Nouns : A Movie

Fund it as we build it. ⌐◨-◨

Tl;dr:

After the success of Prop 195 and the release of the Nountown animated short film we made, we are proposing Nouns engage with Atrium to continually produce a series of episodic content via consecutive proposals. When this content is pieced together retroactively - all of the cinematic content will be able to be binged as a single movie / series. Atrium creatives will write and create the content which will be split up among story acts.

This specific prop is funding a pilot delivered at the end of 90 days. Detailed below are the steps involved in exploring different visual styles, additional deliverables and ultimately making the Pilot content.

After the pilot is revealed in 90 days, the DAO will decide if it wants to move forward in funding more of the whole film.

Proposal Ask:

125,000 USD for a time-period of 90 days

• Pre-production & character development
• Script for the Pilot (3.5 mins) / ACT 1 + Summaries of all subsequent acts - delivered at 90 days
• Animated Teaser with final look for the show - delivered at 45 days
• Animated Pilot (Runtime 3.5 mins) with the above mentioned script - delivered at 90 days

transferred to Atrium Multi-sig upon execution

Note: Subsequent funding pathway for future Acts as detailed below with the rough timeline. As we go further along the production (optional and will come in different proposals), the timeline gets more efficient and shrinks.

Recap: what is Atrium?

Atrium.art is a crypto-native network of independent artists and creators. Disciplines represented on Atrium currently include Screenwriting, Animation, Concept Art, Voice Actors, and Music production. Together, creatives on Atrium bring experience from Pixar, Marvel, Luma Pictures, Sony, Netflix and many more. You can see the work of Artists on Atrium here Simply put, Atrium is a way to easily piece together veteran talent to produce cinematic content.

Resident Atrium Team

Main Creative leads:

Zendoubt (Creative Director) - Black Panther, Godzilla vs Kong, Thor Ragnarok, Birds of Prey

HKJay (Creative Director) - The Sea Beast, Lego Movies, Peter Rabbit, His Dark materials

3dprintguy (Executive Producer)

Writing Lead : William Yu - BlckList 2021 , Created #starringjohncho campaign

External Studio Partner (tentative) https://meta-ent.com/meta/ - Creators of Riri, Mave: Pandora

In addition we are assembling a veteran team of creatives (10-14) associating with an external studio partner who will help set up a dedicated production pipeline to handle the needed throughput of the content. This alongside Atrium core will be entirely remote first so it will be the first non-trivial budget content workflow at this scale being funded by nouns.

Additionally Atrium will be sourcing Voice Over Artists, Sound Design resources for

Scope of this proposal (Detailed view)

An elaborate pre-production stage is crucial in order to explore the style and feel of a large production before locking / committing to it for the entire duration. These early steps of engagement and experimentation allow us to save time and money by avoiding costly redesigns later.

During Prop 195, While we created a unique and upbeat version of Nountown with character design that were standard, exploring uniqueness with heads and attire; We realised that there was scope to also explore pathways to develop a style framework that introduces :

• More personality via body types
• Introduce unique worlds beyond nountown

Pre-production

Animation Tests done in public

This early stage style exploration allows us to converge on something that will feel coherent and appropriate for the larger production.

An example of this pre-production work is a screen test done by Sony Animation for a feature length Popeye film: https://youtu.be/M1lzJuwJD9k?t=122 Whilst this screen test is much more elaborate and polished than we intend, Sony would have done many smaller ones leading up to this very polished result which they were proud to make public.

By doing an animation screen test we can experiment with different looks in order to find the right one. This can also serve as future reference for other Nouns animated content, as different possible “looks”.

Unlike Sony Animation, we have the advantage of building in the public eye, giving a rare glimpse into the animation process as well as giving the community a chance to share their sentiment prior to committing to a style..

Looks Tests done in public

The designs, the texturing and lighting of the world. Does the world feel more clean or is it more grungy like stop motion, E.G. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. There are many possibilities to explore. Here are just a few examples.

Deliverable #1 : (45 days mark)

Screen tests in different looks + a teaser trailer for the Pilot Episode to come at 90 days mark.

Story

The future of this cinematic story creation begins with a pilot screenplay, but will expand throughout subsequent acts in a way that allows for adults, teens, and kids to find something relatable within the world that is created. The foundations of existing Nounish stories (prop 70, prop 116) will serve as a guide for cultural relevance and overall thematic inspiration for the story but will be unique in its own right. Unlike standard film productions, our build in public stance detailed below will invite the community to experience the magic of production first hand.

Building in Public

• We will be setting up a dedicated corner on the Atrium Server and sharing progress on socials for people to follow-along with the creative process. We plan to release regular media updates and share sneak peeks.

• Anyone inside and outside the Nouns community is welcome to join. Most channels will be open to Public while some production related channels will be private to have agility on creative decisions.

• We will host multiple open town halls with Creatives & the community members to hear ideas and keep the community updated on the process and progress.

• Casting Calls Galore: As the Story is being written, we will be introducing an interactive exercise to do casting calls from the nounish community, where we make the picks on the main and auxiliary characters from the submitted / interested community members from nouns DAO and sub DAOs.

• Behind the scenes videos and animation technicals to be produced alongside the content and be distributed after the premiere happens in between the premiere.

Deliverable #2 : (90 days mark)

Pilot Episodic premiering on all socials and a Drop Proposal.

Ask Summary Recap

Future Funding Roadmap & Breakdown

Note: This is optional and only shared as a future roadmap. This is NOT part of this specific proposal scope and will be subjected to their own evaluation parameters.

It’s a first of its kind, large production endeavour which attempts to break-free from legacy content production models and Nouns DAO is at the precipice of being the only few who can enable this. When you look at traditional animated film funding today, they can range from micro budgets (Less than 1M USDC) to Jumbo budgets (200M+), and the bulk is paid for star actors, studio supervisors, and executives. Tangled (with a whopping 260M production cost) was one of the costliest animated features made.

As we are aware, many times it is normal for incredible artists to drown out and be siloed in suboptimal work culture and long hours in the animation industry, alongside their creative input. Offering budgets that can be competitive while retaining a much higher degree of creative autonomy (in absence of network executives) , we can give them the financial security to leave a traditional studio structure and be part of a long-term vision which seeks to upend the narrative.

All the team members defined in this proposal already have shown full commitment to come onboard if this series of proposals kicks off and embark on creating one of the highest quality production value the crypto space has seen till date.

This continues till Act 22 and 77 mins total including the pilot (3.5 mins). It runs for 550+ days if funded all the way.

Past Funding from the DAO

3dprintguy at Atrium was funded for 20 ETH via Prop 195 and created a standalone animated short film. The same short film is to be released via a Drop proposal (Prop 237). All significant characters that are part of the short film were released as collectible NFTs and usable rigged 3d files were made available for free for anyone to use.

Drop Content Proposals as we go

Dropping Content selectively through the DAO and coordinating premiere events coinciding with the Nouns mint will be a key event over the course of all of the proposals.

All proceeds from the Drop Proposals will be split (60 [DAO] : 40 [Creators]) with the DAO.

Our North Star

The journey does not end at the final second of content upon release. Nouns ecosystem members will be invited to submit story arcs for the future and ideas for the next runs once the core foundation and engine have been established.

We aim to self distribute the media (via socials & other partners) and our own channels to the widest audience possible and aggregate as much meaningful data as possible for an eventual streaming distribution deal.

Appendix

Self-sustaining creator flywheels https://twitter.com/pbrianandj/status/1610695135414845440

Develop Film and TV like its 2023

https://pricepoint.substack.com/p/price-point-018-how-to-develop-film https://twitter.com/punk4156/status/1613278290130931712 https://twitter.com/js_horne/status/1628203483949150208

Atrium Multi-sig 0x58947f539f1c1e930c2aea6e8a9fb0ecc9763357