The Road to Firefox 2

Earlier this year Mozilla launched one of its most exciting outreach campaigns to date, Firefox Flicks . Beginning as a contest, Firefox Flicks encouraged hundreds of non-developer Firefox fans to create Firefox commercials. By the end of the project over 280 flicks had received hits numbering in the millions, marking an unmistakable victory for both Mozilla and the online video community. Today, however, we are ready to mark the next victory for Firefox Flicks! This summer John Carey and I, Matt Shichtman, not only completed successful internships as documentary filmmakers for Mozilla, but also left a 45,000 sq. foot crop circle in our wake. Through our video blogging, we brought people a little bit closer to the heart of Mozilla, and we reached out to the community and built a team that was able to create something very special! Initially, we had no idea how we would pull off something of so grand a scale as a crop circle. We considered bringing in a company from the UK to make the crop circle ( What are we doing ) but the costs were prohibitive and we couldn't see going down that path. We began to lose momentum. Time passed, and with only a few weeks left in our internships, John and I began to think that the idea that everyone had fallen in love with was not going to come to fruition. Then something wonderful happened. John and I were invited to OSCON, Tim O'Reilly's Open Source Convention! ( Mozilla Hits OSCON! ) to present and film a screening of the Firefox Flicks top videos. There we met Beth Gordon and some of the folks from Oregon State's Open Source Labs. Beth was immediately geeked about the crop circle and breathed life back into our foundering project. Within a matter of days, the OSU gang had created wiki pages, a list-serv, and had begun to work out the logistics. Beth contacted Alex Polvi who, with help from his parents, was able to locate a suitable field, and, before we knew it, the ball was rolling! On Aug. 11 th , work officially began on the Firefox crop circle. The morning was spent doing a practice run in a nearby field. By noon, we had figured out our strategy and began work on the main attraction! Everyone worked through the night and the crop circle was completed the following morning. What a blast! We took a ton of aerial footage via airplane (thanks to David "Crash" Mandrell) and helicopter. My internship wrapped up that weekend but John headed back to the Mozilla office for his final week and started editing all the footage together so we could share it with the world. Now, without further adieu: Behind the Scenes: The Firefox crop circle! (Click to play the video. 39 MB.) (Update: a Theora version is available here .) For a complete history of the Firefox crop circle please see our earlier podcasts: What are we doing Mozilla Hits OSCON! Circle Making Part 1 Circle Making Part 2 Circle Making Part 3 Circle Making Part 4 And don't forget OSU's Linux User Group's page for a the text and photo version! Continue reading →