🎙️ Rewriting The Script: NFTs and The Future of Film

Join AdLunam Co-Founder Nadja Bester as she delves into the transformative power of NFTs in the entertainment industry. Featuring insights from industry luminaries Marc Schaumburg-Ingwersen from Sony Pictures Entertainment, Julian Flores from Rebel Spark Studios, and Max Penzel from The MFTs.Don't miss out on this deep dive into the future of NFTs and digital storytelling!

#TheFutureOfNFTs goes live every Tuesday here (https://x.com/AdLunamInc). Subscribe for event notifications.

Rewriting the Script: NFTs & the future of film

Participants:

• Nadja Bester (AdLunam Co-founder)

• JP Co-host

• Marc Schaumburg-Ingwersen (Producer - Sony Pictures Entertainment)

• Julian Flores ( Founder Rebel Spark Studios & partner - The Film3 Squad)

• Max Penzel (Director and Cinematographer - The MFTs)

Hey guys good to hear that I can hear at least one of you, maybe you can quickly do a sound check and make sure that everyone can hear each other well. Marc,

Nadja, Hi

GM GM Julian checking in from Colorado.

awesome guys so we're gonna give it a few minutes just to let the room fill up but yeah great to know that the logistics are sorted at least for the minute on Twitter it changes like every second, one minute you think that with the space is going great and the next second like the audio is lost. Just some housekeeping notes then if we do lose the space which does happen sometimes I will just generate a new link and hopefully that's not going to happen today but if so we'll deal with it. Okay, cool. So let's wait a few minutes and then let the space fill Up. All right, so I think let's get the show going. 3,2,1 Hey web3 world this is Nadja Bester and you are listening to the Future of NFTs which is sponsored by AdLunam, Web3s first and only Engage to Earn investment ecosystem. We record this live on Twitter spaces every Tuesday at 1pm UTC and previous episodes are available on Spotify channel for anytime, anywhere access to industry speaking.

You Can't hear Anything

Okay ladies and gentlemen we seem to have a bit of a technical glitch but I can see that Nadja Bester is coming back into the room Max thank you for being here, Marc you as well looking to the two of our speakers already here we're just gonna give it a minute for Nadja to jump in. This is JP from AdLunam Inc. and we're just waiting for our team to get started so yeah,

Sometimes Twitter spaces just does that. You know, it's one of those things but hey, you know you get all the best people that come into the room. It's a great space for us to catch up. So that'd be …Julian's jumped in. Hey, Julian,

GM GM.

Hey, all right. Okay, we're waiting for Nadja to be able to sign in as a speaker I think she's been able to do that shortly and then we will flag up the show in just a second thank you so much guys.

Thank you JP.

Okay, while getting this sorted out very quickly, ladies and gentlemen, I just like to remind you first and foremost thank you so much for tuning in. This show of course is meant for educational purposes and views expressed on this program belong to that of the speaker. If you have any questions, see if you can tag a speaker directly and we'll get them answered for you. The question and answer session will open up towards the end of the program just before we close if we have time, we'll take it live. Right. And remember you have those emojis, you have the emoji button so whenever you hear a gem or something that you really like, feel free to let the speaker know that you have found something of interest or tweet that out to everybody or to know a specific quote that some of the speakers have said we've had some real gems being propped up over here and pearls of wisdom on the show so feel free to use those and of course like and follow them as long as I do the mind see. Think we're on standby to Elon Musk is also going to tweet something, we got to send him a message for sure. Something's happening on the spaces where okay, can see a number of our regulars are back in I can see our co-founder, Jason Fernandes is logged in to Kimberly is joined in, I see Nikki is back . And some of our regular listeners on the show, so Ladies and gentlemen, for those of you that are logged into the room prepared to have, you know, an insightful discussion that's going to talk about the future of film. With our speakers that are here we have Julian .we have Max, we have Mark, I'm not going to ruin the introductions for you. I'm gonna let not do that. I see she's back in the room as well. And that's brilliant. So our team is going to accept her as a speaker. And as soon as she's on, I'll be on standby. There we are.

Successful try. Actually when we open the space saying if we have any technical issues, and it seems I jinked I jinx us, because we did. So yeah, Elon, please if you can go easy now on the rest of the space, please. Okay, guys, sorry for that. Tech glitch. We're very used to it if we are on Twitter spaces, but at the same time, you know, it's time we'll never get back. So with that, I think I gave you all an incredible introduction. And sadly, I was giving it to an audience of one, since no one could hear me. So I'm going to hand over to the speakers. Guys. Please introduce yourselves. And then let's get started with an amazing conversation. Marc, maybe we can start with you.

Of course, a pleasure. And hello, everybody. And thanks for having me on the show. Really appreciate that. I was the last 8 to 10 years executive producer at Sony. Now I'm a freelance producer for Sony and Warner Brothers and other fields and um, was you know, if you're such a long time in a big corporation, you always look for another way. Not the way to find great stuff, great people, great artists, great energy. And I think the NFT space, or the crypto space at all was one where I really love to go to. And yeah, so much about me. And to the next speaker, please.

So I'll just take it from here.

Yeah, Max, please take it away.

Hey, this is Max. Hello from Singapore. Yeah, I'm actually from Berlin, which is funny. Because Marc, I think you sitting there. And yeah, I'm a filmmaker by training cinematographer, by heart. So a visual storyteller. We have entered the space two years ago by inventing our NFT project that we will be maybe talking about later. And we're all storytellers. And we're very much interested in blockchain technologies because of like the IP, which is interesting and like decentralized storytelling, and for an decentralized film production in a way so I think that the whole space is also about film3, in a way. So how can we actually do that with all the new possibilities are getting stronger, actually day by day. So it's really exciting to be part of this and looking forward to get all of yours opinions.

Julian, I'm gonna go ahead and jump in from Colorado. By way of intro, I am a 15 year marketer in the startup ecosystem have spent most of my career as an entrepreneur building or helping others build companies, but have always secretly harbored a passion for storytelling and filmmaking, even though I never actually learned the crap, I was just always obsessed with it in late 2021, I was taking some time off of work and started doing some creative writing to finally tap into that and fell into the rabbit hole of NFTs. And who I found very quickly, as I started exploring this world was filmmakers talking about it, talking about the possibilities of potentially a new model, becoming self sovereign with your IP, you know, maybe working outside the studio system. And a lot of the people I was talking to didn't necessarily have business acumen didn't necessarily know how to run marketing, or develop a product and bring it to market. And so I found myself being kind of the glue amongst many, many early adopters, talking about the technology, creating community spitting up discourse. At one point, I was in probably 90 different discourse in early 2022, all talking about various forms of entertainment, IP storytelling using Blockchain. And so fast forward over two years ago, three years now spent supporting, those folks helped build the ecosystem that we call film3, and actually have recently become a filmmaker in the process getting my first short film produced, and now currently in development on a miniseries.

Wow, I thought I was doing a great job introducing you guys. I think the nuance that you've added to your experience is definitely going to make for a very rich discussion today. Thank you so much for being on the show. I think that this is really something that I want to focus on from the get go, because listening to all of your introductions, there are a couple of things that stand out. For me, storytelling comes up again and again. And of course, that is at the heart of any form of entertainment. For us humans, we are storytelling creatures, we want stories to be told to us, we want to tell stories to others. And I think in today's world, you know, there's so much focus on the profit aspect of entertainment that it's sometimes feel, I think for the average consumer of entertainment as though there's more focus on how much money the box office is going to get as opposed to is that storytelling still being done. The other thing that really stood out for me, I think IP was mentioned a couple of times, specifically self sovereign IP, which I think is a very important thing that I would love to discuss today. And then really just this idea that they are Film3 offers new models. And these models are new to everyone that is working. Currently, in the entertainment sector, there's so many different areas where any different profession that touches on the entertainment industry, can really leverage web3 technologies, specifically in film. But of course, with all of the other, I mean, NFTs offers so many different possibilities for entertainment and content creation. So with those really beautiful ideas, let's say as an anchoring point, I want to start off by asking perhaps the more difficult and challenging question. We know that there's a lot of possibility for these technologies in film3, and film3 as the next version of the film industry. But how are we getting there? How far off are we from a world in which this is not only something that we are discussing on Twitter spaces, but this is how things get done in the industry? So I would love to kind of tackle that, you know, very difficult question first. And then from there, we can talk about how we are actually going about getting there. Julian, maybe we can start with you. What are the gaps, the major gaps between where we are right now dreaming up this future? I mean, talking about the 90 different discord servers. Yeah, that was a crazy time in the industry. I mean, everyone was streaming into web3 and 2021. And now, there's so many people saying or that part of it's dead and NFTs are dead. And you know, there were lots of promises made here. So as someone who works very, very closely with brands in this space, how do you see the gaps between where we are and where we are trying to get to?

Yeah, I think we're definitely not there yet in terms of having a soup to nuts, you know, complete solution where somebody let's say a filmmaker has a story they want to tell and they can, you know, kind of go to a website and spin up, you know, a fundraising campaign get something made producing distributed. Those pieces all exist in various forms. But I don't think there's quite yet an easy solution, not that there's an easy solution in traditional filmmaking, but there at least is somewhat, you know, pretty clearly defined paths. I think where we stand today is there are some outliers of people who are creating success by experimenting across these different tools from conception all the way to distribution, Miguel Faus, with his film, Calladita, is probably the best use case of this. But I will say this, I think we're probably a year away from this becoming easier to put together. I think, right now you can find various tools. So like with the MFTs, and Max, you know, you guys have created a community, you guys are finding ways to use your IP to bring the community together and raise funds and potentially, you know, and start creating content. I think that has existed now for a couple of years. But then there's these other gaps like, well, if you make a movie, how do you get it actually seen by people? You know, those are some of the questions that still exist. I think we're about a year away from some of that becoming a lot easier. And here's what I'll say, that might be somewhat controversial, I think we will pretty soon be away from the idea of it being purely a blockchain or web3 or NFT driven process, I think those will become tools that become somewhat obscured into the background. And it's just indie filmmaking, indie storytelling that uses various interesting tools. But you know, block blockchain itself can't be the panacea, because it's just a set of technology and infrastructure. It's about how you use the tools.

Yeah, Julian. And I think on this show, we love that controversial opinion that ultimately, this technology has to be invisible, or there's really no place for it to because if we have to onboard everyone into all of the technicalities, then yes, it's not scalable. So looking forward to a future where we don't have to be discussing the technology, because it's just one of the tools, the assets in the toolbox. Max as Julian said, you know, they are all these different pieces. But then it's difficult putting them all together. And without the help, let's say, of the studio support system. So you guys have done this, you've built an NFT collection, you've grown the community. Can you talk through what that experience was like? And what are some of the major challenges that you face that you think need to be addressed very early on in order for more people to adopt this as creators?

Whoa. That's a very good question. But I'd like just to say that what JP just said, is very, very good. Because we're facing challenges as filmmakers all the time, it doesn't matter if we are like in web3 now. Or if we are in web2, pre web1, if we are like 100 years ago, or whatever, whenever film was invented, the challenges always have been the same. The first, the first big thing always is, is story. What story, are you going to tell so we basically asked ourselves what we want to do with this web3 possibilities, because web3 possibilities is not only going out there with a camera, like a RED camera, and let's say like 15,20 years ago, there was this red camera coming out, and it was like horrible, super, super cheap, and everybody could afford it and go out and shoot movies. And what happened? Not so much. I mean, it revolutionized kind of like from film to video, but that was even a bigger revolution with Ari and Alexa and stuff like that. So that's the technology behind it, you always need to have something to say. And I basically see more the possibilities are like the chances in web3, when you use like gamifying when you basically like let games and storytelling and films and visions and stories that you want to tell that there's no boundaries anymore, you can go from one direction from one, there's no border, you know, like it basically like you don't use, like the big machines anymore, like in the big studios like Maya, or redshift, or like all these kinds of big programs where you need like, specialists random, you can do unreal, which is also like some kind of like technology used in gaming. And you can, you can basically make your own content using like AI like Wonder dynamics, and get a lot closer and a lot easier, closer to the to your own stories that you wanted to. Because let's face it, there's only a little people and that most of most of those people who are sitting in the studios, we're going to make the decision about which story is going to make it into the cinema. And maybe it's always the best stories but it's not all the stories and there's a lot more people who can consume and watch those movies and in different in different platforms. Look, look at YouTube how big it can became like it's more or less like the same thing as TV or even better, because it's content that you really want to see and you want to can see whenever you want streaming, it's all taken analogy in a way, but the boundaries and web3 are kind of endlessly, you know, like, you know, a game or people can suddenly start to make like their animation films, people can adapt animations into real life can put, you know, who’s afraid of Roger Rabbit, you know, we can do all these things in a much easier way that we could ever do before. So I would not only limit it on telling my story and to traditional film financing, but what we always say is like, just imagine, and we're selling our NFT, we're selling basically like some pass to be part of our journey. Just imagine, if you would have like a steak or like some kind of like, you know, like some reality and Lisa Simpsons 25 years ago, just imagine if you would have that, in the beginning be part of that whole journey, which came after it became such a success. So, so all these things a lot easier through blockchain technology, because it's basically like, all written down, everybody can look inside, it's going to be the power of making movies, and the power of having realities to these movies is going to be definitely more widespread, or there is a chance of doing that, you know, on the other side, all these film students can also come in by all these entities and, and own everything again. So that's, that's, that's all but for me, it's this kind of like, what I really find intriguing is that it's such a big space that we can invade. And it's completely new. And it's, it's more or less waiting to be written. So that's, that's my first take. So if you have any questions that, if not, I could basically answer your question what all the challenges are on the way there is to find the team. First of all, find the team that is going through all of this kind of like nightmares of, of have, you know, like building 3D modeling, putting like rigs in them, make them animated, try to basically find a team that is online 24/7. So that people see that you're out there, fighting with all the bots, fighting with all the doubts, fighting with all this kind of thing that Oh, my God, it's not going to happen. It's in then, you know, look at the bucket. It's like pretty bury, and hairy. Things go a little bit more up. But I think I think that's the two components is, is the idea or like, that's the number one, what idea? What's the medium that I want to use? What's the team that I'm going to use? And what's my audience? And where do I meet this audience? So that's the five key points for me.

Awesome, actually, I think you had such good points there. And really, I think ultimately, it doesn't matter what technology you're using, as you'd say, the challenges are always challenging. And the technology is out there to help us make some of these challenges easier. But it's certainly not exclusive to any one technology or any one industry. Building a team building a product. It's always difficult no matter which industry or which segment, you do it in, Marc. So I'm really curious because we are talking about this idea, as Julian said earlier, the self sovereign IP, and you know, the age of the content creator that the indie filmmaker standing independent of the studios, how are the studio's viewing this, the shift this monumental, massive shift in how the entertainment system and landscape functions is put together? I mean, obviously, we are experiencing great changes in geopolitics at the moment and have for the last several decades, the world is constantly in flux. Technology is rapidly changing the landscape of every industry. And these giant entertainment studios have been the mainstays in the entertainment landscape for decades. Now, suddenly, there are all these really very potentially groundbreaking opportunities, whether they are not they are being taken or taken at the speed that they could be taken as a different story. We're obviously very early, but we'd love to hear from your perspective, how the studios are approaching this new epoch and our entertainment landscape.

Yes, great answers. For Max and Julian before thank you for that. But with every good movie, everyone needs to go antagonists and that's probably media at the moment. And yeah, I learned one thing you know, you have to know your audience. That was one of the first sentence I ever got from this awesome teacher I had when I first started out, you have to know your audience. And I think this is a little bit of a misconception right here because at the moment we use I think web3 filmmaking In Web3 films we are the whole space is for filmmakers, for filmmakers. And we don't have actually a solution for the audience. So it must be easier for the audience to hop on to watch that, if we have a lot of if we have a big audience, many people gonna see that we have more money, we're gonna bet big movies if that's our goal. So but I don't see this solution at the, at the moment, just like, take a look at Netflix, the smartest thing they've ever done for the audience and to grow was to put the Netflix sign on a remote. So they could everybody could say and sit down on the couch, watch Netflix, what was a web2 company before? Right, just streaming, but they could watch it from the couch on. And that brings me to how the big studios and everybody's I think is going to see that. Like you said natural before what will be completely correct. We in the age of IP, and they looking for IPs and big IPs. And that's, that's the great thing where we can start in web3 with NFTs. And everything we can start building IPS building, building a community and I mean a community out of superfans, you know, they willing to put 50, $100 What's a lot of money for the most people to put that into a project and just, yeah, just bring the project to the moon, you know, and I love that. And I love that about love that about the space. But on the other hand, we have to be careful, we have to not just find solutions for them financing and firm problems. But we have a way, we have to find a way to onboard the people into web3, and it's a little bit too hot at the moment. And yeah, that's my five cents for that. Thank you.

Thanks, Marc. Julian, you want some you want to add thought to that? Amazing series of thoughts that we've already had?

Yeah, absolutely. I've always appreciated Marc your healthy skepticism for this. And I agree with your take that so far. Film3 has been, you know, for filmmakers. I do want to add a couple of quick thoughts, I think, you know, I think trying to compare the new wave of kind of independent film using some of these tools to the current existing model, I think is the wrong approach. Because in order to, you know, break into the studio system, or to compare even to the studio system or streamers, I mean, you have to talk about massive audience sizes, and it's a scale that I don't think is relevant to this community yet. That being said, I mean, you look at this weekend, the fall guy came out, and Hollywood's complaining that it was, it was a mess, it was a bust because it only made $28 million. And this is because in order to bring something big to the masses, it costs so much in marketing. The point I want to make is, I think web3 allows us to finally tap into a theory that's been around for about 15 years, maybe 10 years now called the 1000 true fan theories, Marc, you're touching on this a little bit earlier, which is that we don't necessarily have to achieve that level of scale for stories to be deep, meaningful, rich and potentially commercially successful. Maybe at a smaller scale. I think we're looking at communities now where you could have 10,000 People 20,000 People who are very, like you said, superfans are willing to pay a lot of money to potentially purchase an asset from that universe or stream something. And so that leads me to these smaller communities, you know, that are creating IP, such as like Zuki I know they've just released the first anime episode, Shibuya, which has now five or six episodes deep into their animate universe. You know, these are communities supported by, you know, less than 100,000 people in some cases, 20,000 people. And no, these are not name brand household, you know, IPs that people around the world are enjoying. But I think we now have an opportunity to go really deep with smaller groups of people and create amazing storytelling opportunities without having to achieve massive scale. So in another, I guess, to summarize, I'm not sure we are in a time yet to talk about this going to the masses. I think we don't need to I think we can create her own micro superfan communities and tell great stories.

Yeah, thank you, Julian. And I think that was a really important addition. That leads me to my next question. I think this idea of the 1000 true fans is something that in other industries people accept far more readily, but in the web three space, of course, it's a numbers game. And if you look at, you know, a project's Twitter account, they have to have X amount of that many 1000 as a follow up, otherwise, most people are going, Oh, this is a dead project. So how are we going to balance this web three mentality? And I think, you know, you touched on this and all of you have touched on this. The difference between seeing it as a web3 exclusive problem as a parser, this is just a problem that comes with its technology. But I think, you know, the predominant and prevailing sort of mindset in web three is not the idea that there's a small number of really committed funds, but rather No, this project has to reach the masses everywhere. Now, of course, in the entertainment space, with IP, and I mean, we, you know, we've talked about really strong powerful IP brands, and then IP brands that are maybe not as well known, but are strongly supported. It seems like there's a bit of a tension between these two points. So Max, what are your thoughts? How do we how do we kind of navigate this idea that in web3, we have to have as many people as possible on board, as opposed to No, it doesn't really matter, there's a small number of people supporting you, and that's perfectly fine. Because ultimately, it's about the storytelling, not about amassing numbers.

Well, in the end, it's always scaling, right? So that's the big game. But you know, on the other side firm is like over 120 years old, right? So it's like 120 years more publicity. And it took them 20 years more, more, more that you are used to go to the cinema that you're used to certain kind of viewing habits and everything like that. So entering like this completely new artificial space, which is web3, which is like a parallel world, or like some kind of digital twin, or whatever we might call it, it's maybe different audiences. So let's say like, you know, like, all the people that did, they like to go to the cinema, and they just want to get, they want to get entertained, they want to basically watch, they want to have some kind of cinema feeling. They're basically like, I have completely different viewing habits, different consumption habits, and so on. So when you look at younger people, GenZ, millennials, and maybe even like in the gender gap of Gen X, if people want to get more involved into certain kinds of processes they are, it's not only enough to watch, and get it, it's also like, I want to do something with this, I want to get involved into certain candidates, I want to tell my own story, even if I only tell it for myself, or for my family, even like kids to the you know, for your for the early stages that they basically say like, I want to be this, I want to be that and the only audience you have are your parents, if you are successful, things will grow. Like it, Disney has been a big player, before they started streaming, they started streaming because they saw everything's going like to Netflix, and they needed to do something about it. People wouldn't go to the cinema, and pandemic, hello, and all these kinds of things that were all like factors which drove more and more and more also in this kind of new web3 direction. But as I said before, for me, it's not only about audiences, it's about possibilities. It's about different audiences. And it's about creating a possibility to, to build bridges in between those audiences to close gender gaps, and all these kinds of things. So for me, that's more like, you know, we always talk about being tribes and good morning, and we fly to the moon, and all this kind of stuff. But that's all about it. we need to embrace and enjoy certain things that we'd like to do. And if we have, let's say, like some kind of like product that helps us to do these things. And that bridges certain kind of like gaps, then I think that the audience's will come anyways.

Yeah, Field of Dreams, build it in, they will come Max thank you so much for those insights. I think I feel like I should be sitting here with a notebook taking notes, because I think ultimately, what we are discussing here today are really some of the core challenges, but also the core opportunities. And so speaking of building these communities, Julian, you have had a lot of experience helping companies onboard the technology. The different technologies work with web3 work with generative AI. So what are your thoughts on using technology to build community and then the difference between focusing on the technology as the reason for building the community as opposed to just leveraging the community, leveraging the technology and the outcome being the community as opposed to the technology, which at the moment is kind of a skewed focus on web3, which is understandable. Of course, technologies are very new. We have to spend a lot of time demystifying what we're talking about. It's difficult to focus on the core aspects of something when there's so much explanation that's required. But ultimately, of course, as we talk about storytelling, being at the core of entertainment, and People are at the core of storytelling. So how have you seen the use of technology and specifically web3 technologies and FTAs supporting the focus on community as opposed to the other way around?

Yeah, I think it's a complex question. And I think it's actually evolved so often across bear markets, bull markets. You know, I think the one a couple of cautions first, and then a couple of points of advice, you know, the cautions, I think, are always that if you're starting with a web3, pitch in some way, if you're starting with that as a technology and saying, we're going to organize a community around storytelling, but it's based on web, anytime you kind of lead with web3, you have to know right away the speculators, and the farmers are coming, and they will be there first, they will be the loudest, and they will create some of the most headaches, but they might also create some of the most momentum for you. So it is a very tricky thing to do. And again, that's human interactions. But it's because they're coming because of the opportunity. If you're leading with, you know, a web3 type pitch, not so much with generative AI, those are a bit more currently people who are just really fascinated with the technology, and they want to create art and create, create, those are a bit more of a creator type community and conversation. But if you're starting with, we are creating an NFT collection, we're dropping in orbitals collection we are on salaam, you know, whatever it is, we're going to create our own token. If you start with that, and lead with that, you are going to bring speculators and speculators are the first to cry, foul and flood you and kind of, you know, kill your momentum. So I think what I've experienced is in the advice I give to project leaders is first and foremost, start with your story of you as a person. Now, you might have reasons to stay anonymous and unboxed. But in this day and age to inspire people to come along on a journey, especially as it relates to storytelling that, you know, making a film or even an animated series, it takes years sometimes. And so leading a community with people and humanity first rather than technology. And then using the technology as a way to get people's attention, I think is really interesting. So I you know, I advise founders to not hide, you have to be in the discord, you have to be on telegram you have to tell your story, alongside the story of the content you're creating, yes, these PFPs are really cool. And there's all these trades and all this stuff. Like that's great as organizing as an organizing principle. But really, truly, it starts with a founder or founding team, putting him or herself out there, showing that they're willing to take risks and kind of being an inspiring person that we want to go on a journey with. And anytime every time a project has failed every time a project is run, because the founder or founding team has not been committed and has not put themselves out there or has actually been, you know, committing fraud, but less so than that. It's people who aren't putting themselves in the daily grind of building their community, one person at a time and getting to know people.

Yeah, thank you, Julian. So well said, I'm going to hijack your definition of self sovereign IP and address this question to mark to start off with Marc. So you said earlier, we always need a bad guy in the story. So if we if we talk about the idea of self sovereign IP, it sounds like it's at odds with what a studio might want. So how are we going to navigate this next period where so much of the concept of self sovereign, whatever it is, whether it's identity, whether it's IP, whether it's just the data that we generate on a daily basis, the narrative is definitely shifting as a global society. I mean, it's very slow going. But we see that there is momentum being made in the sense that people are starting to understand, well, other people don't always have to own everything. So I would love to know, what are your thoughts on maybe in the next decade going forward? How are we going to kind of meet in the middle? The what big studios want? And then independent creators who say, Well, I can't get in with the studio anyway. Because I'm you're just some random person and some random little town, I don't have the access that perhaps someone does who lives in a different country. But because of these technologies, I'm now not even able to worry about whether I'm going to get into the studio because I can really just generate this entire thing myself own the IP from the beginning. So what is this tension going to look like between independent creators and studios in the next decade?

Yeah, I love that question. Thank you for that. And to me, it's all about them democratic, democratizing and technology. And this is just such a big part right now. And speaking of IPs, and what we actually do Is now we need we need those nice thinking, I think and this is just like, well, Where does it start with an IP? Where does it start here with an IP area of intellectual property, but now like they did, you can start an NFT project, just stay with the NFT here, start an energy project and build a beautiful community around that. And then just leveraging the IP from there, just going back on the IP from there and this, but this needs what I mean with Democrat demo, could Jesus Christ democratizing technology, so we need to give independent filmmakers the same technology like studios, or the big studios have, you know, I've seen that so many times that the best stories from the best authors from the best independent people from great creative minds, the diet has never been made, because the numbers were into it, you know, just like the numbers with which they started. And we have the chance here to get our own IP to give them numbers they have the big studios are so anyone to give them numbers to just put just to help you make your IP make you a movie make you up. Project your art project. And it's I think it's the time for independent filmmakers on for small so when I piece and it will getting bigger and bigger in the next years. And it's not just going to be Harry Potter or Star Wars any anymore. But it's going to be those smaller, great ideas where you have your chair and where you have a great secondary market where you have the power of community, and you will find a niche, and this niche will be happy with what you're making. So I think it's going to be I piece for niche. But that's a great thing, because I listened to your last one of the last week quarters with when we I think it's she's called Wayne Williams, a great, great, great, great person that really, what I really liked is just like, yes, give a voice to African filmmakers, let them do let them create their own IPs, this is not never ever going to happen in the studio system. And this is a great chance for web three, just going out of the system and have diversity you have people tell stories, they never had the chance to tell stories. And I think that's why we should all find a way. And that's why we are building actually a little token gated community where we give AI data and all the stuff filmmakers need to get the best movie they all the guests happy they would have been able to do.

You know, thank you, Marc for that answer. And I think you use the example of African film DAO, Williams, who was on the show previous time. And I think that's such a great example. Because they operate in a very niche space. I mean a niche within a niche. They are supporting filmmakers in Africa, leveraging web3, I mean, that's a very, very small group of people, you know, in any given context. And I think that's such a great example. Because we tend to focus on, you know, the sort of big markets or very specific markets but not realizing that this technology has the ability to unlock potential for filmmakers, and for people in different industries everywhere, even if there's not as much market potential for any of these niche markets as the traditional ones. So thank you so much for raising that point, Julian, and I would love to get your input as well. Specifically with regards to IP and this this idea of self sovereign IP, what are your thoughts on where we are headed with us? Of course, we know where we come from. We come from an age where we don't own anything. And that's just how it is. And it's a very exciting time to be moving into where suddenly people are even able to entertain the idea that yes, actually we do own a lot of stuff. And you know, not only do we own it, but we can we can do things with it that previously were just not possible whatsoever.

Yeah, I think one of the most exciting innovations on blockchain is not necessarily, you know, the tokens themselves, you know, whether noncoding fungible or fungible tokens. But I think the actual concept of blockchain for registering IP registering provenance is going to be huge going forward, especially in the era of generative AI when it's not necessarily clear who generated this image or this artwork or this news story. So for example. For those who don't know, there's a very well funded startup called Story protocol, which is building an EVM side chain, to essentially create an IP registry system to update the IP, you know, system that exists, you know, that's 100 years old, which you can go, you can register a piece of IP, whether it's a song, a character, a story, a whole entire film, you know, the Sci Fi universe, whatever it is, is your different pieces of IP or blocks that you register on the chain. And then it creates an NFT, that also has all your built in licensing rights, depending on whether you want to allow people upstream to license your product. So this is where you kind of get into some very interesting programmable IP control that you don't have currently. So if I'm, if I'm a person that creates a toy, or let's say, a new sci fi universe, you know, I'm essentially going to have to currently go to the studio system, convince them whatever, let's say get the budget to make it. But as soon as I get a single dollar from the studio system, I lost control, because they're actually going to require that they control the IP going forward. Now, I may do well financially, but I will never have control again. So using something like blockchain technology allows a creator to let's say, you know, Grant automatically through smart contracts, automatically grant licensing rights to somebody, an anonymous user somewhere else in the world who might go and take that character. And because it's all built in, when it's all programmed, that person can then go maybe make a graphic novel. And if they, you know, if they commercialize that graphic novel, I get, you know, money back from that. So I think, you know, the point is, Blockchain is going to allow for the first time creators to really be self sovereign, because they'll be able to use this technology to maintain control, automatically program, other licenses and other royalties, and it will be publicly viewable. It's, and it's automatic. So there's not, you know, 1000s of dollars of lawyer legal fees to like, deal with all these IP management rights. And so it's an exciting time, because I think for me, Blockchain, until recently has been so hard to understand, like how it's going to help with IP, until the last like, year or so. And so I think it's a great time for creators to start thinking about, you know, the blockchain being a way to control expand, and potentially license, you know, freely your content to other people to go big.

Exciting times, indeed, Max, I think we are heading into the end of the hour, we're gonna have time for some questions, but we'd love to have your thoughts on this as well, before we move into the question section.

Oh, I mean, I think it's already been pretty much brought on the point. But Julian, I mean, the thing is, with the big studios, let's look at like Disney, for example, like before, The Nightmare Before Christmas came out. That, you know, Disney took people off the street, to not have competition, because they can. And they had writer rooms and boot camps. And they were sitting like, you know, there and they had like the best writers to basically have them off the street so that the competition couldn't get them. That's the old American way. IP, in a way is something that that angel investors have, or that early, early bird investors have the depth, that's what they're interested in, they want to find that intrapreneur, that director, that idea that film that they can invest on, there are films that you can produce of Cameron, which are blue chips, where you basically like, I want to have a seat in investing 150,000 and 50,000 in that film, because I'm gonna go out. So these kind of, like, you know, this is a big dream. But on the other side, the markets are getting bigger talking also about Africa. I mean, you know, that continent is so huge. And it's been, it's a very interesting group of people there now, which are, like, you know, really finding themselves, the space, using the internet to look on, you know, outside the little borders that they have using smartphones and all these kind of new possibilities to basically like, make friends. I have a lot of lot of these people that basically like constantly ask questions. So I think I think the space as internet as web3, as platform will gain a certain kind of stake of that market. But if you don't want to necessarily own all the IP, because you will always need a team. And you will need to reward the team in certain kind of like stakes. So it's always been you know, it's I don't know what to say it's like either you have like some real big whale, who's gonna pay it all. And then also wants to market it or you need to make that little thing and you're like, Okay, I'm not Gonna be wealthy, I'm not going to be like this making that big steps and be like fast with my idea, I'm going to do it myself, but then it will be smart, small steps. If you have money, you can drive and Bangkok on the on the highway on top, and you're gonna go fast from A to B, but you don't meet anyone. If you if you if you don't have the money, and you have to go through the traffic, you're going to be flow from A to B, but you're going to meet a lot of people. And that's basically like how I'm explaining that all the time. That's the fast track, there's not necessarily the good, the good and the best one and the most enjoyable one, because it can also be very fast over you know, think the meter two meters out of money, you need to go down again, then you didn't make any enough friends, and you don't know anyone. So that's always this kind of like a discussion about do I want to be a blockbuster? Or do I want to be somebody that has value and that tells a good story. And that will be known like Akira Kurosawa, even after his death, or like, you know, doing movies like when does, it's over 80 and still does like commercial and artistic firms, you know. So it's always like, if you are dedicated, and the IP is always yours. And even if the studio buys from you, everyone else will know as you it was used before. I think Giuliana says something that follows up on what use you said before?

Yeah, sorry, the audio just cut out the end there. Sorry.

I just repeated in my own words, what you said.

Excellent. It was a great, it was a great talk. I loved it. It was great.

Yeah, awesome. I really have to thank all of you. I think there was just so many insights shared here today. So definitely, if you are interested in the space, do make sure to follow all of the speakers as you can tell, they have a lot of insight and wisdom to share. So I'm going to move into questions, I see that we are almost out of time. So the first one, the first question from otaku Max, I think is for you, as a director at MFTs. What unique challenges and advantages do you encounter when creating content in web3, compared to traditional file filmmaking? So what unique challenges and advantages creating content in web3 as opposed to traditional filmmaking?

Well, I would say that there's like so many ideas. In Web3, there's so many possibilities. So it's not just one screen, you're playing basically on 100 screens and 100 monitors and under possibilities, and you need to make very clear decisions of where you want to go first. And then you also need to be able to let go. Because I think that this web3 is made for collaboration it's made for, for bringing in an idea, but then also not be afraid that somebody takes that idea and evolves into a different idea. And then it goes somewhere else. So traditional filmmaking is like a little bit like war. Some people say it's war, some people say like, there's one dictator. And it's a little bit like a system of like one director has to say, and it needs to leave the whole team which is behind them. I have a feeling that in. In Web three, it's a little different, you can start things off and you can follow your idea but you always you can't be afraid of, of letting things go. You know, like some people just don't let things go because he's he doesn't let go his like ideas about America and the way he does direct and camera and definitely doesn't let go anything. These people are like really, really much only they can let anything goes. And I think that's my point. You set a seed and but that seed can grow exponentially or slow or slow first and then exponentially. I think once that the whole idea of web three is taking off, it will really go fast but fast. Does that answer your question?

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's for the audience. But yes, I I've this suddenly answered it for me. So maybe I think I can extend that question, because I think we've touched on some really great closing thoughts there with you, Max. So Julian, if you and Marc, if you have anything to add to this, some of the unique challenges and opportunities, creating content in web3 as opposed to traditional filmmaking and content creation?

Sure, I'll jump in with one last thought. I think for storytelling there, it requires not only a huge team of people, typically to create, although AI and other tools are making it easier for smaller operations, and it takes a lot of patience and money. So I think the one thing that kind of watch out here in this sector is if you're thinking about trying to create storytelling communities, you have to work with your community to make sure that everybody's patient, and that you look for incremental gains, whether it's releasing little bits of content or introducing characters, you know, you, you increment the storytelling out. Because something like filming a feature film, you know, takes forever. And in this space, people have extreme, you know, ADHD and will find things that take too long. And the cycles move really fast. So I guess my closing thought is just find and build an authentic community, who understands who you are and your goals, build with them, and encourage everyone to be patient and to build together for the long term, not looking for short term profits, because storytelling is about experience. And so you know, build a build a lasting experience for your community, and they will come along with you.

Well, yeah, thank you. And I would just like to add the last idea from my side, it's, for me, it's all about the people. You know, it's all about the people who are actually in the space. And if we gather around people who have like we say, some growth mindset, who are ready for innovation are ready to be humans who just use the technology to bring humanity and filmmaking and art a little bit more forward. And I think this would be for me, personally, the most important thing. So breaking up the power structures that are at the moment and getting the stories told, they need to be told by the people.

Well, thank you. That's certainly as those are some beautiful parting words. Thank you all so much for your time today. I think it's such an incredible opportunity to be this early. At the start of anything, really, I think it's always a very special experience to be part of something that would not be able to be repeatable in history, because it's a moment of time. And I thank you all for sharing this moment with us and to the audience for joining in sharing your time with us that is as valuable as anything and I will catch you again next week for another episode of the future of NFTs. Thanks, everyone. Have an amazing day and week and I will speak to you soon and please do follow the incredible speakers that we had on here today. Cheers, everyone.