In Cannes for the premiere of Wes Andersonโs โAsteroid City,โ Roman Coppola, the filmโs story co-creatorโand acclaimed director and producer in his own rightโwas likewise celebrating the 1st anniversary of his Webย 3.0 film fund, Decentralized Pictures.
Speaking to Decrypt, Coppola stated that he and partners Leo Matchett and Mike Musante created Decentralized Pictures to break the stranglehold of centralized gatekeepers over the film industry.
โThere are severalย studios and very powerful agents who control the business,โ he stated. โWe wish to attract filmmaking tools, contacts, and support to people who need their voices to be heard.โ
A film financing DAO
Decentralized Pictures uses aย mix of blockchainย tech and a decentralized governance structure to effectively create a film financing DAO.
Built on a fork of the Tezos blockchainย tech dubbed T4L3NT Net, the platform runs on its own native cryptoย token, FILMCredits. Aspiring directors can buy FILMCredits to submit their work for financing opportunities, or earn them by reviewing othersโ projects.
Accumulated FILMCredits can then be staked toย facilitate favored projects, offered to other users as payment for reviews or feedback, or used to pay for appย charges for creative financing rewards.
The film fund is structured as a 501c(3) nonprofit; rather than grants, its awards are treated as assets in the winning film, with a share of the profits returning to Decentralized Pictures to be invested in future awards on the platform.
The Film3 movement
Decentralized Pictures is one of the key players in the burgeoning โFilm3โ movement, which uses Webย 3.0 technologies such as blockchainย tech to disrupt the film industryโs centralized processes and institutions. The fundโs CEO, Leo Matchett, informed Decrypt that blockchainย tech is a critical tool in Decentralized Picturesโ setup.
โ Blockchainย Tech establish a fair and transparent record of the voting,โ Matchett stated. โDetermining which artists are most deserving of support from the foundation is the goal, and that process hasย toย be open and available to all.โ
At the heart of the โvirtual studioโ launched on the platform is the Decentralized Pictures community, which connects filmmakers, writers, and technicians universally to exchange services and content.
โImagine if weโre making a movie and need a shot of a unique flower that only grows in Africa,โ Coppola stated, โwe could issue a call to action for someone within our community to capture that shot. Or if we required a joke for a particular scene, we could offer a percentage of the movieโs earnings for the best submission.โ
Finding โunique voicesโ
By using a decentralized governance model, the platform hopes to surface underrepresented filmmakers, Coppola said.
โWe have this ambition to really truly find unique voices,โ he informed Decrypt. โEvery couple of years, thereโs a new Tarantino or a new Kubrick. Itโs inevitable that someone we donโt know about now will emerge as an important filmmaking voice of their time.โ
The fund has already had some early successes in supporting new voices in the industry. Coppola expresses particular pride in theย pastย few success of the short film project โHoly Smokes,โ which won a $40,000 Comedy Screenplay Award granted by Decentralized Pictures in partnership with โClerksโ director Kevin Smith. He fondly recalls the moment when the scriptโs two young writers, Gabby Fiszman and Isabella Ares, were declared the winners.
โI was there when they announced the winners,โ he says. โThat experience gave me goosebumps. A sense of possibility blossomedโgiving us the feeling that yes, we can do this, something is happening. That truly made my day. I wish to see such moments multiply, happening 10 times a dayโ.
Decentralized Pictures has likewise thrown its weight behind Film3 filmmakers. It recently awarded the $100,000 Andrews/Bernard prize, sponsored by โOceanโs Elevenโ director Steven Soderbergh, to Miguel Faus for his feature โCalladita.โ The Spanish film is the 1st European feature financed through an Non-Fungibleย Tokenย (NFT) crowdfunding raise.
And thereย is more to come; Matchett recently revealed that next grants in the works include the NAx Award and a horror award supported by โlegends of the genre.โ
Asย ofย now live on the platform are awards including the iPhone Filmmaking Initiative, an ongoing โrent assistance grantโ for screenwriters, and โThat Film I Made,โ with a prize that includes $2,500 in financing and mentorship from Coppola himself.
For โโCoppola, Webย 3.0 promises to catalyze the emergence of new voices in filmmaking, and possibly even new genres.
โIโm a curious individual, and Iโm interested in technology,โ he stated. โYou always ponder how itย canย potentially serve the art of filmmaking, an inherently technological craft. Its existence fundamentally relies on the photochemical process and camera mechanics.โ
โWith the advent of the digital age, photochemical processes have been overtaken, and editing is now primarily computer-based,โ Coppola continued. โWhenever technology comes along, thereโs always someplace where it supports filmmaking.โ
