Max Edward Woertendyke: Actor, director and producer in New York City, New York.

Thanks, Sydney S.

The webinar's available to watch on demand, everyone: www.stage32.com/webinars/How-to-Put-Together-a-Perfect-Pitch-Deck-for-yo...

Thanks for sharing this Sydney! People are constantly asking what makes a good pitch deck and there's no better way to learn.

Max Edward Woertendyke Lindbergh has some good points. Personally, I would never touch a project which doesn't have ONE person in charge, contractually, with final say over absolutely everything. Without that, the potential for a complete deadlock or fight over copyright issues is too great, and the financial stakes are too high - not to mention the work involved in putting a film together. "Producing through" your LLC doesn't imply the LLC owns anything at all. Someone has to own copyright and has to be able to move forward with the project if the partnership breaks down. That is a fundamental issue that any experienced financier or producer (or agent or other rep) will be sensitive to. 90% of bands who have been working together weekly break up the night before the contract is signed because they never hashed these things out.

If by producing through your LLC you mean that you’ve set up an LLC to serve as the production entity, great. But that LLC still needs to acquire the rights to make and distribute the film from the copyright owners. In this respect, you’re the same as any other third party writer--even though you’re also an LLC member.

Max - congratulations on your first film, and wishing you nothing but success on the second film with a bigger budget! We have an awesome webinar about this that you should definitely take: https://www.stage32.com/webinars/Protect-Yourself-Understanding-and-Brea...

Great reel David!

Thanks a lot

Jean Buschmann the explosion was shot for a film we didi in Cairo (Egypt). Unfortunatelly it was only released in theaters so there is no way of watching it in any patform or tv.

Oh, that was PUNNY, Roger Hewett!

Richard Thrift ...Wow! Now there's a random string of parallel coincidences!

I'd love to make a TV series in Cape Town, South Africa and a movie in France (not in Paris), I'd like to explore other parts of France and show the world that it's not just the city of love but the country of love.

Welcome Max! Nice to meet you. Glad you're here.

Congratulations on selling your first feature film, Max Edward Woertendyke!!! :D That's a huge accomplishment!

Max, first of all, congratulations on your sale, that is a huge accomplishment. Secondly, it’s exciting to see you expand beyond performing into the business side of the industry. I’m rooting you on that you get your $5 million film this year!

Check out Alexia's webinar here if you missed it: https://www.stage32.com/webinars/How-to-Work-the-Virtual-American-Film-M...

Did anyone get the hand outs that she had?

No, not yet...

Some sense of what "industry standards" are in terms of contracts, so we are better prepared to notice red flags if and when they appear. Especially in terms of shopping/option/producer/EP agreements. Looking forward Thomas!

Great idea; I like the idea of "RED FLAG" warnings specific to particular contracts. Thanks, Max!

Thanks for the comments. John/David I expect you guys are correct that the opportunities for indie produced pilots has shrunk enormously over the past few years. The nature of this particular project makes it far from a waste, but does likely put it squarely in the creatively fulfilling rather than commercially lucrative category. Will keep folks posted if anything brilliant and unexpected comes of it.

You could try taking it to Banff.

If you have a manager or sales agent on board that has relationships with broadcasting/streaming partners they can help to get your work in front of decision makers. Having a pilot shot before attaching a distributor is rare nowadays, but it can be used to demonstrate your creative skills if you want to remain creatively attached to the project and can be used as a proof of concept when pitching.

Ooh - I miss me some dollar theaters Kay!

Dollar theaters were the best. I had one living in Pasadena with second run films and midnight screenings of great films like The Shining, The Big Lebowski and Eternal Sunshine.

OMG, @Jake I had forgotten about CALLING for times, but you're so right! And there was inevitably someone trying to talk with you keeping you from hearing the times LOL Plus, you had to play that game where you have to figure out how much earlier you needed to get there to get good seats. Anybody ever theater hop? I could never let myself do it, I felt bad for cheating them out of their earnings.

Awesome. Thanks Karen! I'll definitely check Shane and CJ out and perhaps find a way to chat!

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Great question, Max Edward Woertendyke! I feel like there are representatives that focus only on the jobs they are good at getting - a fellow hyphenate I know has a talent manager which is separate from his directing/producing manager. It's not that you can't find a rep who is all-encompassing, but my sense is that no one likes to do that as it divides the rep's attention, and you definitely want them on their A-game!

Thanks Karen -- that reflects my current take on the situation as well. I do wonder if we'll see any shifts over the next few years as creators become even more technically able to generate and control opportunities across all stages of production, from development to creation to distribution. Conversely, if the new "studio system" of the streamers essentially continue to fold these makers into their own networks as they vie for more eyeballs, how that will effect the way reps work as well and the kind of jobs they will have to get good at to keep income coming through the doors. Exciting times!

If you want to read about the ad world ... ADNEWS is a good resource.

Hi there. May I suggest getting an account on IMDB pro? It has the trades and other news sources right there - https://pro.imdb.com/

Hollywood Reporter can send daily news by email, it's great. Also Variety does something similar, I follow Variety on Twitter

Erik A. Jacobson The ruling to my knowledge is that they cannot charge fees for permits, not that they cannot require permits. They are still required by law to do the environmental impact study, and it cannot be interpreted as giving carte blanche to film productions to do what they want, which would be absurd.

Just as an update, we've received some good leads on privately owned land -- some individually or family owned, others by land trusts -- who are open to our using their property as a location. Also NYC run parks folks have also been quite helpful and those locations (for anyone here in the metro area) are extremely affordable/useable -- but we haven't yet been able to find anything that quite matches what we're looking for in terms of environment. Alley Park Pond is the closest so far, but it's missing some key elements of what we need. Will continue to keep folks posted as more develops!

Further update: After approaching a number of parks (township owned), and land trusts, and making clear that we were operating as LOCAL filmmakers, we were offered two separate park locations free of cost. Needless to say, we will be sending a big THANK YOU gift to the people who helped arrange it, but just goes to show that the surest way to get a "NO" is to never ask -- especially if you have an otherwise well thought out, organized and planned production (even more important if like us in this case, you're working with an extremely small budget). At any rate, looking forward to moving forward and thanks again everyone for your input on this matter.

Brett Russell Hi, I have been preoccupied with the Premiere of Sin 13 and the launch of Facet.TV, so that's the reason in delay for my launch. First, block chain technology is used to secure a transaction. Transactional security is not an issue in film finance. Never has been, never will be. So the key strength of blockchain is not applicable to film finance. To my mind, the only possible application is, as you allude to, the possibility of raising money through a wide net where people buy cryptocoins instead of stock certificates. That is, essentially a crowd-funding solution with all the inherent challenges of crowd-funding PLUS the challenges of getting people to accept a crypto-coin as a legitimate vehicle and how to exchange money for that, etc. Not to mention the question of whether or not there is any public pool of investors just waiting to invest in film. Seems there never has been. Crypto-technology doesn't solve that fundamental issue and may even make it harder since public perception of crypto is not flattering. Every so often, since the beginning of bitcoin, someone has decided this was a great solution, and tried to use it, and never, to my knowledge, succeeded. As far as a "tokenized asset" being "legal" - as a lawyer I will tell you flat that my opinion is the nature of a tokenized asset is a security. Period. So creating a funding scheme using a crypto token is at best skirting securities laws, and then only if you have gone through extensive legal maneuvers to take those transactions outside the jurisdiction of the SEC. Those maneuvers in themselves should raise red flags for investors. Now the SEC has recently said that ETH tokens specifically are not "securities" in and of themselves, but that really will depend on the nature of the transaction, and certainly does NOT apply to other tokens. In my professional opinion, the SEC is just plain WRONG on their recent pronouncement, and will likely reverse itself when it considers a real situation where people are raising money for a venture like this. Now having said all that, can you lay out any actual advantage to investing through a token rather than traditional stock purchases, etc.?

Hi Shadow Dragu-Mihai, Esq., Ipg getting you a response to this next week. Very pleased to engage you. Have a good weekend.

Hi Shadow Dragu-Mihai, Esq., Ipg ,

I appreciate you taking time to respond, thanks very much. I respect your view.

This kind of feedback is valuable in that it provides a snapshot of how some established entertainment industry participants may view this emerging and disruptive technology.

Let me be clear, any funding or crypto payment mechanisms we propose, develop or implement will not violate any law, securities or otherwise. Nor will we put any participant at risk and will be transparent. Compliance is a priority for all legitimate projects in this space and ours will be no exception. Anyone contemplating anything related to investments or the use of alternate currencies definitely needs competent legal support.

Funding pain-points are proving to be good conversation starters on Stage32 and Im pleased you have joined that conversation.

We enter the WEB3 era - decentralized applications, users control their identity and programmable money is native and flows across borders effortlessly and inexpensively.

Shadow Dragu-Mihai, Esq., Ipg wrote,

"First, block chain technology is used to secure a transaction. Transactional security is not an issue in film finance. Never has been, never will be. So the key strength of blockchain is not applicable to film finance."

Response:

Yes, blockchain does secure transactions. If Im understanding your point here you are saying transactional security is not an issue. But we see it differently. The types of transactions we refer to are many and range from blockchain based automated payments / residuals to smart-contracts that are written to commit screenplays or assign intellectual property to filmmakers/producers. These transactions, and the many more that arise during the development, financing, production and distribution of any film project, are executed, recorded and secured by blockchain. The entertainment industry is built on transactions. Contracts, agreements, assignments, licensing, releases, trademarks, copyrights, are a few of the "transactions" that will be recorded and managed on a private blockchain made available to a select few. Specific to film finance, and aside from our plan to introduce tokenization as a form of funding and payments, a blockchain based chain-of-title is one example of how blockchain can establish the veracity of proprietary rights which is crucial to film finance.

With respect to our ideas around tokenization.

Shadow Dragu-Mihai wrote,

"That is, essentially a crowd-funding solution with all the inherent challenges of crowd-funding PLUS the challenges of getting people to accept a crypto-coin as a legitimate vehicle and how to exchange money for that, etc. Not to mention the question of whether or not there is any public pool of investors just waiting to invest in film. Seems there never has been. Crypto-technology doesn't solve that fundamental issue and may even make it harder since public perception of crypto is not flattering."

Response:

You are correct that there are elements of crowdfunding in tokenization. But, among the many benefits of tokenization, we see it as a way to attract a new pool of investors. One example is token divisibility means unaccredited investors can purchase smaller percentages of the asset. I will expand on this topic in a future post and it will be clear in visuals we are preparing for our website. It seems to me your view of crypto is not positive and that may spill over to the players in the industry and I can understand why if you have not been keeping pace with industry developments. We are well past the ICO scams of 2017 and many of the popular cryptocurrencies (there are now almost 6,000 different listed coins and more unlisted) operate in clear view of regulators and some are underpinning financial instruments on Wall St. and other financial centres. One recent development (July 2020) is that The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which is an independent bureau within the United States Department of the Treasury, now allows USA banks to be crypto custodians. Meaning they can hold bitcoin and other crypto for clients. Public perception of crypto has vastly improved and regular media coverage by financial reporters continues to contribute to positivity in the space. It's not my role to convert you or others who feel the space is a scam or who anticipate bitcoin or ethereum will fail. They wont, and the SEC would be remiss to change their view of ethereum.

Shadow Dragu-Mihai wrote,

" Every so often, since the beginning of bitcoin, someone has decided this was a great solution, and tried to use it, and never, to my knowledge, succeeded."

Response:

Somebody said this.... “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat..."

First, again to be clear, our project is not based on bitcoin - a public crypto and public blockchain - which happens to be a very different technology than the permissioned/private blockchain we are building alongside an public ethereum ERC20 based token.

Shadow Dragu-Mihai wrote,

" As far as a "tokenized asset" being "legal" - as a lawyer I will tell you flat that my opinion is the nature of a tokenized asset is a security. Period. So creating a funding scheme using a crypto token is at best skirting securities laws, and then only if you have gone through extensive legal maneuvers to take those transactions outside the jurisdiction of the SEC. Those maneuvers in themselves should raise red flags for investors."

Response:

Im sorry if we were not clear in the original post. There was never any mention of taking any sort of "legal maneuver" to skirt security laws. In fact, in the US there are legal ways to create "funding scheme" that would fit well within the entertainment industry. And, depending on the type of token used and the jurisdiction (we are global), there are a number of avenues available. One example of a completely legal and SEC compliant token is a the security token and STO's (Security Token Offerings). In the USA under a two tiered Regulation A+ (REG A+) up to $20M can be raised from nonaccredited investors in the Tier-1 and reporting requirements are light. The second Tier-2 is $50M but reporting is strict and it's accredited and nonaccredited investors.

Although this funding/seeding component is important, I dont want to lose sight of the overall benefits of our blockchain project.

Here's a very high level overview of our project ecosystem, for this purpose we'll call a blockchain for a film production a "Circle". We are still developing this so dont get tripped up in the conceptualization.

Each "Circle" is a "permissioned blockchain", that would be a the tech layer - ecosystem - on top of a new LLC for each production. This private Circle, would be commissioned by the founders/producers and they would select and invite all the necessary "participants". The participants would include every person and organization that touches the production. They include the producers, actors, extras, writers, directors, assistants, camera operators, hairdressers, makeup, set constructors, electricians, lawyers, law firms, accounting, auditors, investors, bankers, regulators, union reps, and so on.

The Circle blockchain could be redeployed for subsequent film productions by the same producer. In simple terms it could be overlayed onto a new LLC with some of the same participants - ie. lawyers, accountants, writers, or all of the same participants, or all new participants. This results in a streamlined and cost-effective roll-out with certain costs eliminated as each new production is developed.

The founders/producers of each production would use a token within the Circle to pay each participant. Each participant could have their own unique token or accept any token. Tokens can stay inside the ecosystem or offramped to a AML/KYC'd exchange for local FIAT / USD or used to exchange for a USD denominated stablecoin. Other cryptocurrencies could be swapped out on DEX's (decentralized exchanges) for other tokens. Other tokens could also be another participants tokens.

Here are some benefits to using blockchain in the entertainment industry

- Business Continuity

As a production moves through its life-cycle, the responsibility to maintain obligations, record keeping, distribution of revenues and payments and other commitments will remain for years. The transparent and trustless nature of blockchain will provide a solid foundation for any person or organization tasked with overseeing business continuity.

- Payments / Residuals

Blockchain can facilitate auto-payments using smart contracts. Residual payments are costly to administer and cryptocurrency can be used to execute payments as small as pennies. Oracles will be used to trigger payments based on smart contracts.

- Micro Investments and Profit Sharing

Cryptocurrency has democratized finance. It's now possible for any person, anywhere, to invest as little as a dollar. Imagine a camera operator or set builder who opts to reinvest a portion of their income in exchange for a small cut of the profits. Imagine if they did it on every production they worked on.

-Contracts

Agreements, contracts, assignments of IP, etc will all fit nicely into a chain-of-title and will reduce risk and insurance overhead .

- Networking

Each of the participants in a Circle can develop a trusted relationship with other participants. For example, a production accountant has the option of making themselves known (privacy release) to any other participant - say a business manager - who may want to use their accounting services on another production. Because identity verification is part of the Circle implementation, that accounting person or firm can reuse that identity generated to join other Circles.

Thanks again for your interest and please stay tuned as we continue to develop this sizable project.

Let me know if you have any questions Ill help out as best I can.

Brett