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Tokenizing Entertainment Financing with Pressman Films
Recorded: Sept. 11, 2024 Duration: 1:02:42Space Recording
Full Transcription
Welcome in, everybody. Excited to get started with our spaces today. We just got the room open, so we're going to be kicking things off here in a few minutes.
Going to get our speakers up here and get things started here.
So thanks for coming in right on time, and we're going to get our conversation started here in a minute or two.
Excited to talk about tokenizing, entertainment financing, and all things that entails.
So we're excited to have Dom and Morgan from our side and Sam Pressman from Pressman Film coming up.
So let's get the speakers up here. We can see if the audio works well. Morgan, how are you doing?
I'm good. Can you hear me, guys?
Yep. Sounds great. Thanks for jumping on. Dominic, how are you?
I'm good. Doing good. Good morning. Good morning.
All right. We're going to get Sam up here in a second, and then, yeah, we'll get our conversation started.
Thanks, everybody, for joining in on our next space today.
Really exciting topic. We have something really new and unique that I think it's going to be awesome to hear about how it all works.
So we're going to get started here as soon as we get Sam on in, and then we'll jump in.
We'll probably take some questions at the end.
So if you do have questions that pop up throughout the conversation, feel free to request up towards the end as we call it out if you have any questions for our guests here.
But first, we'll jump into a little Q&A and kind of talk about film financing and what Pressman, Republican, Avalanche are doing to kind of change the whole structure of tokenizing cultural assets.
So there's some awesome things that we're going to jump into, and it looks like we're pulling them up here.
So, all right. I think we got it working here. Sam, is that you on the Pressman account? Oh, it dropped off.
Hey, hey. Yeah. Can you hear me all right?
Yep. It sounds great. So thanks for jumping on.
And I know we got folks that are going to be kind of trickling in the room as we go, but we can just start things off with a little bit of introduction just to get to know the folks that are up here speaking.
So, Sam, we'll start with you. We want to just give a little background and who you are and a little bit about Pressman.
Pleasure to be here. Thanks, everyone, for joining.
My name's Sam Pressman, CEO of Pressman Film.
The company was founded in the late 1960s by my father, Edward R. Pressman.
Ed stood for everything that I think is best about the film industry.
As a producer, he really put the movies first.
He made movies like American Psycho, Wall Street.
Arnold Schwarzenegger credits him with launching his career with Conan the Barbarian.
He was about international film.
He was about blockbuster movies.
He was about indie films that broke directors like Oliver Stone, Jason Reitman, Catherine Bigelow.
I mean, it just boggles my mind what he accomplished.
And I got to learn from him and live within the industry and within the dream of movies that he established.
And so, to me, film has always been about expanding realities, whether that's for the audience or the collaborative teamwork that is done in making a movie.
Early in my career, I did a lot of behind-the-scenes work, worked for Werner Herzog on the Nicolas Cage Bad Lieutenant in New Orleans, worked for Matt Brown on the Dev Patel film The Man Who Knew Infinity.
And in this, I believe there's something almost mythical and mystical.
My father would refer to movie theaters as the cathedrals of our time.
And to me, expanding the way that audiences connect to the films we watch as we move into the forward, into the future, that distance is going to become closer and closer.
And so, we've just recently launched a first-of-its-kind development slate raise on chain with Republic.com.
If you go to Republic.com backslash Pressman, or as of yesterday, we launched a separate offering which is the same but is able to receive crypto USB-C investments, that's Republic.com backslash Pressman-Reg-D.
And I'm just saying that if anyone hasn't taken a look at the website, you can follow along and we can talk through it.
But, yeah, I think the beauty of this is that we can welcome anyone who wants to put $200 to $1 million in, and they're going to participate in the revenue, and they're going to participate in the process of making movies.
And, again, really excited to connect with Republic and Avalanche's community.
Thanks for being here.
Happy to talk more.
Amazing.
Oh, man, it's such a treat to hear the background and hear all the stuff that you've been working on, and excited to see how this technology can help move it forward.
So, let's jump into the conversation.
Let's do a quick intro.
Dominic, you want to say hello?
Yeah.
How's everyone going?
My name is Dominic Carbonaro.
I've been at Avalanche for a little over two years now, which is kind of crazy to even say.
You know, I started here in June of 2022, I believe.
That was the exact timeline.
It's funny because I, you know, ever since I had started here, me and Morgan had always kind of talked about tokenizing some of these assets.
I was working a little bit more on the culture side with crypto-native projects, and obviously she was the tokenization queen.
So, these have always been kind of early conversations around, you know, how do we tokenize some of these, like, more traditional assets, but are maybe more crypto-relevant and crypto-native in a way.
And so, I think that we, you know, we really think this is a good partnership of both.
Excited to see this one, first of this one, go to market and, you know, kind of start this narrative around, you know, financing films on chain.
Morgan, do you want to take a crack at it too?
I feel like Sam has such a voice for radio.
I feel like I could just listen to him talk like an hour.
But, yeah, thank you for joining us, Sam.
And, Tom, it's so great to be doing Spaces with you.
I feel like we don't do this enough.
But just like Dom mentioned, I'm Morgan Krupetsky.
I lead institutional and capital markets ecosystem growth for Ava Labs.
In my role, I really partner with kind of the whole spectrum of companies from startups all the way through to large banks and asset managers as they build different products and services on Avalanche.
And notably, in this case, as they tokenize assets on Avalanche.
And like Dom mentioned, really excited to kind of dig into what Sam's doing with Republic because I think, you know, to Dom's point, this really represents kind of an intersection of a lot of the stuff that I've been focused on, but a lot of the stuff that Dom has as well.
So the things that we do from a vertical standpoint here, you know, in a lot of ways are definitely not mutually exclusive.
A lot of people think like, oh, stodgy institutions has nothing to do with DeFi, has nothing to do with cultural assets.
But I kind of look at it as like a Venn diagram where there are definitely places where a lot of these things overlap.
So really excited to be taking this forward.
And I would be remiss if I didn't throw a disclaimer in there to say none of this is financial advice.
Please do your own research.
We won't be talking about price or yield or anything like that.
If you guys do want to learn more, I highly encourage you to check out the Republic page where the Pressman Rays is listed, as well as kind of the broader film roadmap from a Republic standpoint.
Sorry, I had to throw that in there.
But, Kyle, if you want, we're happy to kind of get started and dig in if that works for you, unless there's any other housekeeping that you had.
No, no, you took care of all of it.
So jump right in.
Cool.
And Dom, obviously, feel free to jump in here.
But, Sam, I want to like, let's just like start and like lay the groundwork.
Because I think for a lot of us in like the crypto native space, we're just like so far down our rabbit hole of rabbit holes.
Let's like, let's peek out of the rabbit hole and just even just start talking about film.
Really love to get a sense from you.
Like, what does it mean to be an independent film company?
I certainly, but when we started this process, I didn't know what the difference was.
I know you mentioned some of the awesome films that Pressman Film has worked on.
But what does it really mean to be an independent company?
And what does that mean from just like a fundraising perspective?
And where does that fit in?
Morgan, you've got an amazing voice for radio.
I want you on like my 99.9 morning drive radio.
So, let's start with that Pressman Film is doing a development raise and defined development.
Development is the early stage of a film's evolution, right?
You're principally getting a screenwriter to write a script, which is your blueprint that everything builds off of.
So, you're buying or optioning a book, an article.
Pressman Film was one of the first companies to adapt comic books to movies with Conan the Barbarian and The Crow.
Pressman Film was one of the first to adapt video games to movies with The Street Fighter starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue in the mid-90s.
So, you take IP, you develop that with a script, and then with that script, you can budget, build a schedule, bring on a casting director to bring the actors on to the film, bring the director on to oversee the work.
And that becomes what we call a package.
And as an independent producer, you have the freedom of the entire marketplace.
So, you can set that movie up with international partners.
You can set that movie up with a streamer or a studio.
But you're independent, which truly means that you can work with anyone.
So, it's incumbent upon that independent producer to do all the work creatively in the trenches with the artists, with the writers, and then also with the financiers.
So, having the capital to develop those projects, which is what this republic raise is accelerating, allows us to go back through Pressman's historical library, the films my father made independently, with rights that return to our company,
and retain control of those with the investors, as opposed to sort of selling the land, selling the property away for that $200,000 injection that gets the project started.
Does that read for everyone?
If there are any questions, you know, happy.
It reads for me.
I just want to dig in a little bit more just to understand also in that context, like, can you maybe take a step back also and just, like, talk a little bit more about, like, the state of the film industry today?
What's working?
What do you feel like is, well, I don't want to say broken, but either broken or needs, you feel like, needs, like, significant improvement?
And obviously, that's tied into potentially why you guys decided to kind of go down this path.
But for those of us who aren't in it day to day, we'd just love to get an understanding of, like, what is the state of the industry today, and what do you feel like really needs to be improved?
Well, we're constantly – film is a technology, right?
The motion picture is a technology.
And the way we receive and consume and watch whatever is made as a motion picture has gone through many states of transition.
And we're in a massive phase shift in the industry that, you know, when you look at – there was a writer's strike and an actor's strike last year.
And a lot of that had to do with the lack of transparency on the part of streamers, right?
The difference between a revenue model where you're going to the theaters and there's clear accountability on behalf of theaters.
By the way, 60 years ago, there was no accountability on behalf of the streamers.
They didn't – sorry, on behalf of the theaters and exhibitors, they didn't have to say publicly how much the movies were making.
The same is true with the Nielsen ratings.
TV –
I didn't know that.
That's interesting.
Yeah, TV was not public.
And part of what the strike was about was saying how many people are actually watching the Netflix show you watch?
How many people are watching the Apple show you watch?
And as we have more transparency, the independent producer or the actor is entitled to the success of what they create.
And what is clear to me is that the way that audiences connect to motion pictures – and let's include Twitter – sorry, Instagram or TikTok – inside of the ecosystem of motion pictures, you have creators that are far more directly related to the audience that consumes their content.
And you look at a company like A24 or Neon or Blumhouse, and they've successfully created a brand where their fans know what their brand stands for, and they know that they're going to show up to support the new A24 launch.
And in my mind, what we want to do in this next step and why having a community that's truly invested in the films we make is so exciting is because you're suddenly amplifying that fandom.
Anybody who's invested is clearly going to be that much more excited about what we're doing and share it with their community.
When Kickstarter came in, you know, suddenly the distributors and the people who are responsible for getting eyeballs on a particular film got very excited because suddenly you had 1,000, 10,000 people that were evangelists for the film that was coming out.
And ultimately, you know, that is a game changer and that if we look into the future, there's massive issues with equitability and transparency on behalf of the studios.
Oftentimes, they don't account accurately to the people who've invested in the film and what blockchain allows us to do.
And part of why this raise is so groundbreaking is that the smart contracts allow on a very granular level the scaling of the number of people who are accounted to because it's just very simple.
Every investor has the same terms and every investor gets their share of the money that comes in on each produced film so that we don't have to deal with this Hollywood accounting system where we don't know where is the money going.
It's just money comes in and money goes out to each investor.
I really like what you said also in terms of like the people associate certain films with A24.
I think it's really cool that you're thinking about it this way because, I mean, I think a lot of people obviously know and are familiar with a lot of the movies from Pressman Film, but they don't necessarily know that it's a Pressman Film, right?
And so I think in this world in Web3, we throw around the term community like a lot, but this is really a way for you to start cultivating a brand and a true community, I think, among like the next generation of potential like investors or viewers or audience members.
So I really like how you put it that way.
Yeah, I want to add to that real quick, Morgan.
It's funny you say that because if you remember, we met a few weeks ago, all of us, it was the weekend before The Crow came out.
And, you know, he's like, go watch The Crow.
And I was like, all right.
So I went and watched it with my wife and I saw the big Pressman intro and I was like, oh, I'm on their team.
But I'd never, ever thought of it that way before.
But it was kind of like the first time being in the theaters and like the big Pressman logo came up.
And then so it's funny you say that because it was like the first time I actually had ever felt like that.
Like you never noticed it, but like everyone knows these movies.
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
We like to say, you know, everyone knows Pressman's films, but not many people know Pressman Film.
And yeah, that's a good way of putting it.
I have a question, too, about kind of the layers of, I guess, financing, if we want to call it that.
And maybe just walking us through what that looks like from start to finish.
And so I know we touched on it briefly at the beginning around what this financing goes towards, getting a casting director, getting the cast, getting the director.
Kind of like the, it almost seems like the initial like startup boot cost.
But can you walk us through like what that whole process looks like in terms of financing from start to actual like movies inside the theater?
Yeah.
And I think it is kind of like you're seeding startups, right?
Like each movie is its own startup.
You're building the management team.
You're building the product.
And then you go to market to finance the full production, right?
So imagine a film can cost anywhere from $100,000 to $1,000,000 to develop.
It can go even higher.
It could go less if you don't work with, you know, WGA Guild writers.
But the order of magnitude of cost is much higher for production, right?
You could spend $100,000 on development and make the movie for a million and a half.
Or you could spend $250,000 on development, i.e. getting the rights, getting the script, getting the team assembled.
And then the movie could cost $10 million or it could cost $50 million, right?
The costs of production are significantly higher.
And with independent film, you're cobbling together equity, which is the pool that owns the film in its lifetime.
And you're cobbling together state subsidies, right?
If you film in New York State, you're getting 30% back on all qualified spend in the state.
If you make a film in Malta, you're getting 50% on every qualified dollar you spend in Malta.
And then an independent, traditional independent international model, which my father was a pioneer in, you'd sell, say, France, Germany, and Italy for 40% of your budget.
Then, say, you're getting 30% from the tax credit.
Now you're at 70% of your budget covered.
And then you go to equity for that last 30%.
And they are owning all of the world except for France, Germany, and Italy in that circumstance.
And you take that to a film festival.
I'm in Toronto for the Toronto International Film Festival.
About 50% of the movies here came in with their studio or their streamer.
And the other 50% are here looking to sell their movie to get back that money and to expand the channels where the film will be sold.
Obviously, home video has changed fundamentally from VHS and DVD to now primarily, you know, PVOD and SVOD, premium VOD, where you're paying $10 to $25 to rent or buy a film.
Or your subscription VOD, where they're paying you a fee for a limited time period of licensing that movie on Netflix or Amazon Prime, what have you.
What ultimately is constructive or additive in this raise, we have very preferential terms to the investors because genuinely my goal is to succeed for the investor and for ourselves.
And if you check out the website, it's not bullshit when we say when we make money, you make money, which is to say at every point where Pressman Film is taking a fee, we're sharing that with our investors.
Upon principal production, when the camera starts rolling, the investor gets back their money plus a 20% premium.
Say you spent $200,000 on a script and developing an IP, the fund immediately gets $240,000 back.
Say we got a million dollar producer fee, Pressman Film on that movie, we're giving 15% of that back to the investors.
Say there's a rights fee, we're giving 15% of that to the investor.
So those are revenues of the fund that go towards through production are paid back.
And then there's the long-term revenue stream, what we call the waterfall or the net profits, which is once the movie has made back its costs, we're actually giving 100% of the development raise investment.
Sorry, we're giving 100% of Pressman Films net profits until the fund is repaid with 108% preferred return.
So it's a traditional financial structure that is built so that when we make movies, all of you make money.
And the goal is to build something that downstream when we're raising a massive production number where we're looking for 50 or 100 million, you know, everybody says, well, damn, you delivered for us on your first attempt.
You're willing to break ground and go into this space where no one else has at this point.
Let's keep going.
Let's make more movies together.
I'm learning a lot of terms between P-VOD and S-VOD, so I need to start like a vocabulary, a film vocabulary.
But you touched on Sam and obviously we don't want to get into like, you know, return terms and all that stuff in terms of the raise itself.
But I feel like maybe just like take a step back, you know, film is obviously known to be like a very risky like investment.
Obviously, it's not equatable to like T-bills.
And it's not something that somebody puts their necessarily their savings into.
But if you could maybe just like also just talk to us about like in the traditional film fundraising process, who are the types of investors that you guys usually do talk to?
Like it's high net worth individuals, it's institutions.
Like what does that traditionally look like?
And what is their motivation that they that they like they feel like they're like expert film pickers and they're going to make an outsized return that they want to be part of like a cultural movement?
Like talk.
Can you just talk to us a little bit about like what is like the standard profile?
And then obviously this raise allows, you know, pretty much anyone globally to kind of join in on that.
But I would just be curious to hear your take on who traditionally is looking at film as an investment.
Yeah, well, development investment, as I was given like a little bit of framework on, is traditionally a lower capital investment.
So most often you're looking at high net worth individuals who want to get their feet wet, who want to see how a movie is built from the ground floor up.
You know, there are large investment funds that are dedicated to development.
They're generally trying to aggregate IP, build a library like what Pressman is already sitting on.
So we tend not to want to partner with that type of money.
We like to partner with individuals or small consortiums of people who have that disposable income to invest.
And that, you know, when I kind of chuckle when you say, you know, learning about the terms of PVOD and SVOD, because that demystification of film and all of these layers of movies, I think.
We all are shaped by movies, you know, are the way we see the world, the way we fall in love, the way we dream is like deeply inspired by the movies that we share globally and culturally.
And yet the access, the barrier to enter movies has traditionally been one that has really, really high gates and many gatekeepers that don't necessarily want the general public to understand how movies are made or just don't want to take the time.
And that's what differentiates this raise saying, sure, with $200, you can be a part of this community, share in the revenues, but importantly, like watch over time how these movies come to the screen and, you know, watch that movie in the theater and know that you had a part in bringing it to life.
There's no, you know, there's no desire to not share.
The whole intention is to bring a community in and allow an audience to feel an ownership in what they're watching.
And I think that trend is going to just continue to expand as, you know, you think about data dictating so much of how the algorithmic filmmaking is going on at the big streamer level.
But you have a company like Sony buying the Alamo Draft House, which is a movie chain where they serve great food, and Sony as a studio buying that is because they want to have access to the data of who is going to the movies.
Here we're going a step further and we're saying the community is going to get to have insight into what is made.
And that's actually valuable to us.
We're able to ask that community, hey, here are 10 different movies.
What are your thoughts on this?
You know, we're very much going to produce the films.
It's going to be myself and our management team and our executive team that is executing.
And that won't change, but we'll have this built-in community unlike any film company in the past.
Sam, I want to transition here to some questions around IP.
I know it briefly got brought up.
And I got a chance to listen to this, you know, when we started this process, I kind of wanted to just consume a little more content around, you know, what's going on in the current film industry.
And I saw this really great interview with Vince Vaughn where he was talking about how, you know, now every movie has to be some pre-existing IP, right?
He was like, you know, we all grew up playing Battleship on a game, on a board game.
And now it's this movie where these giant robots are fighting in the ocean because, you know, something had to be, you have to make a movie and it has to have pre-existing IP.
And I know this, you know, this film slate has, is going to be pulling from six IPs.
It says, you know, three of them being pre-existing catalogs and three new IPs.
Could you speak on that a little bit around what those are, maybe some of the decision-making for that and just, yeah, kind of add some color to that, to that section?
Sam, you have to press the unmute button.
Oh, yeah, I think you're muted.
Thanks, Boomer.
I was getting nervous there.
I was like, oh, did I ask that question?
No, no, no.
He's like, no, I don't want to talk about it.
No, first to clarify, you can check out that model, which is sort of the framework and a projection of how we would use the proceeds of a million and a half dollar raise.
We're six days into the raise.
We just passed 520,000.
We have 120 investors in.
500,000 was the threshold.
If we didn't make it to 500,000, we wouldn't be able to receive the money at the end of the raise.
We've still got 70 plus days to go with the raise.
So I felt really chuffed when we got an investor in six-figure investor from completely outside of our network two days ago, three days ago,
was just signified, you know, there is an appetite and a hunger from a larger community to be a part of this.
And yes, we have our traditional network.
We could have raised this, you know, in-house, but the desire was let's bring a community.
Let's see if people outside of the traditional streams of capital take an interest.
So, sorry for my tangential sort of flow of thought, but returning to the point of your question,
that million and a half dollars, we cap out at five million, but we can take in,
if we raise a million and a half, we modeled out making six, developing six films with that million and a half,
which is our target goal. Anything over that is gravy. If it ended, you know, tomorrow and we only had 520,000,
maybe we only make two movies, right? If you have less money to work with, you can develop less property.
Um, if you have more, you can develop more. So with a million and a half, we model making six films,
three of which are from the catalog, three of which are from the library.
Those would be like reimaginings or remakes. And then three of them would be new scripts, new IP,
get finding an amazing article or buying a bestselling book, um, partnering with the video game company and,
and, and, and making a movie based on a video game, which by the way, last year, like that was,
I think six of the top 10 grossing box office films were based on video games. Um,
we have not yet defined, uh, which of our library titles and which of the new titles, uh, will be part of
the slate. That's partly, um, as a trade secret and partly out of respect to this being an SEC regulated,
um, development endeavor, right? The, what I think is really exciting about this is that Republic is
completely SEC compliant. Um, this is like a truly above board, uh, endeavor. We will be reporting
to our investors regularly and there is a secondary market liquidity, which is enabled by this being,
you know, on blockchain rails. Um, there are a few aspects and maybe I'm jumping to kind of the next
topics, but about how blockchain is, is functioning in this raise. But the base of the answer is we're
strengthened by the legacy of our company and we're strengthened by what that legacy actually
produced, which is IP that we're able to work from. Um, and the most important thing when we
approach that is, you know, uh, there was a huge TV show recently, uh, presumed innocent that David E.
Kelly wrote. Um, that was a movie that was like kind of popular, but there was a, another way into the
material and thinking about why you're making what you're making and actually building a, a group of
filmmakers. I'll give you an example of a movie. Um, again, this may be included in the slate. It may not
be. I personally am very interested in having it be part of the slate because again, I, I want us to
succeed as a company and in doing so make our investors happy. Um, my father made a movie early
in his career called old boyfriends. Uh, it was written by Paul Schrader kind of right at the time
he wrote taxi driver. Um, uh, Paul Schrader's an absolute legend. Uh, it was directed by Joan
Tewksbury. It was one of four movies distributed by a major studio in the 1970s directed by a woman
four movies in the entire decade. Uh, it starred John Belushi, uh, Talia Shire, uh, from Rocky fame.
I saw Megalopolis, the new Coppola movie last night and saw her. It was nice to see her face.
Uh, Keith Carradine, Buck Henry, an original writer and, uh, member of Saturday night live.
And it it's telling the story of Talia Shire, who's going through a divorce and a mental breakdown,
going to all the boyfriends throughout her life and just eviscerating them. She goes to John Belushi,
seduces him and then leaves him, uh, without his clothes on and drives away from the lookout point
where they made out in high school. And he embarrassed her point point is that's a movie
that's kind of a deep cut. And it, I feel like I want to see this movie. You're going to love it.
No, it's like, it's, it's like, it's just so ripe to be remade. And it's like, who do we work with on
it? That, that, that is the fun of development. And, um, you know, we'll, we'll talk more about it.
Sam, let's, so I know you mentioned or alluded to, you know, the, these stakes, and this goes back to
also what you said. So I want to kind of take this a little forward. Um, you know, we always talk
about when we talk about these raises, at some point there may be a secondary marketplace. Um,
these shares, whether they're this film or other things that are being tokenized, and frankly,
not just on Avalanche, but just in this, in this kind of on-chain ecosystem writ large,
they may or may not be open to secondary market trading. Um, and I think just like my personal
opinion is, you know, you need, you, you need a reason, right. For these things to, to trade.
Otherwise, like it's just going to be like a one-sided market and that's not particularly
interesting. But as, as, as I, at least as, as I've been talking to you and we've seen kind of
in the, in the PR and supporting materials, it's not, as I understand it, it's not just going to be
like a one and done, i.e. like, you're not just like launching this raise, getting investments,
and then like going away and then coming back in three years and like updating people, right? Like,
as I understand it, and we'd love to hear more from you, like, you're really going to be taking
people along the journey in terms of like the development slate on these various projects.
And, and I think it was mentioned earlier with different perks and, and potentially like pulling
the community about different things that they want to see. Talk to us a little bit more about like,
how do you, how do you plan to engage with the community? What are the additional like benefits
or perks that people can realize? Um, what is that kind of continuity, uh, and relationship
going to look like? I don't know if Sam's speaking or if I can't hear, is it just me?
I just hear a police siren. I think they're going to got him.
Oh, his, uh, he dropped, his mic dropped off, so I just added it back up.
Uh, okay.
Sam like really didn't want to answer my question.
No, no, I just, I'm, I'm, I'm, uh, uh, no, my, my, my machine, it's the AI. Um,
Did you hear my question or do you want me to repeat it?
I, I think I got most of it. Give me the, give me the, like.
Yeah. Just, just want to know.
Are we trying to get secondary market or are we talking about?
Well, I think before even people get to the option to potentially trade on a secondary market,
like, I think it would, I think your plan and correct me if I'm wrong, but like your plan
isn't just to do like an investment and go away for like three years and then come back
and be like, Oh, we made these things. The plan is to kind of engage the community kind
of along the way. There's different perks and benefits that various investors can gain.
Like talk to us a little bit about like how you plan to kind of continue and grow that
relationship directly with the community.
Um, I'm just going on, I'm going on the Republic website so that people can take a look, um,
about two thirds of the way down republic.com backslash pressman, uh, is sort of a, a chart
of perks, um, that, that ascends, um, $200 being the minimum investment, we are really taking
you on a journey with us as an investor, right? You're, you're going to be included in regular
updates, whether that be quarterly or every four months, um, which overview all of the films
and all of the progress that's going on, that fact that it's not a single film where there's
kind of just one chart where like there are certain announcement, Oh, the director comes
on. Okay. We started filming. All right, here we sold it here. It releases, right? That's
just, there's one sort of singular graph of interest and milestones. The fact that it's a development
slate gives investors, uh, an insight into both multiple genres of films, right? We could make,
uh, a thriller, an action comedy and a rom-com if we were doing three films. And those are going to have
a radically different fan base for each of those films. Um, we will have on a base level,
a community forum where all community members can communicate with each other and, and share ideas.
Um, and then we'll have sort of public ask me anythings where myself and our team and, um,
filmmakers we're working with will do kind of Q and A's with the community virtually. Uh, and then as the
investment perks go up, you're suddenly saying like these super, uh, exclusive experiences like
walking the red carpet or visiting set or sharing dinner with our board or our filmmakers, um, become
things that we're like actively inviting the community into. Uh, so, you know, perks and revenue
share are a piece of the equation, but bigger than that, you know, we had an awesome event last week
here in Toronto to launch this raise. We rented out a theater. We showed, um, a number of films from
these amazing filmmakers called shy kids. They made the first movie, um, narrative film with Sora,
open AI's, um, text to video technology. We're making their first feature. You know, we, we could talk
for hours about what we're thinking about in, in terms of the evolution of technology in film, um,
as it relates to AR XR AI immersive experience. But, you know, we had this great party and then we had a
screening, um, last month we, we did an awesome thing in Los Angeles with, with a private screening.
Uh, we're making some really cool merch these days, uh, only intending to do more of that.
And we want to like make all these awesome things happen with people, right? The movies are given
their value from the engagement of audiences without the fans. You know, anytime anyone wins an Academy
Award or, you know, goes up on stage to, to thank the Academy there, the, the bigger thing is thank you
to the audience for taking these movies into their heart and into their minds and making it part of
their lives. So we, we genuinely believe that the strength of this raise is including and giving more
access and more visibility, um, to the touch points of film, to those who join the community.
Awesome. And Sam, I'm going to, I'm going to do my, uh, my best Matthew McConaughey here. If
sometimes you got to go backwards to go forwards or whatever that funny meme is, but
earlier I heard you. All right. All right. All right. All right. Right. The UT looks good this
year. I'm sure he's excited. Um, earlier I heard you mention, um, you know, uh, comments around
transparency around financing. And one question I always ask Morgan and I ask my team is, uh, like
why blockchain? Right. And a lot of the times we're, we're working with so many creative people
and like people always want to do interesting things. And we always have to ask that question,
right? Like why blockchain? Um, and so I guess my question here is like, why blockchain for film
financing? I know I heard you kind of briefly touch on some transparency around financing. So we could
maybe like talk about how blockchain helps with that. Um, or if you have any other things you want
to mention, um, around like why blockchain for financing films is, is kind of the next wave.
I think that would be a really great kind of talking point here.
Well, let's, let's talk about like near term, immediate, why Republic, how we're doing this raise.
And then let's also kind of expand into the bigger picture. And, uh, I've been working with, um, an
amazing film producer and also just thought leader and, and actual, you know, pioneer in the web three
space, Kyle Kaminsky. Um, Kyle did a part, a project called, uh, keepers of the inn, um, with Julie Pacino.
Um, it's the first film that was financed entirely, uh, by NFTs. Um, so in that circumstance,
investors were, were not necessarily taking a revenue position on the film that, that they're
a part of, they were purely involved in the community. Um, that movie is called, I live here
now it's in the final stages of post-production. Um, but what Kyle and I kept talking about was
a more equitable structure for production. And now again, I'm, I'm doing this in reverse,
talking about the big picture and the goal here, but the more that film financing can be brought on
chain, the more equitable, assuming the smart contracts are, are written in such a way to
benefit the whole crew and cast. Um, we could have a, a, a film very soon that's financed entirely on
chain and in so doing dictate the terms of engagement so that everybody participates in
the success of a film because a movie's value outstrips the way that the develop, that the
distributors are repaying these people, right? Like if we, we spoke for a moment about the secondary
value of, of this raise, right? The principal revenue stream that is coming in for the Pressman
development slate, which is paid out to all the investors could actually have more value than just
the money coming in. If in the secondary market, the crypto community says like, damn, no, I want to be
a part of that. I want to have access to that community. I want to have that token in my wallet
to say like, I was here at the beginning when this movement started, um, on, on the immediate,
market, you've got the way that Republic, uh, is on blockchain rails, which is to say, um,
in the background of everyone who signs up, you're, you have to create a wallet. Um, and in creating that
wallet, you have your specific share, say you invest a hundred thousand and the total raise is
2 million. Then you've got, what is that? 5%. I'm not really a mathematician. Uh, you've got 5% of
every dollar that comes back. So when a hundred dollars comes in, you're getting $5 to start paying
back your investment. Um,
Sam, I also liked how in that you, you, and you mentioned this earlier, like the whole idea and
kind of going back to what Dom was saying about transparency there, it's really a concept of money
and money out, right? Like there's no, like you kind of leveraging a combination. We always say
this like of smart contracts, blockchain and tokenization. Um, you can really kind of
automate and, and really upgrade legacy ways of working and legacy infrastructure. And so what do
you, do you guys always say, like improving Hollywood accounting? Like there is a very clear structure
that you guys have created that you've standardized that you can now, and I hate this word,
but fractionalized, but right. Like let's cutting it, cut, cut it up into standard pieces to be able
to kind of be able to take on a greater number of investors. So I always thought like, you know,
I think this concept like is very applicable to like everything that I do day to day, which is so much less
fun than this, but it's, it's, it's equally applicable to, to this world, especially as I understand it,
film financing is Uber kind of non-standardized. You guys are almost making a way to, to standardize
it and therefore be able to take on a greater number of, you know, of investors. So I think,
I guess I think those things kind of go hand in hand.
Yeah, absolutely. Like blockchain is in the background, but it is necessary for what we're
doing, right? Like you're from the moment you sign up, you're on chain creating a wallet. And to the
moment that you're being dispersed revenues and payments, it's all facilitated, all facilitated
on chain and avalanche, you know, being fast and expensive and customizable is like, you know,
amazing. Right. I think everyone here probably totally understands what avalanche is all about,
but you have an ecosystem that's really about high quality tokenized assets instead of just kind of
highly speculative and, and sort of, um, carnivorous to the investor. You want to cultivate a community
around assets that truly have value in this world. Um, and I think that's like,
I think that's this new generation or new era in blockchain, um, that you're trying to establish and,
and, and, and help the macro community really love this, um, whole revolution. And, and when I think about
film, it's just like, so perfectly built for a blockchain because everyone talks about community,
but here we are, movies are based in community. They're made in community and they create community
in the audiences that watch them. Um, so when I think about creating an asset on chain that is
tradable publicly and also has a lifelong revenue, right? Like a movie continues in success to have money
come in, right? You think about five years later, you're, you, you sold it to Netflix on a five-year term
after five years, that movie is sellable again. There you take it to, uh, Apple and they pay another
200,000. That's $200,000 five years later that continues to be paid out in perpetuity
to all the token holders. So it's not just to like, here's some money now it's a, let's see the value of
this endeavor increase year over year. Um, and, uh, to me for all these reasons, film and blockchain feel
so good together. Sam, we're going to have to keep having you back to get community updates.
Oh, that's a hundred percent. Like maybe able to get to be on these movies and to watch my father
make these hundred movies. It's like the privilege of my life. Like, that's why it's just so awesome.
I want other people. I want the public to have access to that. I want us to be able to share
in that movie magic. It's so heartwarming. Good. That's a good, that's a good message to,
to almost end with maybe, um, Sam, if you'd be up for it, would love to take maybe like one or two
questions from our community. Um, if you're down, no, I don't want to talk to anyone.
Um, Kyle, can you, can you work your man, Matt magic?
Yeah. I just, uh, pulled up our first guest here who was, uh, requesting up just as a reminder.
We want to make sure that we keep all the questions focused on this particular topic
and Pressman and what's Republic's doing. And, uh, you know, just honor the time of our guest
here as we only have a few minutes left. So why rabbit you are up if you've got a question for Sam
or, or, or Don or Morgan. Thank you very much. Yes. Super excited about what I hear Pressman
doing. And I congratulate you guys about on migrating into this space. Um, I can't help but
wonder, and I don't know if you guys have looked into this, but from reading on your website,
I think you have what's up with a crowdfunding when it comes to blockchain and avoiding, you know,
being considered a security because we're also in the web three space. I'm a filmmaker myself.
We're working on a movie right now and we don't want to cross over that very, you know, murky line
in that gray area that, you know, lands us in the world of securities when we're fundraising
through blockchain. If you could chime in line on that, that would be appreciated.
Well, that's, I can maybe take Republic, but yeah, no, that's why we love, it is a security and we,
we want it to be a commodity that is a securitized commodity. That's, that's what Republic is all
about Morgan. You've been doing a avalanche has a number of collaborations with Republic. So maybe
you'll speak more eloquently. Yeah, no, I was just going to add, like, I think that's right,
Sam. Like, I think you mentioned, sorry, there's traffic outside my window. Um, I think you mentioned
earlier, um, Kyle and Julie's, uh, endeavor, and that was very much crowdfunding, right? Where
people effectively bought these NFTs and didn't, and don't have, um, access to, or rights to any
returns or, um, future revenues that that project, uh, generates, in which case, you know, that,
you know, that probably is not a considered a security in that, in that respect. And that's
very much like a crowd, uh, funding endeavor. Whereas this is very different in that it's crowd
investing, right? And, and people in fact do, do and have rights to reap those, reap those benefits
from investment. So in this case, I think the team, the team took a stance that, Hey, this is a security
and that's precisely why they worked with a partner like Republic who, um, is a registered SEC
registered broker dealer. Um, and it has those licenses in order to be able to kind of compliantly
issue, um, you know, tokenized securities on chain. So I think, and Sam don't want to put words in your
mouth, but I get the sense that like, you guys realize this and you, you know, took, took that path
where, Hey, we know this is security. So like, what do we have to do to kind of follow the laws,
rules and regulations that, but already do govern securities? A hundred percent. No. And it took a lot
of time and, you know, this was a long time coming and I think we've broken new ground and, and the
folks that are going to follow, uh, Snoop Dogg's son and Snoop Dogg's company are launching something
on Republic. Uh, Robert Rodriguez is, is, is launching something on Republic. Some akin to
what we're doing. And so we've had to do, you know, triple the work to be the first ones to break
through, but it is all about that SEC regulated and compliant, um, standing because, uh, we want the
investors to be able to reap the benefits, you know, receive the revenue. Right. And that's only
allowed if, if this is considered a security and a commodity that can be, um, entitled to a revenue
share. Absolutely. It makes sense. Is there information on the website, like how, um, you guys
process those investments, like how much the minimum is like, I don't want to take up too much time here,
but if I can read more about it, I would love to. Yeah. I think, uh, again, we spend a lot of time
creating that website and all the information on there. Um, there's a myriad of, of FAQs, um,
down at the bottom, but all of, all of the different investment tiers are, are listed on there twice.
Uh, if you're on desktop, it's on the right side. Um, if you scroll down, um, about two thirds of the
way down, there's also kind of just a perk chart, which reiterates those. Um, again, the terms for
all investors in terms of their share of revenue is all parody. Everybody is, is entitled to the same
terms. Parapasoo, whether investing $200 or a million dollars. Um, it's just a determination
of how much you put in compared to how much the total amount raised is. And then you're getting
your percentage of that total amount as each, um, film is made and each dollar comes back into the
slate. Um, but yeah, check out republic.com backslash pressman. Um, if there's anything that doesn't
make sense, you can ask questions, um, on there and we're, you know, vigilantly getting right back,
uh, to people and, you know, genuinely, this is a community powered endeavor. So if any of you dig
what we're talking about, um, supremely appreciate and sincerely appreciate you taking the time to share
with your communities, um, in addition to considering investing. Cool. Thank you very much.
Pleasure.
Awesome. Uh, great, great question. And thanks for coming up and, um, and listening in and just
thank you to everybody else for, for listening in. It's been an amazing talk and I'm sure we're
going to have Sam back on it in the future to talk through how things are going, um, with this
development slate. Yeah, go ahead, Morgan.
Oh, I thought you were going to say something. Um, cool. Well, we are at time, so we are going to wrap
things up here. Once again, thank you everybody for coming in, listening in. Uh, there's a post pinned
here to the top. If you want to grab that before we wrap here, that has our blog and a lot of
information. Also, you can find the links to the Republic site where the raise is happening. We're
really excited to see, you know, the next steps in this and all the content that gets made and just
kind of how this changes film financing and the idea of, of tokenizing cultural assets on chain and
Avalanche is leading the way there. So Sam, appreciate your time. Any final words for the
community here?
Just thank you. Uh, thank you, Kyle. Thank you, Dom. Thank you, Morgan. Uh, look forward to more
conversations.
Sam, we're just going to, we're going to have you back and we're just going to have you moderate
every single Twitter spaces that we have.
Yes, please.
All right. And it's a good, good platform.
Thank you. Thanks so much for joining us. And also thank you to the community for, for, uh,
for joining and hanging out as well. We'll post, uh, Kyle, we'll post, um, a replay for this in case,
uh, you want to kind of share it with any, any of your friends. Um, and, uh, I'm sure we'll talk
to you soon, Sam.
I love it.
Absolutely. Thanks everyone.
Thanks everyone. Have a great day.
Peace.
