NFT Film Distribution Dapp&Showcase

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

Build a platform for NFT film distribution and showcase a successful example of a blockchain-enabled solution to attract the attention of key players in the industry.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

30 years of combined experience in film, TV, apps & games production

Creators of 2 successful CNFT projects: Trybbles & Icons

Core members of the Cardano NFT-Guild.

Genesis artist of the Emurgo marketplace, Fibo.

Very active in the Cardano NFT space since February 2021.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Context

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

However, the film industry is now facing challenging and uncertain times and it risks losing a lot of its influence to the centralised 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.

Our hope is that the dapp and services we will offer will become self-sustaining after this initial launch and showcase, and as such we will be able to continue developing the service on Cardano and attract a lot more interest from the film industry worldwide.

Approach

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 core 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.

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

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 

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 next-gen movie tickets come in.

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 distribution infrastructure and the showcase on Cardano, an open, permissionless, decentralised platform we would also seek to exemplify the numerous other advantages specific to this application:

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 and filmmakers.

These possibilities would be closed off from the start on a proprietary infrastructure and we intend to emphasise this point, as this could potentially become one of the biggest selling points. 

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:

By building an MVP distribution platform and delivering a first example, a practical showcase, demonstrating how the process works by 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.

We plan to build a custom dapp and NFT minting platform tailor-made to fit the needs of the film industry, with a focus on accessibility and the large storage requirements of the industry. The minting platform will be accompanied by a very easy-to-use NFT-based authentication service, to implement access to the films, additional content and perks.

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 to re-scan & remaster films shot on 35mm Kodak stock (both color and black&white) for the showcase.

Conceptually, one key advantage of releasing a preexisting film through NFT tickets, as opposed to 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 is orders of magnitude lower, plus you don’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.

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. For the purposes of this project, 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 very close to cost. This is where the Catalyst proposal comes in.

The project will have two main categories of costs that we are seeking to cover with the help of Project Catalyst:

• associated with the development of the dapps for the custom needs of film distribution - NFT minting, storage, seamless authentication, etc.
• associated with the preparation of the film-related content and events.

On the film side of the project, 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 short films that we’re the authors of, have copyright ownership, and have easy access to the film stock. However, we are leaving the door open for higher-profile collaborations, even for the initial showcase.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

Our proposal of creating an alternative distribution model for the film industry addresses head-on the core objective of this challenge setting. Namely that of driving the adoption of Cardano through the deployment of useful and interesting dapps, solutions and real-world use cases, in a way that provides value to the whole Cardano ecosystem.

What dapps, products and integrations can be implemented to bring impactful use cases to Cardano ecosystem that help drive more adoption?

In addition, by building a custom solution to address the needs of a whole industry, by partially relying on infrastructure that already exists on Cardano, we are very precisely addressing multiple definitions of success, as outlined in the challenge:

Increasing the number of dapps and products available for the community to use that help to enrich the ecosystem with new use cases.

Increase the number of integrations that bring existing solutions together for a more seamless and connected experience between different products.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

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 estimates.

We have also made sure that the film stock for the films we are planning to re-digitise is in good shape by contacting the archivist of the National Academy of Film.

Other than that we don’t foresee any major risks that could stop the project from being successfully completed. 

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Project Plan:

• 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 (2-3 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 (3-4 weeks)

Note: 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.

Timeframe

If successfully funded we could start work on the project in Q4 2022.

We expect lab processing, scanning and color correction of the 35mm film to take around 4-6 weeks, factoring in current wait times.

Expected Launch Date

Late Q2 / Early Q3 2023

Deliverables for other Fund 9 and previous funds proposals.

Fund 9:

Attract ETH NFT Projects & Talent

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/418068

Given the timeframe and the volume of work predicted for the proposal, we estimate that an average of 13hrs/week will be required per person to successfully complete the project deliverables if that proposal is funded. (420hrs/2 persons/ 16 weeks).

We are the project managers and market researchers for Phase 2 of the NFT Guild development proposal NFT Swap Infrastructure Templates project https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/417999.

In that project we are taking on a market research and project management role, as estimated in the detailed plan for that project, we foresee our commitment to be of around 12hrs/week/person for the duration of the project, including Phase 1, which we estimate to complete by the end of 2022.

Trybbles NFT AR Pets project divided into 3 proposals.

Prototyping & Tokenomics

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/422707  

World Building - Art & Assets

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/422762 

Development

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/422724

If funded we will take on a project management and oversight role in the initiative and conduct the hiring process.

We estimate a required commitment of 10hrs/week/person.

If all the projects that we have applied for in Fund 9 get funded, the timeframes for the other projects will only partially overlap with this project. We estimate the time commitment for the other projects for the periods of overlap to be around 25hrs/week/person, giving us ample time to execute on the deliverables of this project.

Previous Funds:

As core members of the NFT Guild we are involved in finalising the deliverables for the NFT Guild Fund 7 proposal https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/NFT-Alliance/384031-48088 . However this will have very little impact on our ability to deliver on this project, as the scope of the proposal is complete and the only deliverable left is the project close-out report. As such, this will not interfere whatsoever with this project.

The NFT Guild has several standards proposals funded in F8:

NFT-Guild: Standard for verification of NFTs

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398372

NFT-Guild: NFT Royalty Standards

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/400204

Given the timeframe of these projects, they should be completed weeks or months before the start of this project. In the small likelihood that some work will not be completed on time on these proposals, the workload associated with their deliverables is distributed amongst the members of the NFT guild, and the time commitment required for us is of just several hours/week, as other members are facilitating the day to day operations of the Guild.

We are also the project managers and market researchers of the NFT Swap Infrastructure Templates project, the first phase of which was funded in Catalyst Fund 8 https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/397532 , however the time commitment for this project will end before work on this project will commence.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Film Distribution Showcase - $42600

Film Restoration - Making off Production - Film Industry Event

Lab costs for 80min of unedited film stock -$220/minute x 80 minutes - $17600

(4K scanning, film restoration & treatment, color-grading)

Film Editing - $60/hour x 40 hours - $2600

Sound design and remastering - $60/hour x 60 hours - $3900

Making-of production costs - $5000

Making-of post-production - $3500

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

Blockchain Development - $57700

Minting backend development - $15000

Distribution backend - $15000

Distribution web frontend - $10000

Authentification service backend & frontend - $15000

NFT preparation (images + metadata) - $45/hour x 60 hours - $2700

Miscellaneous Expenses - $27750

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

Accounting Services - $3000

Legal Consulting - $3500

Travel - $2500

Software, Subscriptions, Web Hosting, Web Domains - $750

Overhead - 10%

$12805

Taxes - 7%

 $8965

TOTAL: $149820

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

The core team of the project is New Mindflow, who will be responsible for project management, direction, recruitment and more.

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/

Besides our experience in film and television there is an entire range of reasons why we think that we are uniquely qualified to execute this project and showcase the potential of NFTs to the film world:

• We have been exposed to all aspects of the NFT ecosystem on Cardano since before day 1 (March 1, 2021 - The Mary Hardfork).
• As artists and creators, we have launched two Cardano NFT projects: Trybbles, in May 2021, and Icons in September 2021. https://www.trybbles.com + https://www.newmindflow.com/works/icons 
• 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 Quinn ( @mqp ), aka. TheAncientKraken. 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 pay residuals (i.e. royalties) to artists on resales of their works. https://cardanoscan.io/transaction/34dd0b7ae56b65f4cda029d99cda8322684ec6339ac1c195c16458c1e5e94b96?tab=contracts 
• We are Fibo Genesis Artists and have unveiled our third Cardano NFT collection, with the launch of the Genesis Collection of the Emurgo marketplace, Fibo ( https://fibo.art/collection/21 )
• Core members of the Cardano NFT-Guild, involved in guild operations since January 2022.
• Over the course of the last year, we have already offered pro bono consultancy sessions to artists and projects, either preparing to launch on Cardano or entirely new to the NFT ecosystem.
• As members of NFT-DAO (between late February - early June 2021), we have worked on trying to build a fair and open ecosystem for NFTs on Cardano.
• We have participated in a wide range of aspects of the Cardano ecosystem. For example, we have been involved with Project Catalyst since Fund 3, February 2021 in all roles.
• Member of multiple “gated access” communities in the Cardano NFT space.

As a result of all these factors and events, we have amassed a considerable amount of knowledge and experience about the Cardano NFT space, and the NFT ecosystem in general and are ready to combine that knowledge with our filmmaking expertise and create a bridge for the benefit of both spaces.

For the film production part of the project, in addition to ourselves, we will require the services of skilled professionals from the film industry: film editor, film colorist, sound designer, DOP, event manager. Given our contacts in the film industry, we do not foresee difficulties in finding the necessary personnel, as this will be a demanding but relatively straightforward project that will not require any highly specialised unique skills to complete.

On the dapp and NFT minting and distribution platform development side of the project, we are already in talks with multiple developer teams and have discussed the key requirements of the project.

Given the relationships we have cultivated in the Cardano NFT space in the last year and a half we are confident that this won’t constitute a block.

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

This is a one-time project, that will not require any maintenance work once completed, as such we will not be returning to Catalyst for additional funding.

As previously mentioned our intention is that the dapp and services we will offer will become self-sustaining after this initial launch and showcase, and as such we will be able to continue developing the service on Cardano and attract a lot more interest from the film industry worldwide.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

Each deliverable, as detailed in the implementation plan, will be recorded and submitted via the Catalyst Monthly Reporting form.

In addition we will also track the following KPIs:

KPIs

• 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

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

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 on our platform, aided by NFTs on Cardano.

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This proposal has never been funded before.