Tinseltown. The dream factory. Hollywood has been synonymous with the American film industry since the early 1900s. The area’s reputation firmly entered popular culture when the famous ‘Hollywood’ sign was erected in 1923. (The sign, which originally spelled ‘Hollywoodland’ was intended as a temporary advertisement for local housing development.)
Since those early days of pioneering movie-making, the film industry has grown into a profitable titan.
Making movies is a rather expensive enterprise these days, however. With very few exceptions, long gone are the days of independent filmmaking. Low-budget movies are nowadays confined to arthouses and specialised sections within ‘mainstream’ film festivals, and in recent years, streaming platforms like Netflix and YouTube. Considering that most blockbusters cost a fortune to make (hundreds of millions), independent filmmaking has little chance to thrive. Hollywood’s eye-watering budgets mean that making a movie requires very -very- deep pockets that only big studios can afford.
This exclusivity (centralisation, if you will) shuts out independent filmmakers, who find themselves struggling for financial backing for their projects. Ergo, most resort to ingenuity to find alternative funding methods. Crowdfunding, for example. A few dozen films have been funded through platforms like Kickstarter. Sometimes, indie filmmakers find patronage through philanthropy.
But recently, a new funding trend has emerged. Enter the ubiquitous non-fungible tokens (NFTs)
The democratization of filmmaking
Going to the movies is fun, right? Either on your own, with your significant other, or with a group of friends, going to your nearest movie theater, getting popcorn, and watching the film is a fun thing to do. Afterward, you can spend some time debating the film’s merits (or lack thereof), and vent your displeasure online, if needs be. But that’s as far as the experience goes. You’ve watched a film that others have made, and that movie might have produced mouth-watering profits for the studio that put up the budget. The actors got paid, handsomely. So did the crew (not so handsomely.) But you, the spectator, do not see a dime. Nor are you part of the movie. Your role is limited to a mere spectator one.
What if you could actually own a piece of that great movie that you just saw? And no, a coffee mug with the movie’s title doesn’t count. What if you could own a bona fide piece of your favourite movie, and profit from it?
NFTs have become harbingers of democratised funding and ownership. Thanks to these little digital shooting stars, you can part-own a hotel, or be the proud proprietor of a plot of virtual land and profit from it. Now, you can be more than a spectator. You can be a film producer thanks to NFTs!
The first example of this emerging trend is NFT Studios, an aptly named production company set up by Niels Juul. Juul acted as Executive Producer for Martin Scorsese’s films Silence (2016) and The Irishman (2019). Now, Juul has gone a step further and, through his new production company, plans to fund a series of upcoming movies entirely through the sale of NFTs. The first such project is “A wing and a prayer”, a movie that tells the story of Brian Milton. In 1998, Milton emulated Phileas Fogg (the protagonist of Jules Verne’s Around the world in 80 days) by circumnavigating the globe in a light aircraft. Juul hopes to finance the entire movie through NFTs, which will grant holders certain rights to the movie, including financial profit.
Juul’s is hardly the only movie project leveraging NFTs for funding. American actress Jennifer Esposito, who starred in such films as Summer of Sam (1999), Welcome to Collinwood (2002), and Crash (2004), hopes to make her directorial debut with Fresh Kills, an indie movie that she intends to part-finance using NFTs.
And Julie Pacino, daughter of Hollywood heavyweight Al Pacino, also hopes to fund her first film as director, I live here now, by selling parts of it as NFTs. I live here now is based on an eponymous photography series that she created.
Tokenising Hollywood
Movie studios have held all the power (and kept their hands on the purse strings) for far too long. Because of this level of control, studio execs dictate what movie gets made, how, and the themes that it can and cannot touch upon. Creative freedom has been lost to the single-minded search for profitability. This, in turn, has led to cookie-cutter filmmaking that’s limited in scope and created with one goal in mind: to make money, tons of it, for the studio. And you, the spectator, get nothing out of it. Avengers: Infinity War made over $2 billion at the box office worldwide. Avengers: Endgame came within a whisker of $3 billion. These are insane amounts of money for movies with zero originality (they’re both based on characters and events from the Marvel Universe), and even less creative freedom. The studios cannot deviate from the Marvel canon. Now, none of this is necessarily a bad thing. The Marvel Universe has a long pedigree (Marvel was founded in 1939), it has a gigantic fan base across the world, and the movies based on it do very well. But these types of blockbusters can hardly be considered cinema classics. They are, essentially, popcorn movies for quick consumption.
The tokenisation of filmmaking subverts this status quo by giving the directors back what’s rightfully theirs: the freedom to create the movie they want to create (rather than being forced to abide by the studio’s guidelines) and to give the fans the opportunity to truly participate in the filmmaking experience. By offering NFTs, filmmakers, and fans form a bond hitherto unheard of. There is a synergistic connection there. People are no longer mere spectators. Thanks to NFTs, people can truly become part of the movie, own certain rights (if so stipulated on the NFT), and enjoy a percentage of the film’s revenue. The creator enjoys total creative freedom, thus bypassing any gatekeeping exerted by the larger studios.
Conclusion
Creativity requires freedom, and freedom requires independence. NFTs enable both. In turn, they benefit both the creator and the spectator, who become intertwined with the film in hitherto unexplored ways.
If filmmaking or cinema, in general, is one of your passions, NFTs are likely to become part of your future experience, whether you are behind the camera, or sitting comfortably in a movie theater somewhere.
