Possible blockhain solutions for the Movie/TV/web video industry
Movies & TV remain to this day the widest form of entertainment in the world. Reaching out to over 5 billion people worldwide, this is a $300 billion per annum industry. Recently, online services like YouTube, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have taken this world by storm, but face a fair few challenges. In this post, I shall discuss possible blockchain solutions that could change this industry.
The Problems
There's a fundamental disconnect between the audience and the artist. Decisions are made by businessmen who have a questionable understanding of consumer demands. It is, of course, evident in the big Hollywood studios churning out the same rubbish over and over again, but the same extends to medium budget, low budget and TV as well. It's a vicious cycle of rubbish that drags the whole industry down long term, all for short term profit. Needless to say, short term profit that's pocketed by the middlemen. The free market is all well and good, but in this case, the burden is on the artists to create demand. This can only be done by respecting the audience, instead of throwing rubbish at them. This is why countries with subsidies such as the UK or Germany produce far superior cinema that stand the test of time, and over a longer term is beneficial for the economy.
Speaking of which, film is forever. Yet, the industry functions with a view towards short term profit. Films can be consumed for centuries.
Convoluted copyright laws, international rights and exclusive rights mean it's pretty hard for the consumer to get access to content in a timely manner. Furthermore, consumers have to research and subscribe to various different services to figure out where they get access to the content they need.
Many countries have ridiculous censor boards which act dictatorially.
Video files are large, and remain a challenge to decentralise. Though torrents have been pretty successful on this front. Some clients stream pretty well too.
Dogged by annoying advertising where consumers don't have a choice.
Possible solutions
(Inspired by Steem)
A worldwide, blockchain based system. The audience are investors, and their stake determines which content is greenlit, and how much produced content they can consume.
Inflation goes towards producing and acquiring content. We'll need a full-scale production system, of course, with smart contracts offered to content producers. Content producers will receive loyalties over a long term, depending on how much value they bring in.
Producers will make proposals for content financing. At the end of each project, producers will be rated on their performance. Most reputed producers will naturally be most likely to get larger greenlights.
Video will use VP9, which is an incredibly efficient codec. It's possible to compress good quality FHD content to ~2 Mbps. There'll be distributor nodes all over the world, and they'll be paid from inflation to maintain compression, storage and bandwidth required. It'll be distributed in a StorjX / Torrent like manner, though I don't know the technical details of how those work. This system must be upgradeable, of course.
Censorship and exclusive / regional rights should be a thing of the past. This will be one place to access all video content from anywhere in the world.
Advertisers can invest in the network to finance content, but consumers can choose to ignore those.
Of course, this is a utopian view of things, but one that could solve most problems faced by the incredibly inefficient movie/video industry. Can this be built on top of Steem?
We are aware of the potential legal roadblocks using a token ICO. However, let's leave that discussion for another time. So, here's a question for you which skirts that issue. Do you think it's possible to produce a feature film through steemit rewards alone, using behind the scenes video from the film pre-production through to release to create the capital - think reality T.V. Let's say it's a low horizon intimate film of $500K. I realize the film itself may need to be underwritten at the outset with seed capital but those monies to be returned once the reward funding gets underway?
I don't think it'll be possible going forward. It was very feasible in July or August of last year, but not anymore. The price has to rise significantly, and when that happens there'll be intense competition for votes. Especially now that we have linear rewards, it's hard to see any single content creator cash out more than a few thousands per post.
However, what could be possible is a shoestring budget web-series. You can make 2 or 3 posts per episode, including behind the scenes, making-of, trailer, etc. So, for a 12 episode season of 10-20 minutes per episode each, you could make a good 30 posts or so. Given the novelty, that should attract a lot of attention and could potentially earn a few thousands a post, especially if the price goes up. If all goes well, that could be $50k - $100k for a web series, which is doable. So, that might just work out!
As for a feature film, I have my doubts.
That's interesting. I don't disagree. Our initial tack was to launch a token - ethereum. But we backed off because we wanted to stay within the Steemit ecosystem for the time being. In Ned's talk a month ago he mentioned a Steemit community token. No idea what the possibilities are that we will see that by year end - doubtful . So it's my sense now - after H19 an ICO is inevitable. Until then we will build the profile of SteemFilm and the screenplay, 'Better Left Unsaid' on Steemit prepping for an eventual token.
Your series comments are in line with my thoughts. I'm working an a pilot right now. It started out as a feature but the story lends itself well as a series. It's the third project I have lined up. The second is a feature, 'I Wanna Be a Pip!'. Given this conversation, I'm going to reconsider the order.