Decentralized Pictures Foundation brings blockchain to film financing

0:01i'm ashton addison from block west capital for investmentpitch media and the cryptocoin show and today on blockchain interviews we have leo machet ceo of decentralized pictures foundation dcp leo welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time to come on today thank you for having me you're very welcome i'm excited to dive into the film industry democratizing

0:22access to capital to resources using blockchain technology to improve uh all of the frictions in the industry i would love for you to kick it off for us with a high-level overview of dcp and what are some of the solutions you're focused on bringing yeah so decentralized pictures foundation is a an organization focused on talent discovery and content curation

0:47uh we're using blockchain technology to help us achieve our goals and we you know are essentially democratizing the decision-making process of which artists uh you know get a shot to get their foot in the door in hollywood um we intend on building out a virtual studio uh of applications uh so you know all the various departments you

1:13would find at a big studio uh we're starting with the financing department uh and the way that first application will work is users can submit their ideas to funding rounds that we will post to to the web application and um they will pay a fee to to submit their idea uh that fee actually doesn't go to the foundation it gets locked into a smart contract and it incentivizes the

1:42rest of the community to review and anyone who gives their opinion on the project will earn a portion of that submission fee bounty if you will and through that process we'll aggregate data and um certain projects will rise to the top uh and we will shepherd uh the winning project through the life cycle of the film uh we've been reaching out for years now to generate a production

2:10network to support artists that win and you know help them package co-finance and distribute and sell their their films uh so yeah we're a talent discovery and content curation platform very cool leo and you know so many people go to the movies they see the big picture on the screen they see the top actors in the movie but i'm sure many of them have no idea you know how did those

2:39what path did those actors take to try and get to the point where they're at and also more importantly you know how did that film get chosen get financed uh to be get to the big screen and i think there's a lot of steps that no one really hears about and i'm guessing you're familiar with the traditional film industry and how easy or hard it is to get your film financed maybe you can

3:03talk a little bit about some of those problems that you pinpointed when uh deriving this solution yeah you know it's a very centralized industry there's a relatively small group of decision makers that um you know are good at what they do and they pick obviously great content we all watch it in the theater and stream it online um we're not necessarily trying to take

3:29a lane on on their highway we're building a different highway uh to get to the same place so you know the difficulty and the problem we're solving one of the problems we're solving is uh what we call the drinking from a fire hose problem so you know most of the big companies out there agencies uh they won't take what's called unsolicited material you can't just send

3:52them the script and say hey give this a read if you like it call me and buy it let's make this film they just won't accept them part of the reason for that is you know relatively small development departments acquisition departments uh you know you would get so much inflow it would be impossible to review it all so the problem we're solving and the way

4:15we're solving it is by outsourcing that review to the world and we're incentivizing the world to help us with that review and and through that process we will get data uh about which demographics any piece of content that is submitted uh it you know is striking it forward with and uh then when we go to our production network with these winning projects

4:40we can go to them not just with the script uh it'll be you know a very detailed report of who's responding well to this piece of content so um we're creating a new avenue for aspiring artists uh to you know get their content into the hands of people that can help them execute their visions and bring their their projects to life

5:07definitely yeah it feels like a like a kickstarter for films you know as a film watcher i want to watch you know i know what kind of material i like rather than having the the top producers you know analyze what they think i might like i can actually invest into a film that i want to see be created from the beginning before it's even made so i think that's that's super cool

5:31well just to clarify you know kickstarter indiegogo some of these you know crowd source or crowd financing platforms are one thing that is not what we are we are actually the ones financing the winning projects we are actually rather than asking our community to give money to finance these projects we're flipping it and saying hey

5:57you will be paid to give your opinion and tell us which project we should finance so it is not a crowd funding platform it is a crowd sourcing of intelligence data platform definitely well it's still great to be able to give your uh opinion you know pre-production on what you think you would like to see um so that that is still uh great to include people in that

6:25and i know that your team's been working on this for for a little bit and there's still a lot to go maybe you can talk about you know the uh inception of decentralized pictures how long your team's been working on the project now yeah i mean we've been thinking about it for a very long time in uh you know late 2015 when ethereum launched and smart contracts

6:51were you know becoming a reality uh you know we were conceiving uh ways uh to to bring it to our space and um i think end of 2016 2017 we you know started putting together a team to build it raise money to start you know conceptualizing how it could work and

7:20you know we initially thought hey you know distribution is a huge issue that you know there's so much disruption that could happen there with all of the various territories and sales agents and all the intermediate parties between the you know purchaser of a movie ticket or uh you know the person who's paying to to stream something and the actual artist who created the ip

7:46everyone is kind of taking their their pound of flesh as it goes down through that waterfall um but you know there's very significant incumbent inertia at that end of the film life cycle so you know we thought everyone wants to get their film finals there's so many great ideas out there there's so many great artists let's start at the other end let's start with financing

8:14and um you know let's discover some great talent and and see how we can use blockchain efficiently to to do that and i i think we are you know we're we're creating transparency in the voting process which is important because we're giving away significant amounts of money um we're creating value uh for the participants in our ecosystem with our economy

8:42of idea submitters and idea evaluators and uh you know we're creating efficiency with um dynamically paying out people for for doing work and and you know participating in this intended incentivized behavior that we've you know built into this application yeah it's uh i'm interested to learn more in you know

9:10as a as an evaluator of a film you know my incentives are are my incentives financially motivated or am i looking at you know what should i give a critical opinion on the film will you still be uh you know incentivized to do so if you're not gonna make as much money um should you and you know is there any trick to how that you've built out the ecosystem

9:32to sort of keep everything in line with you know good moral principles yeah so um we have a moderation process where uh the community will actually self-spam filter so anyone in the community can apply to be a moderator they will post a bond to a smart contract during their time as a moderator to disincentivize colluding with uh participants

10:00you know at the risk of losing their bond the bond is significant um we're a small relatively small team you know we know we can't police a ecosystem on our own and we want to decentralize that process so we feel like the community self-centering really is the best way to do that we don't want to try and define what's art and what's not

10:29that's a very difficult question and very subjective and uh you know so our our goal is starting out and you know this is a moving target and we plan to to evaluate as we go to to make it better but um essentially content should fit within the mpa rating system so between g and nc 17 uh you know we're not a pornography site we don't want to promote hate speech or

10:56terrorist recruiting videos or anything like that we want to to not try and define what's art and what's not but we also can't filter everything on our own so yeah um outsourcing that to the community just like outsourcing the decision decision-making process about what projects are are deserving of financing what artists are deserving of our support um

11:21so yeah that's how we're going about that yeah definitely totally makes sense leo and uh great that you mentioned that as well and it's interesting to hear about the the bond mechanism and you talked a little bit in the last question just about the ecosystem incentivizing you know the the evaluators and i'm guessing that also has to uh to do a little bit

11:41with the dcp decentralized pictures token ecosystem maybe you can talk about just the the token itself the main functionalities and and how it's used throughout the ecosystem and you mentioned creating sustainable ecosystem yeah so we've um built a decentralized uh well we we've stood on the shoulders of giants and port software to create our own blockchain i shouldn't say we built one

12:08um but we are we are creating our own chain and uh so the token will be used to to pay gas fees for anyone who wants to build on top of that chain it'll pay gas fees and um be used as an incentive mechanism with all within all of the you know applications in our virtual studio ecosystem um but specifically to the financing application uh it's used uh as an incentive

12:36mechanism for for the behavior and so um people can can use it to submit their project ideas uh people can earn it by giving their opinion uh on either project ideas or creative queries anyone can post a subjective question to the community and target it to specific demographics um and people will earn for giving their opinion on those types of questions

13:00uh and uh so yeah we've uh the token has many uses we're even you know talking with companies about using it to license software uh to get subscriptions to streaming services um and you know we're gonna promote other organizations or individuals who want to to build arts and culture focused applications in our ecosystem as well um so it will be used uh

13:29as a um as really the fuel to our ecosystem and and the blockchain itself very interesting yeah i didn't know that uh you're creating an entire protocol so that's really interesting to hear i'm looking forward to seeing how that plays out and and speaking of that i'd love to hear just a little bit about the future plans you know where you're at right now and

13:51what are the main milestones you and your team are looking to get out into the public you know by the end of this year and beyond yeah so um we're focused on launching what we're calling the beta net and that's that underlying infrastructure that blockchain we're also very focused on a fair launch so for the beta net phase we will allow anyone who wants to run a

14:17node and help us decentralize and secure the network validate uh to have an equal stake uh and start at the beginning where everyone has an equal stake in the network as it's a proof of consensus um so uh we're hopefully in the next well i don't i don't want to participate on but very soon we will be releasing that software and and allowing people to start validating and

14:43mining on the network so so that's our immediate goal right now at the end of that beta net phase we will transition to mainnet and launch our first application which is the financing application that i did described earlier uh and we're also working on um some other applications as well and hopefully we'll get those out in in early 2022

15:12uh so yeah we're very excited about getting the mainnet out and uh you know making sure that we follow fair launch principles um we will be selling our our tokens at the same price that any of the early purchasers got in the same amount so you know we had to sell some some tokens to get where we are now uh and um you know we're lucky enough to have great

15:40supporters and people who understand that to to sell them at the same price to the general public it will help we hope galvanize the community and build confidence that we are trying to launch this in as far away as possible so yeah those are our immediate goals great uh well i'm looking forward to seeing all that come to fruition uh for the viewers that are looking to follow

16:05along with decentralized pictures as you continue to grow what's the best place for them to learn more and get involved in the community uh head over to our website you can uh read about uh the mission and our applications there it's decentralized.pictures and uh we will also be releasing a website for the network

16:33software that you can download and help us participate in validating and you know running the network our our goal is to decentralize it and you know rely on our community to help us upgraded and and be part of the decision making process uh on which direction it should go so yeah um our website our twitter we have a medium

17:01page as well um i'm not sure if you can put links uh to this somewhere but we'd be happy to share those with you definitely yeah i'll leave all the links in the description box below as well for the viewers so no worries on that part uh well thank you so much for taking the time to come on leo all the best with decentralized pictures moving forward and the launch and let's follow up in

17:23the near future thank you so much for having me ashton i really appreciate it and yeah um we'll keep you posted you