A small team in Latvia, led by an inexperienced director Gints Zilbalodis, won an Oscar for their animated film FLOW, crafted with free software in a modest studio. This achievement signifies a growing trend where creative teams can produce high-quality works from anywhere, leveraging affordable technology. Previous successes include Billie Eilish's home-recorded album. As software becomes increasingly powerful, the potential for small creators is expanding, especially with AI revolutionizing the creative process, pushing boundaries of what can be accomplished with limited resources.
We established Dream Well Studio in Latvia for Flow. This room is the whole studio. Usually about 4-5 people were working at the same time, including me.
Let that sink in: 4-5 people in a small room in Latvia led by a relatively inexperienced director used free software to make a movie that as of February 2025 had earned $20m and won an Oscar.
As computers and software get cheaper and more powerful, people can do more with less. And 'more' here doesn't mean just a bit better.
With AI in the mix, things are about to go into overdrive. Zilbalodis and his collaborators could produce their film because someone else built Blender.
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