In July, we reported on the open-source movie community A Swarm of Angels – a group that hopes to update “the current filmmaking models of Hollywood and independent film to create cult cinema for the digital age.”

They’ve announced what they are calling the world’s “first open source film trailer,” for The Unfold, a sci-fi thriller being made open-source style:

The trailer is at the forefront of new creative processes empowered through the Internet of crowdsourcing, and peer production. Finished with title design by the internationally recognised graphic talents of Matt Pyke of Universal Everything collaborating with Maxim Zhestkov, it is a stunning glimpse into a world being created by a global membership fueling a pioneering people-powered film studio.

Rancel has evoked a powerful unfolding world created in 3D from 2D images created by Japanese photographer Palla. Through community feedback and discussion at the forums of aswarmofangels.com the initial ideas developed into a spiralling, shearing cityscape synchronised with an otherworldly soundtrack developed by Abadia. The online collaboration encompassed a team of participants from Spain, Belgium, the North and South of England, Japan, as well as Russia (not including members who participated in votes and posts via the forums).

The trailer and all accompanying source files are released under a Creative Commons CC-NC-SA-3.0 license, allowing full non-commercial remixing and sharing (embed codes for Youtube, blip.tv & hi-def Vimeo). Join the Swarm to help make the film and get further details for the open source package (register here, full member details here).

While the trailer doesn’t tell us much about the movie, I’m intrigued by the open-source approach to movie making. If you don’t like the trailer or the final movie, you can make your own version and share it.

The open source approach has worked for Linux, Apache & WordPress, but will it work for making movies? We’ll find out, with A Swarm Of Angels’ The Unfold.