“Blockchain won’t let people who steal and distribute video get away with it.”

The resident Futurist at Paramount pictures, Ted Schilowitz works with the senior and technology teams at the studio, exploring emerging technologies including virtual and augmented reality. With a background in storytelling and technology, Ted is passionate about immersive experiences and how these can be successfully protected using the blockchain.

Hi Ted! Let’s kick-off by you telling me a bit about your background and how you got involved in this space?

So I grew up in central Florida, which was a place full of inspiring experiences that really defined me at a very young age. The influence of Disneyland Orlando, particular the environment of imagination and creationism, was felt throughout my upbringing and helped me to think differently and creatively. My first career as a children’s TV director naturally fit with this upbringing, and my love of storytelling. I worked in children’s TV for 20 years in and around the Florida scene.

Whilst I was really passionate about what I was doing, I began unwittingly moving more and more towards technology. In particular I was interested in tech’s ability to allow storytellers to convey their ideas, as well as effectively protect them from piracy.

Pivoting into this career direction led me to moving out to the west coast, where I did seven years working with an engineering firm helping build out technology surrounding desktop video.

Following this, I then went on to work in a few startup environments. One in particular was focused on a hard drive company that went on to become very popular in the shape of G-tech. G-tech is now one of the most recognized brands in the industry so I’m pretty proud of being part of the early team on that one!

From there I was then asked to be one of the first employee’s of a movie camera company that was being built called RED, so I was one of the group who helped bring that brand to life. Some of our key products are now used to film some of the world’s biggest movies, so I’m really happy with what we achieved. I retired from RED after seven great years.

It wasn’t long after this however, until my friends at 20th Century Fox approached me to be their resident futurist. The role was strange to me at first as it didn’t really have any definition of what it was! You kinda just had to go and figure it out.

With that role I started getting heavily involved in Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality and Augmented reality, which acted a little like a throwback to the beginnings of my career in the entertainment industry. Especially considering the theme park world, where I’d be looking at simulations to work out how we could improve those experiences and deliver them to the consumer.

After five years at Fox I then moved over to Paramount which is where I’ve been for the last year. Overall I’m having a really good time travelling around the world giving lots of presentations about technology and creativity.

How do you feel about how blockchain is being used right now and the opportunities within that?

Blockchain as a term has taken on a lot of tangents and angles which has caused some people to be unsure on what it really means! Most just see it as a buzzword, and that is somehow attached to some kinda math and decentralized economy etc. So more clarity to the public is definitely needed on that one.

Where the blockchain is of interest to me, particularly, is on looking for ways to secure content and to protect it from being pirated. With the ledger and technology you can track who is watching what and when, so you can protect it better. This will empower creators and producers with the ability to find better ways (with more economic efficacy) to distribute and deliver content.

So that’s my particular interest, it’s in the advanced math that we term and sometimes mis-term as just “the blockchain”, and how it can be used to protect content.

What initiatives are you most excited about in the space and why?

That’s a good question! It’s not really my day-to-day stock and trade to focus on the blockchain, however it has the potential to be a core component in the areas that I’m really interested in, which is technology as it relates to the storytelling.

Saying that, it’s the technological component of the blockchain that will have value in storytelling industries is what I’m excited about. This potential is still being defined so I think, more than anything, what I’m most interested in is not where it is now, but where it’s going.

What is this kind of particular potential new technology going to mean to people as they choose to absorb different kinds of entertainment in different ways? This new era that we’re heading towards will affect everything including how consumers choose to absorb content, and how they choose to have it delivered.


Why is bringing video and the blockchain together important; Why should people care?

So from my standpoint, as a storyteller, the idea of being able to protect your content is very critical right now.

Technology has been defeating the archaic ways of people protecting content now for many generations as they’re still not really working! People are torrenting things, they’re moving things around, they are stealing footage and presenting it in a way that is not ethical.

As far as I’m concerned pirating is theft.

This is people’s hard work and labour that they’re not creating as a charity, but as something they’re looking to make a living out of. Taking that away is effectively taking someone’s living, so anything that can allow content to be more protectable is a good thing from my standpoint.

Where do you see the space going and why are you personally excited to be involved in bringing blockchain and video together?

The idea of decentralizing the video space and giving more people the opportunity to participate within it is very exciting to me.

I like the idea that we can open up an industry to more companies and more individuals that want to participate. It’ll add a healthier amount of variety and innovation as far as I’m concerned.

The fact that the blockchain allows this, and in particular what VideoCoin is doing, is great for the industry so i’m quite enthused by where we’re headed. Even if this is in an early experimental and learning stage, with disruption you’ve got to start somewhere!


Why is now the right time for video and the blockchain to come together?

I don’t know if there was necessarily a wrong time for it to come together, however I think that we now have a potentially new world economy that’s being built on crypto (which of course then associated with the blockchain) so it gives our industry the room to experiment.

We have a whole swirl of different experiments around this new technology and its potential application in our sector. It was probably always a good time for this to come together because, as we all know, video is a multi-billion dollar industry.

It’s just a matter of who chooses to capitalize on it, or rather, who embraces the risk and reward knowing that there are going to be some mistakes along the way. I think it’s a case of, if you’re up for that challenge, great things are going to come from it.

So you mentioned earlier that one of the key plus points you see is decreasing piracy. If this decrease in piracy doesn’t happen soon how do you think it will affect the entertainment industry?

It’s affecting it every day, all day, constantly.

I don’t even think people have a sense of how much revenue is lost to people that are essentially taking content that someone else has paid for and then effectively stealing it.

I think if we can change that, just even a little bit, it will have massive upsides to creative entities that are already working on sometimes difficult margins.

With our industry, you have to spend a lot of money to make money. Whatsmore is that you have to take a lot of shots at finding a hit to get one. If X amount of percent of people are stealing your ‘hit’ after you finally make it, then you’re limiting the ability of creative people to create.

We want to help stem the tide of piracy.

Where do you see the future of video on the blockchain how will it disrupt various industries?

I think the idea of decentralization and viability for new companies to produce content is a big deal. The beauty of it is that a lot of stakeholders and companies will be the ones making it happen.

The ones that get it right should do very well! They’ll help their creative community, earn a good profit along the way, as well as help a lot of small to mid-size companies participate in an industry that was previously locking them out.


How do you see video and the blockchain coming together to help make the world a better place

Technology can be the instrument that helps humans do good things. So, if bringing video and the blockchain together decentralizes this industry so people who want to do good things have access to it, then I’m all for it.

One thing I think introducing the blockchain to an industry does is create better transparency. Traceable and trackable transactions, as opposed to the mystery of what some transactions are now, create trust and security within an industry, which can only be healthy for the sector.

When I think about it transparency is good for nearly all industries! You can see the corruption in today’s financial systems around the world, and a lot of it is because it’s hidden, a lot of it is because you don’t know really what’s going on. When things go bad, and those regulatory agencies are put in place to help “clean” those up, they tend to be corrupt themselves!

So the idea of bringing our sector in particular out of the shadows, and out of the protected secrecy of organisations that have their own hidden agendas, is really appealing to me.


Is there anything else you’ve been inspired by in the space or something interesting people might not know about the space that you could add?

I think what’s interesting that some people keep making the narrow assumption that blockchain = cryptocurrency, and that this is a limiting factor.

I think people don’t realise that the creation of this digital ledger allows for transparency, and allows for efficacy. It empowers the people with the knowledge of what’s really going on with things that are financial in nature, as well as things that are not necessarily financial in nature

People want to know what’s really going on with our political system, our food supply, the world’s oceans, the world economy etc.

The idea of using this technology so that if, for example, someone say illegally buys a weapon, you can know where they got it from. Thinking bigger here, you could track if someone is doing some elicit behavior with financial instruments that could potentially crash the market affecting millions.

One thing this brings into it is the issue of white collar vs blue collar crime, and the fact that it’s elitist in nature. Previously you could hide behind the shrouds of secrecy that these financial institutions deploy, and the ability to break that down and say you don’t get to hide anymore is what the blockchain should do.

Thinking in terms of video however, is that it won’t let people who steal and distribute video get away with it.

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