Hollywood and Smart Contracts Empowering Artists through Technology Panel

story driven creatures from the camp thighs of ancient times to the magic of watching a movie on the big screen stories are more than just entertainment they serve as a compass for each generation movies have taken storytelling to a whole new level today tens of thousands of powerful World shaping stories aren't being told this power lies in the hands of the few instead of being split amongst the many what would happen if those untold stories were given a platform to be heard with Kino for the first time in cinema history to invest in upcoming films collect authentic props as seen on set and in the movies and experience walking the red carpet visiting set engaging with cast and crew and so much more and everything is tied together through a digital experience that acts as a window into the film creation process so you can see what happens behind Hollywood's closed doors from script to screen by empowering creators and connecting audiences we can tell the stories the world needs to hear be a part of the movies you'll love all right now we've blown your eardrums um hello everyone I'm Daryl Fannin and I'm awesome Worrell uh I'm gonna do a little bragging on Austin we'll introduce each other uh Austin uh background in economics and law uh specializing in Securities uh went to LSC the London School of Economics uh USC Gould School of Law his last charity token had a 500 million dollar market cap 500 000 holders and I will brag on Daryl my co-founder he's an executive producer and writer in Hollywood who knows way cooler people than I will ever uh get to know but he most recently produced a movie with Sylvester Stallone anybody heard of Sylvester Stallone uh he with his first show he wrote and created with Matt Damon anybody heard of Matt Damon uh they sold that show to Netflix and then he also wrote a Show with Jimmy Kimmel anybody know Jimmy Kimmel the the best of the jimmies um uh he sold that show to ABC Disney so an expert in the Hollywood space and we're here today to talk about Hollywood and smart contracts how we can Empower artists through blockchain technology which is something we're doing at Kino and there are other amazing platforms that are working in both the Hollywood and entertainment space generally yeah so I think the first thing that we kind of have to wrap our heads around is the problems that we're facing in the industry so I'm just going to share a little bit of my experience um my background I actually grew up in like a fundamentalist religious cult where I wasn't allowed to go to the movies or own a TV as a kid and um I realized I believe a bunch of crazy at 17 years old and I uh I went to my buddy and I was like look the Bible's full of like genocide and violence there's a greater moral Arc that's what movies are I want to watch some movies and so uh that week we rented the Matrix and my mind melted and I was completely just uh horrified as I watched the metaphor of my life playing out on Instagram yeah exactly and I uh I I definitely got um mind as I I was watching you know Neo kind of come out of this a system and I knew that I had to get out of this so to get out of that environment I joined the military at 17 years old having never been cursed at that was its own crazy experience um and after the military I I went to LA to kind of Chase my dream because movies had changed my life I wanted to get a degree in screenwriting I did that through the Army and then in 2014 went to LA uh where I got to uh you know write act and create my own show with Matt Damon it was the most epic experience and I'll never forget um after our pitch we were driving Matt's Tesla back from his house and uh he was giving us this big speech about how we have to manage our expectations it can take months and months to hear back um and we get a call from our agent uh that we had actually sold the show in the room they stopped him in the basement on the way out and uh they were like we're gonna call you in five minutes with an offer so Matt was super excited he was slapping my buddy Sean who was in the back seat I was driving trying not to cry because I was emotionally overwhelmed and we get back to his house and Matt Damon FaceTime my mom and dad to tell them that we sold the show which was the most epic thing and because of the whole religious thing my mom had never seen any of his movies so she just thought it was Daryl's friend Matt but my dad had just watched the Bourne trilogy and I washed his eyes just light up and he turned into a big kid and the only thing that he said was oh my God it's Jason Bourne and uh for context for everybody here Daryl how often do people sell or show to Netflix in the room uh it's very rare um I would say probably a fraction of a single percent of individuals uh sell a show in a room uh it's so difficult for creatives to actually get in to the industry uh there it's it's highly gate kept and I just was very fortunate that I found myself at the right place at the right time and in fact 98 of stories films that could be made in the industry don't get made so only about two percent actually get green lit and of that two percent only about a quarter ever get to see the screen so if you think about that a 240 billion dollar industry with all those different movies and films so much more can be made and yet because we have the big studios that have only limited capital resources they only have limited amount of Executives a green light certain Productions we don't see as much entertainment as we really could which means there's a lot of stories that are inspiring that are game changing that are world changing that we're not seeing because the industry is so centralized yeah and actually what used to happen is uh there were a lot of films that used to be made in that 20 million dollars or less category and these were impactful films um that that uh really kind of dealt with the issues and social issues like you know I think back to um uh you know get out as a great example of this small movie that just had such a big impact but because of the way the industry is set up now we're we're making more and more of these 300 million dollar films uh and fewer and fewer of the the smaller stories and I think there's a huge market and appetite not only from the creators like we're talking about creators who have created billion dollar franchises who have stories that they want to tell but they can't do it in this centralized system and that's what I find so exciting uh about blockchain and I actually I think you should talk a little bit about your experience with your web3 project and how you understood the value of community and and what that can do for us well I actually grew up wanting to be a film and TV actor I wanted to be the next Zac Efron um but he's doing that job just fine so um but a week before I went to college I got a call from my dad that changed my life he said Hey kid we've lost everything you're on your own and basically my parents business ran a foul some regulations and I remember sitting there thinking why the hell didn't the lawyers fix this so I decided I'm gonna go be a lawyer because I don't want everyone to be in a position where I can't fight against Injustice fast forward uh what 15 20 years later how old am I now I'm back combining my love for film and TV my love for Law and my love for technology to build a platform and a protocol to empower artists and creators and I was really inspired by the power of web3 through my last project it was called elongate it was on the binance smart chain if anybody has ever heard of BNB chain or if anybody's heard of elongate uh you can talk to me after about your experience we had this idea when Elon tweeted there's ever a scandal about me called elongate we thought that was funny so we said let's create a meme coin nobody will take it seriously if anybody buys it we'll donate everything to charity well 500 000 people took it seriously we reached over 500 million market cap and I was literally on calls with people like Kimball musk writing million dollar contracts to donate all of the proceeds to charity and I got to see firsthand the power of all of us here 25 000 people in this building right now which is amazing it's the power of community in the new internet in web 3 which is that we don't just go like and comment anymore online we can like comment and put our money behind things that we believe in now that's pretty difficult when it comes to the real world especially for me my background in law and my expertise in Securities regulation there's a lot of laws that govern how Finance can transfer from one hand to another especially when it comes to Capital markets funding startups projects films Etc and so the reality is we live in a world right now where we have brilliant ideas and Brilliant Tech being built but there's a lot of regulations that are lagging behind and so it requires a team of experts like we have it requires really passionate Builders passionate lawyers passionate Engineers to come together and say how can we build Tech that the world actually accepts and the world can actually use that ultimately lives up to the ideals of empowering creators and allowing them to bring the stories to the world that they need to hear which is something that I get super excited about I'm a total legal geek I love sitting down our CTO David is right here and thinking how can we combine smart contract technology which really is dumb contract technology like there there are no material terms in our contracts right now but how can we turn those into real contracts so that Daryl in the future doesn't have to go to Netflix to get Finance he can sit down press three buttons have a smart contract that wraps together his production company his individual film he can bring on all the actors all the writers the directors cinematographers and take it from creation all the way to the Big Screen through a trustless protocol and he didn't have to fight a million different people in Hollywood and backstab left and right because each person is trying to cut into each other's royalties that's the brilliant future that we see yeah so let's talk a little bit about nfts or as we call them smart contracted assets and the value propositions that they can bring into film and television I think uh you know for us we're using it for individuals to be able to invest in films to be able to collect to have that on-chain proof of authenticity and then also ticketing so we should talk a little bit about that yeah so I mean I think you're right film and TV is a big industry right there's a lot that goes on with entertainment uh let's take stranger things for example we actually did an Instagram live one of the stars of stranger things about a month ago we had 500 000 people show up because fans were just like I want to get a behind the scenes look at how this thing was made I want to be directly connected to one of the stars and just see what it was like I mean how many people here love film and TV raise your hand if you like film and TV and how many people here know actually how a film is made right like does anybody know what happens after it goes we got one after it goes from script when it goes we got two right I mean I'm a co-founder of a film company and I barely know that's Daryl's expertise right but there's a lot of amazing work there's a lot of amazing artists that we don't know about from wardrobe to makeup to lighting to all the different people that actually bring that thing I mean talk about post-production right there are so many crucial individuals that are making that art Beyond just the people that you see in front of the camera and so there's so much opportunity for us all to support all those artists just by meeting them where they're at and saying yo I'd love a peek into your life and I'm willing to pay for it and so something we do at Kino is we give you the opportunity to Simply you could just invest put your money into the production and you're gonna see profit when the film goes and gets sold to Netflix or hits the box office right that's a pretty simple vertical and and to be very clear we are a Securities compliant platform we are undergoing our final stages of registry with the SEC because that's how the world works and we can't just close our eyes and pretend like the SEC isn't going to chase us right there is a world in which we can be hybrid we can be web 3 but also compliant right that's one layer but the next and what I love has anybody seen American Psycho with Christian Bale anybody here okay we got a couple fans if this doesn't land I'll move to a different movie but anybody know the business card scene what I'm talking about when he's like look at that pale thin Watermark I would have loved to have owned that prop from that movie or Dark Knight The Mask the Batman War if you could have owned that prop right well we give you that opportunity through an nft or we call it a smart contracted asset you could buy the right to a prop before the movie's even made and we'll ship it to you after which means either you can keep it and now Yvonne chain authenticity or you could retrade that right as many times as you want before the movie actually gets made but that's not possible prior to blockchain because you don't have a good Ledger system that not only authenticates but also traces that chain of custody to wherever it goes so that's a cool use case for smart contracts and The Ledger in general and then the final like Daryl said I mean Coachella for example did a ticketing we can do that for the red carpet premieres we can do that for set visits has anybody been on a movie set before anybody here this is actually a fun question has anybody been background or an extra in a movie raise your hand all right we got some extras here uh movie sets are really cool they are like mini working factories of artistic genius and the ability to be on a set is really cool and if you could just on our platform any of the others that are in the entertainment industry buy a pass that is recorded on Shane to go visit set like who here would do that who here would think it would be pretty cool to go visit set all right all right so we got some future users good to know um and and what's great about that is not only is the ticketing system more secure via blockchain but also you can prove it you can brag your friends and they're like no you were not on set with Matt Damon you'd be like yeah look it's literally on chain right so those are some of the cool use cases that we're working with and other companies are as well that's what I forgot to do was get an on-chain photo with Matt Damon um you know I think the biggest thing for me and the reason why I'm so passionate about the web 3 space is because what I want to do with this is Empower artists and creatives and we've said that several times but I think a lot of people people don't realize that the royalty situation in Hollywood is really really really bad in fact um Tom Cruise in the last uh top gun Maverick he had to sue for 60 million dollars worth of royalties that he was owed and if they do that to Tom Cruise you can imagine what they do to smaller creators and I have friends of mine who have created show like a friend of mine created a franchise that brought in a billion dollars of Revenue that's a billion with a b and he only made a couple hundred thousand dollars and while you're like oh okay he made a couple hundred thousand dollars like you know that's not that bad but in La that doesn't get you anywhere um and I have another friend of mine who created one of the most watched shows on Netflix 480 million views in just a few months and yet he's struggling now to pay his rent uh and this is a problem because the people who are being creative and they're bringing their energy and their ideas in this is such an inefficient system that they're not seeing the value that they're bringing and so to me to give the ability for creatives to connect directly with fans like yourselves so that you can exchange value directly that's an exciting value prop of the blockchain that we can create communities around these creators and these films and we can we can literally give you these amazing epic experiences where you might if it's a road movie we might give you the car that was driven in the movie by the lead of the film and and that's uh Daryl says might very facetiously that might be some Alpha that is uh just slipped yeah I I realized I just said something I probably shouldn't have oh well but the idea is that you can engage with films in a brand new way that you've never seen before and we can create communities around this where you can actually interact with the writer actor director and have conversations uh around these films and uh one of the questions we always get is why blockchain on the artist side like what are you doing to actually help an artist I mean ultimately when you have somebody like I mean I think of like the cast of euphoria there was an article that came out that one of the stars of euphoria talked about how she got uh she became pregnant I think after the first season and she had to go maternity leave for a long period of time and couldn't work and she started to not be able to afford her own rent because she got a one-time payment before Euphoria one of the biggest shows on HBO Max and then that she couldn't work for basically a year afterwards so she had to live off her savings and everybody's like you're this big star why are you complaining but they don't understand that the cast of Friends still makes about a million dollars every year on the royalties from their deal way back in the 90s star is currently on most of the shows you see on Netflix get a one-time payment that sure looks pretty nice up front but when you realize that they have to keep chasing job after job and if you aren't Matt Damon you might not work every single year you might not get those big paychecks and you don't know where your next paycheck is coming from and then when you go below the line and your workers who are you know directors assistant director cinematographers grips makeup artists wardrobe artists you have this whole industry of folks that are putting so much time and effort into Productions and then they don't know where their next job is going to come from and so at Kino and other companies blockchain gives us the ability to record your right to backhand on chain and you no longer have to trust that your lawyer and your agent and your manager are all going to fight to make sure that you got that back end right oh and also that the big companies aren't playing a bunch of Hollywood accounting literally look it up there's a whole Wikipedia article they're not playing a game to hide the profits instead it's all transparently recorded on chain the payment Railways are there your wallet is connected the payments will go to you so when we sell it to Netflix for 10 million and you will one percent of that you're going to get your pay out immediately right like that's that is the beauty of a distributed Ledger that's transparent but the Ultimate Reality currently that we live in is we have to build to there and we have to work with all the systems that are in place we can't pretend like they don't still exist I can't believe our time is already up I literally I was like what um if you guys want to talk more about this we're going to be around like let's have great conversations uh you extras uh let's definitely talk um thank you so much I'm Daryl Fannin in the next about a month or two we are launching our first film uh I can't say who was in it yet uh we're not allowed to legally announce but one of the Stars has one of the biggest shows on NBC uh it's a two last name show I can't say anything else and then the other stars on one of the biggest shows on HBO Max right now we're very excited about this one um we'll be doing cool things like selling a behind the scenes pass which is an nft for about 20 bucks uh you'll get exclusive behind the scenes access we're gonna give away some of the props including the electric uh SUV that he drives across the country so think about being able to own an A-list Talent Stars car that he drove in the film you'll also be able to invest collect an experience if you'd like to learn more follow us on Instagram Kino makes movies Twitter Kino makes movies and democratizefilm.com thank you everybody uh and enjoy the recipe Denver thank you so much [Applause]