Albeit quietly to the world at large, a new era of digital ownership has arrived and is rapidly evolving one day at a time. But when it comes to reaching the masses, motion picture is still the most powerful medium there is. Cinema and art house film are strong sectors to communicate the vision of the artist and now that has extended to the web3 ecosystem. If we look at the history of NFTS in 2015, those early projects had very low MB storage capacity, which required artists to mint solely jpegs and small files. Leading up to 2020 and today’s insights, those storage capacities to create NFTS have grown exponentially. As a result, it has opened up the doors to vast creativity—in some cases, blockchain films housed on platforms offering up to 750MB on the ethereum space. This has created an opportunity for NFT artists to be far more creative, not just in their style of digital art, but in the length of art they create.
Whether you are a filmmaker, video artist, blender artist or animator, you can now create long-form universes and mint them as NFTS. What we are seeing now is a revolution of the film game within the game. The revolution for blockchain films and long-form NFTS in 2022 will dominate the market the way that photography began to dominate the market in 2021.
It’s worth noting that many female filmmakers are currently in the spotlight for their works in the web3. Each unique in their art and storytelling, here are the notable ones to watch and bookmark for your next purchase.
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Jordan Bayne
Jordan Bayne is a hustling independent filmmaker, whose directing career began in 2006. She has forged her way working with some celebrated actors including Oscar winner Melissa Leo in her most recent NFT music video ‘Red Flags’ that was minted on the ethereum blockchain and sold successfully as a 1/1 piece of art. A film that tackles difficult relationship trauma and domestic abuse in an upfront manner.
Bayne tells Vogue: “NFT technology fundamentally changes the game for creators being able to have a sustainable living, which creates more opportunities for underrepresented filmmakers to have a shot and stay in the game.”
Jordan is also the founder of NFT Film Squad, a bubbling community of film3 enthusiasts that meet multiple times a week on Twitter spaces. According to Bayne, their mission is “to empower filmmakers, explore big ideas in film through ownership, utility, financing and distribution to catalyse the film3 culture forward.
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Uppercut
Led by several powerhouses, including Alisa Jacobs, the founder of Loop Studios and gaming and serial entrepreneur in tech for a decade, Uppercut Training Club is set to release their NFT Genesis collection with Jumpcut (a tech-first entertainment company that collaboratively creates narrative IP with communities) This will be an interactive storytelling and martial arts gaming experience, where members mint their 3D fighter to become a hero inside a collaborative story universe to train with real martial artists including women martial art expert Gemma Nguyen (Everything Everywhere All At Once).
Uppercut will also unleash an inclusive action metaverse of generative heroes on the blockchain with diverse faces, shapes, genders, and colours that reflect today’s world, rather than the narrowly defined superheroes of recent cinema. As the story progresses, scripted live-action videos featuring dynamic fight scenes will deliver a jolt of adrenaline and tasks for the week from some of Hollywood’s greatest action performers recognisable from several global blockbuster hits.
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PplPleasr
PplPleasr (a.k.a. Emily Yang) is a multidisciplinary artist based in NYC. Her work as a digital artist includes visual effects credits in major feature films including Batman v Superman, Wonder Woman and more. She has since brought long-form animation to Web3 through a new venture called Shibuya, which is, in Pplpleasr’s own words, “a Web 3 experiment where long-form content is free to watch but monetised on the blockchain to allow viewer participation on the creative process and also shared ownership.”
Shibuya will crowdfund production of long-form visual content – such as short films, movies or television series–by selling NFTs called “producer passes,” disrupting the traditional studio-driven methods that now dominate the industry.
The first Shibuya project will be an anime called “White Rabbit,” an interactive Web 3 series centred around a protagonist who goes down the crypto rabbit hole. It’s like “anime meets Black Mirror meets crypto,” said Pplpleasr. While the series will be free to watch, viewers who hold the producer passes will be able to stake the NFTs to vote for one of two alternate endings to the first episode. The option that receives the most votes will determine the main character’s plot line in the next episode.
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Julie Pacino
Julie Pacino’s NFT Film ‘I Live Here Now’ is about a young actress who is disillusioned with the conflicting demands on her body by Hollywood, finds out she is pregnant and runs away to the Madonna Inn. But, she soon becomes aware that the employees are watching her every move, and she finds that the hotel itself has an even darker interest in her body than Hollywood.
This NFT Film is being funded by two of her photography NFT projects, which will all be included in the feature. Holders of NFTs from the two projects will have special access to the filmmaking process, including being able to weigh in on creative decisions.
Julie is also launching an initiative to encourage female filmmakers to get into the NFT space. “I’m incredibly inspired by the convergence of film, photography, and NFTs and how it will provide access to capital and community for independent filmmakers,” said Pacino. “The NFT space has changed my life by connecting me with an incredible community and enabling me to grow my body of work. I want this project to help pave the way for democratising film financing and opening more doors for queer and female filmmakers to create and share their art.”
About David Bianchi
David Bianchi is a multi-hyphenate artist, actor, filmmaker, with over 100 professional credits in studio films and major network TV. His work in front of the camera has earned him membership in the prestigious Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. With NFTs, he blends together each of his passions into his very own art genre called Spinema™ (spoken word cinema). The poetic-cinematic experiences he crafts with Spinema™ have led him to become known as one of the most unique creators in the NFT space; David was nominated in 2022 as one of the 100 most influential creators in the world by NFTNow.
