A few days ago, IndieWire published an article stating that Hollywood is starting to take blockchain technology seriously.
Summary
Decentralized Pictures
The article mentions the non-profit organization Decentralized Pictures, co-founded by Roman Coppola, son of the famous Francis Ford Coppola, and a film director, actor, and producer.
In addition to Coppola, Decentralized Pictures was founded by technology and entertainment veteran Leo Matchett and American Zoetrope executive Michael Musante. At the same time, its board of directors includes Sofia and Gia Coppola, the great director’s daughter and granddaughter, respectively.
IndieWire reports that Decentralized Pictures plans to go live in the fall, with a mission to support underrepresented filmmakers using a blockchain-based web platform.
The platform is currently being tested by members of the Ghetto Film School and the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Once it is made public, anyone will be able to participate.
How the platform will work
The platform will allow people to upload their own projects to request funding or revisions and vote on or review projects uploaded by others. It will use a token called FILMCredits needed to submit your projects or to submit your review of others’ projects.
FILMCredits will be “pointed” at one’s favorite projects or used to make payments within the platform.
The potential of these new technologies applied to the film industry is creating interest in Hollywood, where one of the most common problems is finding funds to finance the realization of the most appealing ideas.
According to Michael Musante, this would allow the creation of a democratically managed film fund, where it’s not the board of directors that decides but the community.
The funds would be raised by the non-profit organization itself or by individuals and organizations interested in investing in film projects.
Using a token makes it possible to force its owners to “vote” by spending their resources, thus inducing them to invest their resources in the way they consider wisest.
In addition, the use of blockchain technology makes everything transparent, verifiable by anyone, and immutable, allowing, for example, the creation of a system based on the reputation of participants that will give more weight to the opinions of those who are more successful than others.
It also allows for a large number of transactions and payments to be made efficiently and economically, although it’s not yet clear which blockchain they will use.
Interestingly, the platform intends to attract and retain its members with incentives that could play a key role in building a large community. Moreover, it is hard to imagine that, should it be successful, it would remain the only one.
In other words, it is possible that an innovative process made possible by the use of new tools based on blockchain is about to be triggered in Hollywood as well, and that it does not only concern the process of raising funds to finance the making of films.
Hollywood films on blockchain
There are already other initiatives, often involving other well-known filmmaking faces, looking to leverage other blockchain-based tools.
For example, NFT’s visualization and distribution platform Vuele, which will launch the film “Zero Contact” starring Anthony Hopkins, and a division of a blockchain-based entertainment development and services company, Breaker Studios, which produced a documentary by Alex Winter titled “Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain.”
It’s possible that 2021 could be considered the year in the future when blockchain definitely became part of the film industry, revolutionizing it from within.
