Top Podcasts
Block Of Horror - Be A Part Of The Story Making Process, Feat. Blockimus (Zach) & Quit, Plus Strangeloop Studios, Global Titan NFT Sporting Events, And More...
A movie no longer has to be just a two-hour, spectator experience at a theater anymore. With blockchain technology, you can now become a part of the magic of telling amazing stories—from inception to distribution. The new cinematic experience is made possible by trailblazing projects like Block of Horror. In this episode, Blockimus (Zach) and Quit join the show to share how they are disrupting the way that content creation works and re-envisioning film and storytelling from a decentralized, community-based perspective. After a rousing discussion about Block of Horror which includes a “killer” demo video, the crew talk about Strangeloop Studios and why it is one of the leading creative pioneers of the new digital media realm. Join this conversation and learn how you too can now be a part of creating within a whole new realm of storytelling and media production.
—
Listen to the podcast here
Block Of Horror – Be A Part Of The Story Making Process, Feat. Blockimus (Zach) & Quit, Plus Strangeloop Studios, Global Titan NFT Sporting Events, And More…
Stay tuned for our episode and find out how Block of Horror is going to take to choose your own adventure idea to the next level.
Why Strangeloop Studios has become one of the leading creative pioneers of the new digital media realm.
Catch a shout out to one of our most beloved community members, all this and more on this episode. Enjoy.
—
Our sponsored episode features Zach AKA Blockimus and Quit of Block of Horror. The platform that is disrupting how content creation works. Blockimus inspired the Block of Horror mission to re-envision film and storytelling from a decentralized community-based perspective. Blockimus got his start in Web3 in April 2021, where he went headfirst into the OpenSea of NFTs, learning the market and building a platform with Web3 ethos.
Through experiencing all of the NFT space and what it has to offer, Blockimus, a play on Gladiator’s Maximus, has become what he considers a Web3 lifer and hopes to be an ambassador of what this new technology can do to decentralize Web2s most gated opportunities. How about Quit? Quit has been a crypto degen since 2013.
He is a BAYC Owner and renowned educator in the NFT space, sharing deep insights, usually in the form of Twitter threads, to help protect the community from bad contracts, nefarious actors, and outright scams. He also heads up development at Block of Horror and including the upcoming mint and voting portal. He is an invaluable piece of their team and a trusted voice for the entire NFT community.
Block of Horror is the beginning, a launch point to build a decentralized platform that offers up the most access and best experiences for artists and fans. No longer just footing the bill for a ticket at a theater, members of Block of Horror can join the story-making process from inception through distribution, gaining access to come aboard as co-producers and collaborators who are always celebrated and revered. Their members are key parts of the magic it takes to tell amazing stories. They will always work with that as their guiding light. Guys, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having us. I appreciate it.
This is Opera pro. You named the project Block of Horror. That’s how we all feel about this market. It is one giant Block of Horror. This would have been a great time to release the project. If you foreshadow this, I don’t know if that was part of the mix.
Honestly, we were geared towards a Friday, May 13th, 2022, mint date. It would have been timed brilliantly perfectly. I’m not sure that too many people would have been gung-ho to purchase at that time, considering everyone was like, “Sky is falling.” They are looking to protect their downside risk, unfortunately.
There’s an emotional element to this industry. It’s Quite possible that the name of it would be, “I have already lost 99% of my money on Luna. Why not throw the remaining 1% into this cool project?” You never know.
If you believe that, I trust your judgment. To our benefit, we pushed it to give us a little more time to button up everything. It could have been a good marketing position to be in.
Don’t take my advice. You guys clearly thought this through. What you are trying to do here is cool. You transform Hollywood content machines, and how they operate without sacrificing artistic integrity and coming up with high-quality experiences and stories, which is the heart of Web3, our society, and culture. It’s a massive vision. Can you tell us more about how this project came to be?
The best way to frame this is around where it all began. In April 2021, I wrote a treatment for a feature around NFTs in a horror context. It’s a horror slasher thriller. I wrote a ten-page treatment. It was going to get into production for a short of that feature. As we geared up to get into production, it hit me. I was like, “Do I even know enough about NFTs and about crypto at this point in time to tell an informed story that hits it on the head?” I pulled back off doing that piece of material and decided, “Instead of the production budget for that short, I’m going to funnel that money right into NFTs directly and learn by diving ahead first.”
From that point on, we came up with Block of Horror, which originally started as a PFP project because the market was up in arms about the next PFP thing. This was even before BAYC was on the map. As we were developing this PFP world around horror, monsters, and all kinds of cool things, I was like, “Is that what I’m here to do? Is that what Web3 is meant to be, a cool JPEG that we can rep on social media?” It is cool. I rep my mutant regularly but to me, NFTs spoke to the use case around what’s possible utilizing the smart contract in general. We pivoted off of this PFP strategy and started to ask ourselves the harder questions. “Why are we here? What do we want to accomplish?”
I spent a few years in Los Angeles, working in Hollywood. My Cofounder, Mike, said the same thing. He’s an editor for AMC. My wife worked on Avatar 2 and 3 and Justice League. Seeing the issues that plague the centralized choke points within media and Hollywood, we started to formulate a plan around, “Let’s bring artists and fans to the creative table from inception through to distribution. Let’s have them be integral to the part they can play, and making a communal effort towards creating exceptional experiences, cinema, and everything that’s possible in the metaverse, especially from a technological perspective.”
You have VR. Augmented reality is going to be coming out. We wanted to position ourselves to build something that could sustain the long haul of what this technology is doing, which is transforming every industry in time that there is. We started with what we know, which is cinema, storytelling, and filmmaking. That’s where it all began. We have been building ever since to get to the launch point, which is coming here soon.
I want to pull out a theme in what you said. We had Eric called around before this show. He delayed Art Blocks for a few months because he was too busy playing around with NBA Top Shots. There’s something to be said for not forcing projects out the door too quickly and letting the creative juices marinate and mature. We delayed one of our drops for the same reason. A constant conversation we have internally with all the different opportunities in this space is to let things marinate and make sure of where you want to focus your energy. That makes a lot of sense to me.
To add to that, it’s why we found Quit. I had good synergies. He’s similar. To me, there are people in this space that have to take up this ambassador role, whether they like it or not. I never intended that to happen. With all the cash grabs, the outright scams, and people getting completely wrecked and screwed over by bad actors, I wasn’t about to participate in that narrative. I’m not saying anyone who launches quickly is doing that but we are building a company.
We are building something that, in a Web2 sense, if you raise money, that money goes to the community’s growth, inevitable rise, and brand. It doesn’t go to the founder’s wallet. We have been working to position ourselves to build properly, organically, and well. If we want to be here for 10, 20, or 50 years, that’s what you have to do. If we wanted to profit, check out, and potentially go to prison, maybe we would do something more nefarious, which we decided not to do so.
I want to talk a little bit about some of the concepts you came up with. You’ve got this genesis NFT, which has thirteen movie posters based on the original story concepts you designed. You are minting those potentially here in early July 2022. Can you tell us a little bit more about this and the utility involved? If a reader wants to participate, how might they keep their eyes on that?
We are aiming to mint in June 2022. The markets may dictate the date that we mint. You don’t want to mint into something that the market is completely on tilt and off-kilter. The plan is about mid-June but if we need to push to make sure the market dynamics are conducive to mentoring, then we will do so. The thirteen movie posters are original story concepts that we came up with. We built them into movie posters. For anyone that’s familiar, your movie poster historically is your first major piece of advertisement around, “Should I go see that thing? Should I go experience that Saw movie or this Halloween franchise?”
We built these original stories, some of which have been IP that we have been developing for years personally. I have a few that I have been working on that I donated to the thirteen original story concepts. Between me, my cofounders, our poster artist, and creative producer, we formulated these stories that when you get a chance to mint them, whether it’s in June or early July, you are going to get one of these stories or movie posters as a token. That’s your forever membership pass to the Block of Horror.
There’s a lot of additional utility outside of that but you are part of the club. You are part of the Block of Horror. You are going to have a say in which one of these thirteen stories are we going to make into our first future-length movie? From the start, you mint, you decide. Right from the start, we want to demonstrate that the community, the members, and you are collaborators. You are a part of the creative process.
We have different subgenres of content and stories, some of which are more geared toward the left-field, some towards the right field. It’s going to be open-ended like, “Whatever you all decide, that’s what we are going to make first.” The good thing is the other twelve pieces that are not selected as the feature-length film, we are going to structure into different separate projects that will be, let’s say, a screenplay or a TV pilot, geared towards a board game or different types of experiences in the metaverse. We are going to attack all 13 in season 1 of Block of Horror. We are going to tackle all of them throughout the season. There will be various use cases for each one and different types of content.
I love move movie posters as a method of all this. They fit perfectly into NFTs but there are these kernels of things that are nice and tight. I’ve learned another thing in the movie industry. In the logline, you tell this story in a sentence but that sentence tells you whether that might be a good story. It’s the Snowflake Method of writing a novel. You start with an outline, and then you flesh out a little bit more and a little bit more. It sounds like you’ve got a lot fleshed out potentially depending on the project as well, so you can hit the ground running when people vote for it.
That’s the beautiful part. It’s a prompt. It’s a concept. Though we have backstories and rich material behind it, we are not going to present all of that upfront because we want the imagination of the community, the fans, and the members to inform us, to tell us what they are inspired by, what they feel, and what resonates with them. We can find those synergies with the lead artists that we bring on for each project and work in tandem to create the best IP possible.
We have a demo that you guys put together to inform our readers more about that project. This might be a good time. We will take a look at that. Let that marinate in the reader’s mind. We will come back and talk about it once it’s over. Let’s get to that.
“Block of horror was started in April of 2021 with the mission to challenge what we call the Hollywood machine. Head-on, we are tackling the choke points of backdoor centralization, the hoarding of IP, inequitable distribution of profits, and dull, formulaic storytelling. Block of horror is founded on the principle of decentralized community-driven content and prioritizing artists and fan empowerment.
How do we do this? We envision a world where avid fans have a say in the direction of creative content and where they can benefit from the success of the final product. By way of our very own unique voting portal, we are bringing members to the decision-making table. This type of platform prioritizes the independent artist and avid fans’ desires first by giving them direct access to the creative and producing process in our dedicated community channels.
The team at Block of Horror has written thirteen original story concepts that have been designed into professional and spiring movie posters to represent our genesis NFT collection. Immediately after mint, token holders control which story will go into production first as a feature-length movie via our voting portal. As we get into development and pre-production for the feature film, community members will participate in helping decide the character’s fates who lives, who dies, how, and when led by professional artists, filmmakers, and industry professionals, the community will become integral to the experience that inevitably ends up on the screen.
Block Of Horror: The reason why we wanted to do this, too, is we want everyone to gravitate toward the stories that they like the most.
The remaining twelve-story posters will not be forgotten, as they will each have dedicated focuses and resources for various forms of horror, themed experiences, and content. Some media candidates include metaverse experiences, TV series pitch packages, 360 and VR experiences, graphic novels, and even board games. We see this as a continual collaboration, not a producer-consumer gatekeeping wall.
Every voice should be respected and heard. In our Discord, we will have dedicated channels for each piece of IP so that token holders of those stories can be a part of that story’s inception, development, and lore. That’s just the start. We have a metaverse theater already live in VR chat where you can watch Block of Horror, original and curated content with friends.
We also hold metaverse real estate across all of the premier Metaverses with preparations to build unique experiences on all of them. Utilizing Web3 to its fullest, Block of Horror is about trailblazing, pushing boundaries, and building towards a more advantageous and rich experience for members moving them away from being just a ticket holder to an integral part of our collective creativity and development production and ultimate communal success. Welcome to the Block of Horror.”
Thanks a lot for sharing this with us. To give you a little bit more of the visuals, there is some cool cinematography, graphics, or whatever. It’s almost like scenes from movies, or particular scenarios, an Ouija board. I remember I caught some smoke moving by, some creepy movie theater themed stuff like a movie theater with a popcorn maker that’s in the shadows. I might not want to eat that popcorn or the popcorn might turn me into a vampire or something. There is a lot of VR and AR themes going on in there. It’s cool stuff. I encourage the readers to go check that out. What did you guys think, Josh and Jeff?
It’s amazing stuff. It’s clear you guys have that experience in the industry that you come from. It comes through there. It’s also the amazing summary of everything that is Block of Horror and what it can be, the entire concept of choosing your own adventure and all that means. There’s some nostalgia there. There’s also this entire new platform that has never existed in human history before.
The entire Web3 platform and what that can mean is built on the foundation of NFTs, which is what we are here, always talking about every single day. This is where it’s at. Seeing the actual implementation of this stuff come to life is amazing. It’s one of the best use cases for NFTs and for what’s happening in Web3. The video’s a great demonstration of that.
Going back to the Block of Horrors, it would take the crumbs of my Luna and put it in this opportunity and then probably double or triple down on it, depending on where those crumbs are, given where Luna is going. It’s all in my mind. Tell us more about how you intend to work with the community to build the first season of Block of Horror. You mentioned the movie posters to start with. What happens after that? If I’m in your community, what can I expect?
We will have different Discord channels for each piece of IP. If you are a token holder of, let’s say, the zombie concept, you are going to be able to hop in that Discord channel with the other 500, let’s say, participants or token holders of that poster and work with our lead artists, as we bring them in to go, “What do we want to make here? We are going to do, let’s say, a TV show around this.” We are not going to do Walking Dead but that was the place we wanted to go. We could all work together, pitch ideas, share information and work towards creating a piece of content that we all want to create.
We would build it outside of that but it’s thirteen separate opportunities. The reason why we wanted to do this too is we want everyone to gravitate toward the stories that they like the most. When you mint, you are not going to know what you get. It will be revealed after the first vote of the feature film happens. From there, you trade out to something you want, being a part of all of them, if you buy all the thirteen separate movie poster tokens. We want people to gravitate towards the stories that they want to be essentially a part of.
Quit, how do you pull something like this off? Are you duct taping together a bunch of Web3 technology? Is this something you had to build from scratch? Is Discord ready for this and already has everything you need? What happened when you are like, “This is what I want to do. How do I achieve this vision?”
Discord is mostly ready for what we intend to use it for. In terms of the NFT itself, it will mostly be standard 721. We do have some plans for the voting portal that will be custom-built. We are excited for that process.
That’s cool. That’s great for our audience to know because this sounds like a daunting task. The power of Web3 is that the tools are there for you. The creativity is around the product itself. Don’t be too intimidated by taking on a big adventure with your community.
We want to dive into the IP going on here. We touch upon this every once in a while in the show. It’s a fascinating domain. Can you tell us a little bit about what you’ve come across here as it relates to taking the IP that’s being built here and integrating it and the intricacies that you have seen in dealing with IP in this crazy new Web3 space?
We have a great legal team that has a strong understanding of IP commercialization, what CCO entails, and all of these possible IP licensing options. What we want to do, and why we decided to break the content into thirteen pieces is we want to structure our ability to attack all of these IP choke points individually as necessary. A great word that has been thrown around by our legal team is this progressive decentralization.
They don’t audit it at all.
They stick a random logo up there.
Let’s do it.
Do you have a go-to?
Do you remember where you sold it?
It was Stubhub or eBay at the time.
ETH.
Curiosity.
For better and worse, honesty.
I’m going to go eat, and get back to the work.
Strangeloop Studios** has become one of the leading creative pioneers of the new digital media realm, providing design and content for live events and digital media, including producing music video, short films, and immersive experiences.**
Should we hit the next hot topic?
Let’s jump in.
I don’t think so.
There’s always a way around the fence.
Important Links
-
Discord – Block of Horror
-
Strangeloop Studios – Interview: Strangeloop Studios Co-Founder Ian Simon Article
-
Global Titans have Introduced the First Sporting event with NFT enabled Livestream Access – Article
-
@BlockOfHorror – Twitter
-
Twitter – Blockimus
-
Spotify – Edge of NFT
-
iTunes – Edge of NFT