a mildly interesting experiment that largely just looks
         | like a failure at the moment.
        
       | Deprogrammer9 wrote:
       | Thanks for making me watch that? WTF
        
       | bytematic wrote:
       | would be cool without all the trolling
        
         | smolder wrote:
         | Better in concept than execution, for sure. I feel bad for the
         | people that actually drew their frames competently.
        
           | ternnoburn wrote:
           | The execution is part of the art of it, like, there's a
           | statement being made about the Internet, anonymity, and
           | humanity here. It may not be what the artist originally set
           | out to create with their art, which I find fascinating.
        
       | binary_slinger wrote:
       | Who is going to put each frame into image to image AI model and
       | get out a photorealistic output and recompile?
        
         | cafeinux wrote:
         | Lots of photorealistic phalluses are going to be generated.
        
           | davidmurdoch wrote:
           | Only if you're using a model trained on them
        
             | RankingMember wrote:
             | I think it would be against the spirit of the project not
             | to do so
        
         | Terretta wrote:
         | I've read white papers seemingly claiming with the right prompt
         | these sketches would turn into the indicated art.
         | 
         | That would be quite the compression scheme.
        
       | renewiltord wrote:
       | I watched 5 seconds and it was garbage. Felt like /dev/random
        
       | tuanx5 wrote:
       | Reminiscent of Shrek Retold
        
       | tristanj wrote:
       | Shrek Retold https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM70TROZQsI is a
       | similar fan-made reproduction, but it's way more polished. The
       | movie is split into roughly 1min sections, with each one done by
       | a different creator. The quality is all over the place, in a
       | hilarious way. One minute it's produced by a professional
       | animator nailing the scenes, then the next minute it's people
       | goofing around in their backyard.
        
         | asabla wrote:
         | Some of the most goofiest scenes reminded me about my self
         | growing up, recording dumb re-creations of movies/tv-shows with
         | friends.
         | 
         | I had a blast watching that! thank you for sharing.
        
         | lloeki wrote:
         | I believe the trendsetter was Star Wars Uncut, made of 15s
         | slices:
         | 
         | https://www.starwarsuncut.com/
         | 
         | Which I now realise I never watched in full...
        
           | cafeinux wrote:
           | I love the differences between those three movies (The Free
           | Movie, Shrek Retold and Star Wars Uncut). Star Wars really
           | looks like a work of love. Shrek looks like a work of love
           | that tries it's best to not take itself seriously. Free Movie
           | looks like a bizarre troll post.
           | 
           | While this is coherent with each movie's tone itself, and
           | perhaps with the time each "demaster" was made (I don't know,
           | I didn't check), I feel like this is most coherent with how
           | each movie is viewed by the community:
           | 
           | - Star Wars is a beloved movie, with a huge honest fan base.
           | Thus, it was remade with love and attention to detail.
           | 
           | - Shrek is a beloved movie, but doesn't take itself seriously
           | in the first place, and is also a meme. Thus it was remade
           | with love, but trying hard to look like it's a troll.
           | 
           | - Bee Movie is mainly a meme, isn't AFAIK a beloved movie,
           | and its fan base is mostly made of memers and trolls. Thus it
           | was low-effortly remade at this non-flattering image.
        
             | johnnyanmac wrote:
             | Bee movie has more of a cult fanbase at best. It's still
             | Seinfeld, and the jokes aged surprisingly well.
             | 
             | But there's only so far you can get with a story of a bee
             | breaking out of his natural programming,followed by a bee-
             | human romance, followed by said bee suing humanity for
             | stealing bee-kind's honey. You can't even truly explain the
             | plot without breaking it down into 3 episodes.
             | 
             | It's a surprisingly good benchmark to ask "is it better
             | than Bee movie" when measuring other Dreamworks movies
             | against themselves.
        
               | soperj wrote:
               | You forgot the part where the bees then sit around and do
               | nothing after getting all their honey back. It's
               | basically a diatribe against universal basic income,
               | since without the incentive to slave away for the rest of
               | their lives, their lives become meaningless.
        
             | Freak_NL wrote:
             | > Bee Movie is mainly a meme, isn't AFAIK a _beloved_
             | movie, [...]
             | 
             | All you had to do was add one more 'e'. What a senseless
             | waste of a pun...
        
             | cf100clunk wrote:
             | > Star Wars is a beloved movie, with a huge honest fan
             | base. Thus, it was remade with love and attention to
             | detail.
             | 
             | Agreed. Star Wars Uncut exists because devotees wanted to
             | set the record straight regarding controversial changes in
             | later versions, and their efforts were laudable. Still, the
             | image and sound quality cannot match the latest, greatest
             | studio versions, so watching Uncut versions on the newest
             | home theatre gear means accepting the warts and all.
             | 
             | Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's remaster was also a labour of
             | love but with a different purpose (image clarity and
             | upscaling):
             | 
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19453745
        
               | dmonitor wrote:
               | I believe you are confusing Star Wars Uncut with Star
               | Wars Despecialized Edition. Image and sound quality are
               | far, far away from the first thing I would point out when
               | distinguishing Uncut from the studio masters.
        
         | wk_end wrote:
         | There's an extremely goofy version of RoboCop that's sort of
         | like this as well.
         | 
         | https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3528906/
        
           | aceazzameen wrote:
           | The Robocop remake was my first thought. Some of those scenes
           | are hilarious.
        
           | plussed_reader wrote:
           | Our Robocop Remake is a scene by scene remake, made in the
           | same spirit as this FreeBee Movie.
           | 
           | Worth a watch with friends present:
           | https://vimeo.com/85903713
        
         | vhodges wrote:
         | There is an episode of Bob's Burgers that did something similar
         | to this. https://bobs-
         | burgers.fandom.com/wiki/Brunchsquatch/Trivia#:~...
        
           | bentcorner wrote:
           | Also there's the "The Princess Bride: Home Movie":
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29s1yU3nGkQ
           | 
           | Note that this isn't really a fan-remake as it's professional
           | actors but with the spliced scenes but it's pretty
           | entertaining.
        
         | tzs wrote:
         | Similar is "South Park Reanimated: The List" [1]. From the
         | description:
         | 
         | > 6 years, 175 animators, 260 unique scenes, 1 copyright
         | dispute, and a lot of love-- we are proud to finally present
         | the South Park Reanimated Project! We are so grateful for
         | everyone who participated and made this such an amazing
         | recreation. We hope you enjoy!
         | 
         | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QXX6AnO0nI
        
           | doublerabbit wrote:
           | Incredible. A great episode too.
        
         | sirbranedamuj wrote:
         | also featuring a great reimagining of I'm A Believer by Hot Dad
         | :)
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       |  _The Free Movie_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36687399
       | - July 2023 (100 comments)
        
       | Reviving1514 wrote:
       | This is amazing. I love that this exists. I'm surprised how
       | negative some of the comments are.
        
         | SV_BubbleTime wrote:
         | I skipped to a random spot, and lasted about 5 seconds. Two
         | drawings of dicks, 50% scribbles, and a couple frames of just
         | the word PENIS. Yes, this is truly a noteworthy effort.
         | 
         | I'm as equally curious as you, just on the other side of the
         | horseshoe.
        
           | polonbike wrote:
           | Same here. If you skip to a random part of the movie, and
           | move frame by frame, it becomes a game of "spot the penis".
           | Just one or two can be "tolerated", but we're far from that
           | here, so ... My opinion is that it does not really belong in
           | HN
        
             | filcuk wrote:
             | Because of a penis drawing? Are we in preschool? There have
             | been those ever since caveman times.
        
               | shermantanktop wrote:
               | Did the caveman Bee Movie have penises in it? Because
               | then you'd have a really good point.
        
               | robertlagrant wrote:
               | I think the point is we're not in preschool, nor are we
               | cave(wo)men, so we don't need the penis drawings.
        
               | gopher_space wrote:
               | A penis drawing isn't something that's needed, it's
               | something that happens. Feel free to rail against them in
               | a Kanute-like manner, but learning to cock an eyebrow and
               | say "yeah, that figures" can be self-preserving.
               | 
               | For what it's worth I too prefer the plausible
               | deniability of Georgia O'Keefe's outrageous lies. It's a
               | more sensible chuckle.
        
               | robertlagrant wrote:
               | No-one's railing against anything.
        
               | gopher_space wrote:
               | I was hoping to introduce my old "donging through the
               | millennia" thesis work and ride that hobby horse around
               | the room a little :(
        
             | andybak wrote:
             | > My opinion is that it does not really belong in HN
             | 
             | It's a fascinating tech/social experiment. It belongs on HN
             | because it was done and the outcome is what it is.
             | 
             | If you actually want to watch the Bee Movie then watch the
             | original. I doubt generating a watchable alternative was
             | behind anyone's motivation in this.
        
           | aceazzameen wrote:
           | I'm sure this one had an absurdly short TTP (time to penis).
        
         | astura wrote:
         | >I'm surprised how negative some of the comments are.
         | 
         | It's literally unwatchable - It's 85% scribbles and "jokes."
        
         | tyleo wrote:
         | I can understand the negativity because this only appeals to
         | specific sensibilities.
         | 
         | I admit that it's low brow but it hits my fascination the exact
         | right way. To me there is something special about so many
         | people being organized around something so mundane.
        
       | WesolyKubeczek wrote:
       | Nice idea, but I'm struggling to remember myself ever having
       | consumed so many different pictures of dicks over the course of
       | five minutes.
        
       | eigenblake wrote:
       | We could probably fine-tune a tiny convolutional neutral net
       | image classifier and just hold on the last good frames for longer
       | to cover the frames with clear trolling and nsfw images.
        
         | BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
         | I think that would miss the point
        
           | mkagenius wrote:
           | No, that point was already made. This will be a new point
           | unlike the previous point.
        
             | BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
             | But i like the previous point. Why would you take it from
             | me?
        
               | I-M-S wrote:
               | It's not taking away, a new point is by definition
               | adding. Just like The Free Movie added to The Bee Movie.
        
       | airstrike wrote:
       | I think the word "crowdsourced" is conspicuously missing from the
       | title. It would explain a lot.
        
         | cafeinux wrote:
         | They do say it's "crowd-pirated".
        
       | echelon wrote:
       | Back when I was first playing around with AI, I built a website
       | where people could upload fine tuned GlowTTS and Tacotron2 text
       | to speech model weights.
       | 
       | One of the first things users did was to emit the entire
       | transcript of the Bee Movie:
       | 
       | https://youtu.be/0_ToJXHnVFQ?si=qfMNuJXAHW-hWSz5
        
       | r-w wrote:
       | Epilepsy warning please! :-)
        
       | pajko wrote:
       | The bunny reenactments are cool too: http://www.angryalien.com/
        
       | imdsm wrote:
       | I clicked randomly, at 00:37:09 and got a penis
        
       | ikesau wrote:
       | I drew a few frames in this, but it was a real shame to see how
       | little quality control there was in the final cut. Makes it kind
       | of unwatchable.
       | 
       | Progress near the end was really fast, as lots of people had
       | caught on and were racing to get as many frames in as possible.
       | 
       | I really don't think this concept has been worn out yet, and
       | someone could make their own version of this with a small review
       | step and then we'd get some fun, actually watchable hand-drawn
       | movies :)
        
         | ElCapitanMarkla wrote:
         | What would be interesting is if multiple submissions could be
         | made for each frame, and you could rank each.
         | 
         | You could build a version of the best frames every year and
         | watch it progress.
        
         | sjf wrote:
         | You're right, I can't believe they didn't cut frames that are
         | totally unrelated, there so many left in that are just
         | scribbles or text.
         | 
         | I just tried making some frames for the dune remake. The editor
         | is so hard to use. I can only draw a one pixel line with no
         | smoothing. It's really laggy/glitchy. I can barely even make
         | out what the original frame is because it's in grayscale with
         | an overlay. I got one frame that could have been a landscape of
         | snow and rocks, or it could have been sand dunes, or water. I
         | have no idea, it was just gray and white blobs.
         | 
         | I get that they are going for a retro style, but even MS paint
         | had different size brushes.
         | 
         | It's such a cool idea, I wish the tooling was better.
        
       | GrantMoyer wrote:
       | I can certainly see why many commenters here find this many dicks
       | hard to swallow, but when I take them wholly with the rest of the
       | work, I find they come together satisfyingly and rawly defile
       | copyright and DRM.
        
       | yboris wrote:
       | Different approach: splice in visual and audio effects of guns
       | into Harry Potter
       | 
       |  _Harry Potter and the Deathly Weapons_ -- Harry Potter With Guns
       | 
       | https://harrypotterwithguns.com/
        
         | conductr wrote:
         | I never watched or read the series but my wife was watching it
         | (last week actually), I passed by and saw a chase scene where
         | they were shooting from their wands at each other and I made a
         | comment like "Oh, it's Jason Bourne for kids.. now I see the
         | appeal"
        
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       (page generated 2025-01-13 23:01 UTC)