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
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:
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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.