Independent film studio Hedley Production and Vulture Capital announced the crowdsale of a new Ethereum-based cryptocurrency token called VCAP to fund feature film production.
VCAP coins’ crowdsale is now available for both Bitcoin and Ether.
According to the announcement, the upcoming feature film 'Listen Carefully' will become the first film of its kind funded by cryptocurrency. Moreover, this film aims to spread awareness of cryptocurrencies among those who watch the movie.
According to the official press release, Hedley Production needs to raise at least part of the required budget, about $3.5 million to $5 million, before the beginning of ‘Listen Carefully’ filming in fall of 2016. The movie release is set for the summer of 2017.
Cryptocurrency and movie production experts opinion
CoinIdol world cryptocurrency news outlet decided to find out if this project actually is the first of its kind and
could it become a standard practise in the movie industry soon.
“I see it as a unique step to make the general public and different industries aware of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. I have various friends from TV and movie industry, but the awareness about Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency is almost null. The people who know about it, only do so because they also have an interest in trading and that's how they maybe heard it or used it for trading purpose only. I think once people will know the advantages about cryptocurrency, they would like to use it. But then we have the issue of what they can do with it other than trading in general and such an initiative can bring a confidence in them by giving them a practical use case around them,” said Kumar Gaurav, CEO & Founder at Cashaa, a cash-to-cash remittance company, who has also worked as an actor on world TV show “Beauty and the geek” on the Indian “Channel V” in 2011 year. You can have a look at the record of the show with Kumar, if you wish, here.
“Televisions and movies have an easier and broader impact on the average consumer than a closed industry media like finance, tech or any other. Maybe we think that Blockchain and Bitcoin is very nice and it can change the world and all kind of big words. But until now, the impact of Bitcoin on average consumer it not visible. Taking Bitcoin to use for such a case would definitely make it more popular than before.”
Too expensive
Graeme Boyce, CEO at Solamon Energy and Founder of Civilized Productions, a venture from Canada, that has created and manages the development of two ambitious projects - both conceived as television series, that upon successfully garnering a huge audience globally, would then enable the effective production of character-driven movies, based on new discoveries; called Before The Egyptians and Templar Treasure. Graeme Boyce points out, how much money you need to raise in order to produce a feature film, regardless of the subject, and whether you want the efforts of your team to sit unseen or actually viewed in theatres (and on screens large and small) in territories on a global level. He commented to CoinIdol.com:
“The production of a movie (from scripting to editing) then requires distribution on both small and large screens and a marketing budget to assure success, in not only one market but markets around the world. Perhaps most importantly would be the creative talent required, from actors to directors, as well as the team needed to promote and publicise the finished product. You then must consider what is called 'product flow', to take advantage of economies of scale in the entertainment industry if you are indeed to finance the growth of a studio, as opposed to the production of a single movie.”
Could the feature movie crowdsale raise $15m worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum?
Cryptocurrency expert and CEO of BnkToTheFuture.com, Simon Dixon commented on how successful such crowdfunding might be:
“Films are such a useful user case for CrowdFunding, however budgets are tight, every penny counts and the amount of funds needed is large. To date, the largest CrowdSale we have seen using a CryptoCurrency was TheDAO that did not end well, after raising almost $150k worth of Ether, mainly because it was attached to a smart contract, so I don’t think we will be seeing another one of those for a feature film for a while. Prior to that, $15m worth of Bitcoin for the Ethereum CrowdSale was raised which had the challenge of almost running out of funds due to Bitcoin price decreases. Whether this amount can be raised for a feature film is still to be proven and if the Ether and Bitcoin is converted to traditional money, it is starting to smell more and more like a security, which is subject to very strict regulations that break the CrowdSale model. Time will tell.”
(c) Coindol.com