Coppola-backed FILM cryptocurrency increases independent filmmaking

“I’m sitting here pretty far from everything,” said Quinn, 36, of Zoom from the author’s cabin one recent night. “So being able to find a place where people are encouraged to give feedback on my project really means a lot.”

Quinn is evidence of a case put forward by decentralized leaders and other advocates that, contrary to growing skepticism, crypto is more than a poorly regulated asset class where people can lose their savings or a chance for celebrities to brag about NFT- one sine. It can have beneficial uses.

They say that crypto can be a way to create a global community that does not focus on restrictive old Hollywood clubs – and possibly even help the industry find the next “Godfather” or “Pulp Fiction”. Decentralized, a non-profit organization with the commitment of the filmmaking family Coppola, aims to use its unofficial currency to encourage and make visible a new generation of filmmakers that they say would never be found.

“The decision about what is being made in Hollywood comes from small groups of people,” said Michael Musante, one of the founders of Decentralized, or DCP. “We want to open up to this so that the process is democratized, so that all these ideas can be tested and developed by new people who will now have a chance to break through.”

DCP was founded by several executives at US Zoetrope – the company long overseen by “The Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola – including Coppola’s son producer-director Roman Coppola and Musante, Zoetrope’s vice president of production and acquisitions. DCP was launched in May and has attracted around 2,000 users, say executives, with the goal of eventually reaching 2,000,000 and capturing the attention of cultural gatekeepers.

“I know there is a certain cynicism when people hear the word ‘crypto’ – how does this have value and is not just a hype thing?” in Roman Coppola. “But we value the intelligent commitment of our participants. And we believe that commitment should give them something, which will bring more intelligent participants and build a community.”

At the heart of DCP is a kind of exchange-based square that proponents say can never happen on an unencrypted website, although some critics ask why the current social network can not achieve many of the same goals.

Most of the art industry environments on the current web – such as the collection of authors known as Book Twitter – are solely driven by the interest of the participants, who post thoughts and receive notes if the mood strikes. A screenwriter who wants to ensure more regular feedback on his ideas can apply for a so-called laboratory – a postgraduate scholarship run by an advanced institution such as Sundance. But laboratories are so intensely competitive that they are inaccessible to most people.

Web3 dangles another promise – that by gamifying and even funding the concept of feedback, it can lubricate a robust community that is accessible to all.

Decentralized’s system works this way. The site asks for projects – shorts, scripts, pitches – for a small fee. Users can earn crypto by reviewing these projects as well as engaging with the site in other ways (such as lending their computing power to validate transactions). They can then use the crypto they have earned to pay to enter own projects – which others in turn can earn crypto with their own reviews.

It is a self-sustaining ecosystem – a constant recycling of labor and currency that, if all goes according to plan, will provide creators with feedback and agents and producers with market insight.

Think about how deep into the process a filmmaker or studio gets a sense of what the audience is thinking – it’s really on a test show [after a movie is completed], ”Said Leo Matchett, CEO of Decentralized. “And now we say you can know how your horror movie idea will play out for women 18-35 before you spend a dime on production.”

Feedback is not the only reward for users. DCP also runs a series of grant competitions that pay tens of thousands of (real) dollars to fund projects that have been voted on by other decentralized members. Projects are evaluated by users under a complex system that not only weights the total number of votes, but factors such as the reputation of the voters and how often they are used. (Voters can even use crypto to push a script to a more prominent place on the site, although executives emphasize that this only ensures more general reviews, not more good reviews.)

Projects will then swing up and down in the public ranking. The best advance to the final round. There is a small group of professionals who make the final decision on who will receive the cash prize.

Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh has sponsored such a competition that will pay out $ 100,000 apiece to three different projects; writer-director Kevin Smith has supported one for $ 40,000. DCP also says it will help manage these blockchain-blessed projects for production companies and talent agencies.

“We think this is a much better way to run a competition,” Matchett said. “And everything is on the chain, so no one can claim that anyone has manipulated it.” The blockchain, a digital ledger, makes every action on a platform public, making tampering with a result difficult to hide.

Young filmmakers say that a web3 approach – or film3, as some in the entertainment world call it – can also help cut through the unknown of an old industry.

“With many of the other contests and scholarships, you just throw your materials in a vacuum and hope something happens,” said Tiffany Lin, a screenwriter-director whose narrative short film “Poachers,” about illegal trade in succulents in California, won a grant through the decentralized voice system. “With DCP, you have more control over what you post, and you can also track progress live so you actually know what people are thinking.” The site offers a high level of analytics, she noted, and divides votes by age and other demographic information.

Someone who submits to the site also says that it can reduce Hollywood’s structural bias. Producer DC Cassidy, who founded the production company Diamond Entertainment and produces a story about black athletes in extreme sports called “Black People Do”, says a platform like Decentralized promotes this goal.

“The power of web3 is that you do not have to go to Chapman, USC, NYU, UCLA or AFI to have a chance to meet the right industry people,” Cassidy said in an email. “Twitter and Reddit cracked the foundation, web3 tears down the walls.”

DCP leaders say talent discovery is not the only issue. While the FILM cryptocurrency cannot currently be used off-site, Musante said the company is in talks with film production providers to authorize it to purchase various production items – so users can finance their film, at least in part, with crypto earned on the site.

Coppola has an even bigger idea. He asks if the whole system can be used to locate talent in new ways. Right now, a manufacturer looking to find, for example, a specific location or a highly specialized practitioner has to work through a network of expensive and not always accurate agencies.

“But what if you could use web3 for that?” he said. “Whether it’s casting or development or locations or something across our industry, crypto and blockchain will allow us to find more of what we need and function better as a business than we have ever done before.”

Crypto-skeptics, however, say that this offers a solution to a problem that no one has posed.

“With almost every community, the question is what can be done with crypto and Web 3 that you could not just do with regular money and the web we have,” said David Gerard, a commentator and author of the crypto-skeptical book “Attacks from the 50-foot blockchain. »

A talent representative contacted by The Post who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, added that they were concerned that these changes could not favor the best storytellers, but those who understood how to work and even manipulate a crypto-based system.

But Smith, the groundbreaking indie filmmaker behind hits like “Clerks” and “Chasing Amy,” who are releasing their new film as an NFT, says he sees these tools as necessary now in the same way that movie theaters or home videos were for a previous generation. .

He said: “If you’re an established independent filmmaker, you can go to streamers like Netflix or HBO Max. But where’s the new filmmaker going? Where’s the microbudgeted filmmaker going? With crypto and NFT, there’s a society that is hungry and already here. ” He said he saw crypto’s speculative bubble now as similar to the dot-com bubble around the internet two decades ago: one that ultimately would not hinder the underlying innovation.

While waiting to see if he would get a DCP scholarship, Quinn said that no matter which direction any of this took, he already felt like he was winning.

“I come from a working-class family with no connection to the industry,” said Quinn, who studied screenwriting but spent years in his 20s working at a local crematorium. “Just having a platform to put my work on feels like a real turning point.”