FILMGRID ICO (Project Review)

7 min readMay 20, 2019

Hello, crypto and the beloved blockchain Today I will explain the blockchain platform Filmgrid, see well, take a little your time.

Introduction

Writers with great imagination must settle for writing what the executives request, instead of their own ideas; visionary directors have their hands figuratively tied, using their creativity to meet the expectations of the “product placement” advertiser; talented actors and actresses see the very roles they were born to play, be occupied by artists of lesser stature but with the physique or ethnicity selected by the producer. The world has changed, the viewer has changed. The streaming services are growing, not only as far as subscriptions but also in original content; Millennials are no longer impressed by the industry’s attempts to compete with larger screens, specialized rooms and ridiculously high investment in marketing. They are interested in the content, regardless of whether that is television, a computer, tablet or smartphone; the medium is no restriction. Filmgrid seeks to use technological, operative and ideological innovation to provide a fair commercial alternative, to generate equality between users and to promote art. By getting rid of unnecessary intermediaries, the creation of better films will be promoted. That way the direct participants receive a higher percentage of the profit, and they receive it sooner.

What is Filmgrid?

Filmgrid is an ideological project, seeking to create a business redundant platform that provides a fair innovative alternative to movie business; removing intermediaries from the creative and producing processes.

A place where independent filmmakers and viewers can interact in order to create better movies with richer content and true artistic freedom.

The application will offer all the services needed for this to be an integral reality:

The Billboard. A movie marketplace where creative users may offer their movies, and viewer users can buy them and stream them.
The Pitchboard. A podium where film projects can seek funding either by
obtaining it from the Filmgrid’s production fund, pre-sales or collective production.
The Critique Bay. A social network environment that promotes the connectivity between all the users and the spread of ideas.

Filmgrid will use the power of blockchain technology to manage transactions and hosting the smart contracts that will secure funds, voting, and other important aspects that make Filmgrid unique.

The Unique Solution Fetures

FILMGRID IS A PEER-TO-PEER SOLUTION FOR COMMERCE, STREAMING AND FINANCING OF INDEPENDENT FILMS AND SERIES OVER THE INTERNET.

Filmgrid’s core ideal is to disrupt the movie industry in favor of the moviemaker, not the suit. Of rebel heart, its principles are the base for its business model design, decentralizing as many aspects of the movie industry as possible. The adoption of Blockchain technology will allow us to build an unstoppable application, that shares Filmgrid beliefs.

Filmgrid does not depend on a third party for production nor release decisions, it depends only and always on the users, placing the trust in the Blockchain; leaving intermediaries interests out of the equation.

A MOVIE MARKETPLACE — {THE BILLBOARD}

For those moviemakers that have made a digital movie (and/or hold the copyright for it) and want to capitalize their project, we have the Billboard, a storefront for movies of all type, length, kind and style.

The moviemaker registers in Filmgrid as Creative Users, if the movie is a collaborative work, the involved Creative Users must form what is called a Creative Team, then upload to the Billboard the Movie; once in display, a Viewer User buys a digital copy of the Movie, and, through the application, the Movie can be downloaded or streamed and viewed as many times as the Viewer User decides.

There is also a movie rental option for titles available in the screening mode in the “Billboard”, in exchange for a “ticket”, the user obtains the right to play and watch the movie for 48 hours from the moment of payment.

A FUNDING PLATFORM BY POPULAR PARTICIPATION — {THE PITCHBOARD}

If there are Creatives with a cool movie project or a very good idea for one, they can use Filmgrid’s Pitchboard to fund it. All there is to do is upload a description, an image, gift, teaser or trailer video and a budget to participate.

It’s not quite crowdfunding, yet it relies on the crowd. There are three options to do so:

A Production Fund, where the crowd, in this case, the form users, will decide voting upon the catalog of projects in display on the Pitchboard which ones will get part(or total) of such fund.
An old fashioned Presale, where the user can buy the movie before it is made, in order to support its Creative Users with the production of the project.
The help of a Production Pool made by users that are interested in movie production.

The Production Fund management, the voting and the dispersal of funds will be secured by Smart Contracts in the Blockchain, assuring the veracity and appropriate usage of the funds; every Creative User member of the funded Creative Team can trust the platform will release their respective payment, therefore everyone can focus on making a great movie.

FAIR TRADE COMMERCE

In a traditional Hollywood-like business model, income is produced with the sale of theater tickets, digital and physical video copies, licensing to SVOD services and others. The typical scenario for profit distribution will include a Recoupment Waterfall, an accounting technique designed to provide control to the middlemen, hence the manipulation of profit.

For a movie with a hypothetical income of 101,473,573.86 USD, it would look much like this:

DISRUPTION

In our proposed business model, we have three income sources within the same platform: Premiere sale, Screening sale, and Home Cinema sale.

An important piece of information, the Filmgrid Production Fund, will initially be formed by the total collection of the ICO Phase II, with the sale of 400 million FILM tokens, from this point, it will be filled with the fee charged by Filmgrid during the sales in the “Premiere” modality and by the percentage of corresponding income of the productions previously developed with this same fund; in this way, it will always be growing, giving the opportunity to support more film projects.

Filmpass Token

Filmgrid’s utility token, Filmpass (FILM), is designed to be the means of payment for buying and renting movies and series episodes within the platform.

Token specifications:

Standard: ERC20
Name: Filmpass
Ticker: FILM
Decimals: 18
Max. Cap: 1,000,000,000 Tokens
Contract: 0xdadfd3814684a3a08a001500a98eef74f4ac1712

Token Distribution

The FILM token distribution consists of four sales, each one unique and oriented for different markets. Out of the 1 billion FILM tokens, 800 million will be distributed in total; 200 million will be kept to be distributed among Filmgrid and the founding team.

Why Blockchain?

Because its decentralized nature is a perfect fit for the principles/tenets behind Filmgrid. Furthermore, it can solve problems that traditional centralized technology cannot, particularly issues of censorship, intermediaries interference or trade transparency for example. To provide integrity verification for video files, we will store the data off-chain and store a hash of the data on-chain. This guarantees that the data is not being modified while protecting the blockchain from becoming bloated. We are exploring the benefits of IPFS, to implement in the near future.
With the intention of being productive as soon as possible, the first two years, the ness will take place on the Ethereum network, the DApp and the Smart Contracts will run on top of the blockchain. Gas costs will be cover by the platform, not the users.