My name is Fedja, and I’m a Montenegrin recent USC graduate, writer, and filmmaker. I was introduced to Nouns by Euwyn (Noun #122 and #341), and fell enamored with the sense of community I’ve observed so far. Nounish-ness is special, and I’d love to bottle up a bit of this and spread the word about Nouns to larger audience.
This proposal is for a community-driven, studio-quality animated short film starring a Noun, with a red carpet event in Los Angeles to cap off production and bring Nouns and film community members together to inspire more collaborations.
With an origin story of falling out of their owner’s laptop - think “Finding Nemo” - the protagonist Noun will be animated in stop-motion style, composited on real footage, and film their own journey home. With the Nouns community involvement at each step, the story will be written to be captivating to a broad international audience across different languages, crypto-native and not.
Why?
Allow us to introduce you to: The Noun. An animated Noun, fallen out of his owner’s laptop and finding himself lost in the real world. Starting with an animated short, audiences worldwide will watch the charming, adorable, and sneakily snarky Noun overcome obstacles, find and lose love, and much more as he films his journey home. Modernizing the mold of fictional personalities like Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, or Annoying Orange, and inspired by early Pixar shorts, we aim to make the Noun into a well-loved, viral, memeable, sharable character.
A big part of our effort will be involving the community in writing a unique, compelling narrative for the noun. As a storyteller, this is where I’ll be focused. The intimacy of telling his story from his POV, with his phone camera, intercut with 3rd-person footage of his adventures, will build a lasting emotional relationship with his audience that will transfer into future projects, from this team and others. Whether it be longer YouTube videos, a TV series, or even his own feature film, people will follow the Noun wherever he goes — in the world or online.
His story will be designed to be saturated with clipable, memeable, shareable moments that don’t need context to go viral on their own. However, for the curious viewer, the clips bring them in to a larger narrative designed and produced around a genuine story and loveable protagonist.
Community-Driven Production
Ultimately, we want the character, and the project as a whole, to be completely emblematic of all that is Nounish. Yes, this means quirkiness, humor, personality and spontaneity, but it also means myriad factors and traits we can’t even begin to predict. This is why throughout the entire creative process we will hold bi-weekly town halls to discuss the script and invite members to share their thoughts. The character bio, the general plot, the finished screenplay, design, locations, all of it. We promise to be receptive to feedback, and additionally will host community feedback sessions to ensure our protagonist is as Nounish as can be.
Along the Noun’s journey, he will inevitably interact with other characters and Nouns in the wild, and while the Noun overcomes loneliness, fear, and anxiety, the story will lead towards an ultimate message of the value of community and collective voice. This will open an opportunity for more creatives to build and expand upon what would effectively become the Nouns Cinematic Universe. Other writers, animators, directors, with their own backgrounds, aesthetic styles, and manners of storytelling, can build upon the framework Noun sets and expand with their own real-world Noun characters and stories.
We’re not only creating a viral character who will bring attention to the Nouns project, but a platform upon which like-minded creatives can find opportunities to build art.
Development
Pre-Production
6-8 weeks
- Writing
- Location scouting
- Establishing workflow for animation
- Voice actor casting
- The casting will likely be the longest part of pre-production. In building a project based around the personality of one protagonist, the casting is crucial. We do it once, we do it right.
Production
6-8 weeks
- Filming
- Recording voice lines
- Animation
Post-Production
1-2 weeks
- Hiring social media marketing specialist to maximize likelihood of going viral
- Setting up digital marketing strategy (trending hashtags, etc)
- Deploying the videos
It is our goal to create a professional, polished, award-worthy product. As such, we’re going to need a professional team. Above is our outlined 25 ETH budget, covering a worst-case scenario which can promise a perfect result. We will strive to remain under that budget, however, and any remaining surplus will go towards the following, which we hope piques your interest.
Los Angeles Red Carpet Premiere
As the Noun character falls into the real world, so to do we wish to bring this to life. To cap off production, we will host a screening event in Los Angeles with a Nouns step and repeat banner, red carpet, and more, inviting members of the Nouns and film community. It’ll be an opportunity to meet the team behind the project, celebrate together, and provide another occasion for the Nouns community to gather and grow.
The Team
Who are we!? We’re (mostly) recent graduates out of LA and Austin, Texas, trying to carve our way creatively. With backgrounds in literature, screenwriting, film production, animation, and design, we’re coming together to build something not only with catchy style, but with weighted substance. We don’t just want to work with Nouns to make something — we believe we can make something great.
Fedja Celebic. Producer, Writer, Director
Fedja is a USC graduate with a degree that spanned all mediums of writing and a Masters in Literary Editing and Publishing, and has found his creative satisfaction in screenwriting and producing. With previous work in development with Cinetic Media and consulting on a debut series with WildcatterLA, Fedja also has ample experience in filmmaking, having worked at Port Media for 6 years. He has various awards and shortlists for his creative writing.
James Bristow. Lead Animator
James graduated from the Radio, Television, and Film program of UT Austin, with an emphasis in animation. Some of his brilliant character animation can be seen on his online portfolio. He is currently an Art Director with Midnight Kids Studios, and is the lead animator on Mars – an upcoming animated feature film by the Whitest Kids U’Know.
Euwyn Poon. Executive Producer
Euwyn (Noun #122 and #341) is the founder and CEO of Micro, a holding company that builds and invests in Web3. He is an avid NFT collector and was one of the founding members of PleasrDAO. He previously co-founded Spin, which launched scooter sharing in the US and was acquired by Ford. Among other efforts at Spin, he led the marketing and design teams created the brand and YouTube content. He holds a computer science degree from Cornell University and a law degree from Cornell Law School, practicing at Simpson Thacher before moving to startups and getting funded by Y Combinator.
Note: These are very rough concept sketches, scrapped together by the writer of the group. We guarantee a higher quality of animation with the finished product, promising on a realistically-rendered 3D character.