Showcase Film Industry Use-Case

Showcase a successful example of blockchain-enabled film distribution to attract the attention of key players in the industry.

New Mindflow - 30 years of combined experience in film, TV, apps & games production.Creators of 2 successful CNFT projects: Trybbles & Icons

In the last 120 years since its inception, the film industry's impact on global culture cannot be understated. It has led the charge on countless changes of social perspective.

However, the film industry is now facing challenging and uncertain times and it risks losing a lot of its influence to the streaming giants who were up until a few years ago just one of its many customers.

For the film industry to be widely interested in blockchain it would first need to see potential use-cases applicable to itself.

The use-case presented needs to be easily understood and immediately identified and recognised as something game-changing and applicable to the film industry as a whole. We think that the most effective showcase at this time would be that of using DLT as the infrastructure for a greatly improved distribution model.

If current trends continue the film industry risks becoming subservient to the interests of the streaming platforms, and losing control over its product and cultural significance. This trend has only been accelerated by the pandemic years, as cinema attendance was effectively wiped out while simultaneously exponentially increasing streaming time and audiences around the globe.

Movie Theaters Slowly Recover, but 2021 Box Office Still Down 81% From Pre-Pandemic Times - Jul 6, 2021

https://variety.com/2021/film/box-office/box-office-2021-pre-pandemic-1235010346

EU & UK cinema attendance down by 70.7% in 2020 amid global pandemic - 25 February 2021

https://www.obs.coe.int/en/web/observatoire/home/-/asset_publisher/wy5m8bRgOygg/content/eu-uk-cinema-attendance-down-by-70-7-in-2020-amid-global-pandemic

Impacts of Binge-Watching on Netflix during the COVID-19 pandemic - 16 August 2021

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/SAJM-05-2021-0070/full/html 

Filmmakers are eager to break free of this context and the consequences it could have if not addressed.

As such the film industry must find a distribution method, suited for the current context, one in which it would retain control over its product without becoming just a "manufacturer" with secondary relevance.

This is where NFTs as movie tickets come in. And what better place for that to happen than the decentralised, secure, scientifically sound and verified infrastructure Cardano brings to the table?

In this context, probably the most important selling point for Cardano are the low transaction and NFT minting fees. How could you realistically mint and distribute NFT movie tickets if the fees to do so are 3 or 4x higher than the price of the actual ticket?

Trust in the impenetrability of the underlying cryptographic infrastructure is one of the hallmarks of a truly decentralised blockchain. By building the showcase on Cardano, an open, permissionless, decentralised platform we would also seek to exemplify the numerous other advantages, specific to this domain, that could potentially be the biggest selling points here.

1. Making the NFTs far more desirable to the public, and potentially generating substantially higher revenues, by opening the door to collaborations, which in turn could lead to, very enticing benefits offered to NFT ticket holders, with minimal upfront costs.

2. Access to a much larger secondary market for resale of the ticket NFTs, something that in turn could generate royalties for the producers.

Possibilities that would be closed off from the start on a proprietary infrastructure. 

By making this one of the focal points of our project we would also seek to address the risk that the major studios design and build their own version of a centralised blockchain simulacrum. As this is a relatively time-sensitive issue we believe that this initiative or something similar would need to be implemented in the near future, to showcase the advantages of launching on an open, decentralised platform.

How we plan to achieve this:

Simple, by building a small scale practical showcase, demonstrating to the film industry how the process works and providing concrete examples of what can be achieved. Seed & spread awareness of these new capabilities with a series of events and an organic marketing campaign.

A large part of the film industry still retains emotional attachment & nostalgia to 35mm film stock, even as its practical use has been almost entirely eliminated in recent years. This is why we plan on rescanning & remastering films shot on 35mm Kodak stock (both color and black&white).

Conceptually, one key advantage of releasing a preexisting film through NFT tickets, rather than producing a new one specifically for this purpose, is that in and of itself it would serve as an example that the distribution method can be tried out with minimal risk and investment. The budget required to prepare an already existing film would be orders of magnitude lower, plus you wouldn't need to risk the fate of a potentially lucrative new release by committing it to an untested distribution model.

Ultimately, this could also prove to be a boon for Cardano - imagine the attention and publicity that would be generated if, for example, one or multiple of Stanley Kubrick's films were to be re-released through NFTs on Cardano, featuring unique and enticing perks.

We plan to use an NFT based authentication service, such as NFT Key (a product that was developed through Catalyst funding - funded in Fund 5), to implement access to the films.

Based on owning the NFT (having the NFT in your wallet) you will not only gain access to the films but also other content, such as making-of videos and other media. The most relevant and important of these would be media documenting the journey of re-digitizing the films at a much higher resolution and preparing the NFTs for distribution. This making-of documentary would also be one of the key pillars of our awareness & marketing campaign within the film industry. (From here on out we will refer to the documentary detailing the preparation and distribution of the film through NFTs as the "making-of", even though it's not technically the making-of documentary of the film itself.)

For the campaign to have the most impact and reach we plan on distributing the NFT tickets to the widest possible audience, that's why we plan to offer them at cost: minting cost + development cost (frontend+backend) + hosting costs. But there are a wide range of other costs that will need to be covered.

This is where the Catalyst proposal comes in.

One of the biggest costs we will incur are, the lab costs to have the film rescanned and processed, but other than that we will have additional costs related to re-editing, re-mixing the audio, preparing the images for the NFT collection based on stills from the film, preparing the metadata, etc.

We are exploring potential collaborations with high profile films/filmmakers in the future, but for our first showcase, we want to keep things simpler by focusing on films that we're the authors of and have easy access to.

As such, the main focus of our showcase will be "The Long Way Home/Lungul drum spre casă (2008)", a 21 minute short, shot on 35mm Kodak film stock, that has been validated by a long list of awards & selections at international film festivals & events.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1428049

The film won Anamaria Kövesdi a Gopo Awards nomination (the Romanian equivalent of the Academy Awards), a place among the 2009 "Promising Five", a selection of Europe's most talented young film directors, was shortlisted for an Academy Award (the final step before nomination) and was featured at the Short Film Corner of the Cannes Film Festival.

Other notable awards and selections include:

Awards:

• 2nd Prize, Drama International Short Film Festival in Drama, Greece 2009

• Prize of the President of the Jury, Early Bird Film Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria 2009 

• Best Short, IPIFF (Independent Producers International Film Festival), Mamaia, Romania 2009

• Best Short, B' est International Film Festival, Bucharest, Romania 2009

• Special Prize of the Jury, Cinemaiubit International Film Festival, Bucharest, Romania 2008

Selections:

• ISFF Hollywood 2009, Hollywood, USA

• International Competition Fresh Film Fest 2009, Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic

• Portobello Film Festival 2009, London, UK

• Cinema Jove International Film Festival 2009, Valencia, Spain

• Shanghai International Film Festival, Shanghai, China, 2009

• Istanbul International Short Film Festival 2009, Istanbul, Turkey

• Hamburg International Short Film Festival 2009, Hamburg, Germany

• International Film and Video Festival of Beijing Film Academy 2009, Beijing, China

• International Competition at Ourense Film Festival 2009, Ourense, Spain

• Kratkofil International Film Festival 2009, Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina

• Summerfest Durres 2009, Durres, Albania

• International College Peace Film Festival 2009, Seoul, South Korea 

• Sighisoara International Film Festival 2010, Sighisoara, Romania

Timeframe

If successfully funded we could start work on the project in late April/early May 2022.

We expect lab processing, scanning and color correction of the 35mm film to take around 2-4 weeks, factoring in current wait times.

A complete list of the steps needed to successfully implement the project:

(Some of these steps overlap, such as the sum of the estimated completion times does not represent the completion time for the project. The final time estimate is dependent on the availability of personnel and how many tasks can be run in parallel)

• Pre-production of the making-of documentary (2-3 weeks)

• Production of the making-of documentary (will be spread out across the other steps of the project)

• Scanning the 35mm negative (1 week)

• Processing and restoring the footage (1-2 weeks)

• Color grading the scanned negative (1-2 weeks)

• Re-editing the film (2-3 weeks)

• Remastering the sound (2-3 weeks)

• Preparing the images for the NFTs (creating a design based on stills from the film, batch processing & exporting every individual image) (3-4 weeks)

• Preparing the metadata for the ticket NFTs (1-2 weeks)

• Minting database preparation (1-2 weeks)

• Designing and building the web front end with integration to the minting machine (3-4 weeks)

• Designing and building the back & front end for the presentation of the films (3-4 weeks)

• Integration with an NFT authenticator service (such as NFT Key) (1-2 weeks)

• Organising and hosting a cast & crew reunion (to be included in the making-of) (1-2 weeks)

• Post-production of the making-of documentary (2-3 weeks)

• Organising a launch event for the project with guests from the European film industry, showcasing the making-of documentary, the restored films and detailing the overall process and approach of distributing films based on NFTs (2-3 weeks)

• Entering the making-of documentary into the 2022 film festival circuit and potentially looking into organising other presentation events (3-4 weeks)

• Unforeseen delays (2-3 weeks)

Expected Launch Date

Late Q3 / Early Q4 2022

KPIs

The key indicators for project success would be:

• Number of people from inside the film industry made aware of the Cardano NFT based distribution model

• Number of people from outside the film industry made aware of the Cardano NFT based distribution model

• Number of users visiting the project presentation website

• Number of users accessing the restored films through NFT authentification

• Project social channels followers & positive interactions

• Number of outside articles & media content written and produced about the project NFT based distribution model in general

• Number of producers/projects considering adopting the NFT distribution model

Definitions of success

3 months - The 35mm are scanned, processed & remastered. The NFTs are being prepared for distribution. Production on the making-of is well underway. Plans for the launch event are being made.

6 months - The films and NFTs are completed. The launch is successful, and the launch event organised for members of the film industry is well received.

12 months - News of the capabilities of distributing films through NFT tickets on the Cardano blockchain spreads through the film industry as a result of our launch event & marketing campaigns. The making-of documentary is entered into the film festival circuit, further spreading awareness.

24 months - Film projects are being launched and distributed aided by NFTs on Cardano.

Risks

We don't foresee any major risks that could stop the project from being successfully completed. The biggest roadblocks could potentially be related to the schedules or unavailability of the personnel needed for a few of the highly specialised tasks. Worst case these could lead only to minor delays which we have accounted for in our time estimate.

We have also made sure that the 2007-2008 film stock is in good shape by contacting the archivist of the National Academy of Film.

Detailed Budget

Lab costs for 80min of rough material (4K scanning, film restoration & treatment, color-grading) -$220/minute x 80 minutes - $17600

Film Editing - $60/hour x 40 hours - $2400

Sound design and remastering - $60/hour x 60 hours - $3600

Making-of production costs - $3500

Making-of post-production - $2500

NFT preparation (images + metadata) - $30/hour x $60 hours - $1800

Project Management - $50/hour x 160 hours - $8000

Minting backend development** - $0

Distribution backend** - $0 

Distribution web frontend** - $0

Marketing (events, festival submissions, social media campaigns) - $10000

TOTAL: $49400

* For the making-of production and post-production costs we only budgeted for the "hard" expenses (not including personnel) as we intend to perform those tasks ourselves, at no cost.

** We plan to cover development and hosting costs, as well as other software services or subscriptions (such as Blockfrost) from the small amount we plan to charge for each NFT, as well as some of the marketing costs.

Proposers:

Award-winning filmmakers, film and animation directors, app and game developers. In 2021 they moved into the web3 economy granting new life to one of their projects in the form of an NFT collection on Cardano.

Anamaria Kövesdi

https://www.linkedin.com/in/anamaria-k%C3%B6vesdi-354649106/

Rares Kövesdi

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rares-k%C3%B6vesdi-551260106/

Authors of the first NFT launch on Cardano with a functional, compilable, smart contract in the metadata of the token, completely on-chain in collaboration with @AncientKraken.

An NFT from the collection was the first one to be sold through a smart contract, minutes after the Alonzo HFC. It also was the first sale through a smart contract on Cardano (to our knowledge it still is the only one) to pay residuals (i.e. royalties) to artists on resales of their works.

https://cardanoscan.io/transaction/34dd0b7ae56b65f4cda029d99cda8322684ec6339ac1c195c16458c1e5e94b96?tab=contracts