TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #651: Bitcoin-Backed Independent Film Funding with Forager

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Marty sits down with Ali Webb and Carlos Flores from Forager to discuss how they're using Bitcoin-backed funding to enable independent filmmakers to create original content without traditional studio interference or investor pressure. Forager + Whitepaper on Twitter: https://x.com/Forager_tv https://x.com/whtppr_studio Personal Handles: https://x.com/cmfe2510 https://x.com/AliWebb07 Websites: https://www.forager.tv/ https://whtppr.studio/ STACK SATS hat: https://tftcmerch.io/ Our newsletter: https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ TFTC Elite (Ad-free & Discord): https://www.tftc.io/#/portal/signup/ Discord: https://discord.gg/VJ2dABShBz Opportunity Cost Extension: https://www.opportunitycost.app/ Shoutout to our sponsors: Coinkite https://coinkite.com Unchained https://unchained.com/tftc/ Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videos Clips YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQ Website https://tftc.io/ Newsletter tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ Twitter https://twitter.com/tftc21 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/ Nostr https://primal.net/tftc Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/martybent Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://www.tftc.io/tag/podcasts/

you've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free if you talk about a fed just gone nuts all all the central banks going nuts so it's all acting like safe haven i believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency bitcoin wins in the world of fiat currencies bitcoin is the victor i mean that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Carlos and Ali, welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. This is I'm happy to be speaking with you guys because it's a budding theme on this show. Very small theme, but a budding one and one that excites me because I think it's a signal that Bitcoin is breaking out of the bubbles,

the community bubbles that have existed in my 12 years following it seems that what you guys are doing a forger really validates bitcoin being used as a tool by by anybody not just cypherpunks or people that care about sound money but what you guys are doing a forger in the world of entertainment and carlos we were just talking before we hit record that you heard my discussion with johnny advance um from total twins in angel studio and reached out and as i was also telling you i have a friend a very very close friend and we've been talking about this idea quite a bit the intersection of bitcoin in entertainment in an attempt to get better art into the world and let smaller um artists content creators whatever you want to define them as uh get their work

into the world and actually give them a chance to compete with the mega studios of the world so before we jump into the the broader discussion of this intersection why don't we start with a couple introductions just um how you guys got to where you are what you're doing at forager and um what uh what got you to the to thinking about bitcoin specifically will work um carlos i can give my intro and i'll let you take it um so i went to film school i majored in screenwriting and then i found my way to new york i landed in advertising so it was not where i expected to be after film school you know right out of film school i'm thinking okay i'm gonna go i'm gonna work for a studio i'm gonna be on set i'm gonna you know live the dream and i

I found that being on set and everything that I had imagined about filmmaking, once I did get my feet wet into some live action production for commercials, was not super aligned with the way that I prefer to live my life and to structure my life. I'm very routine oriented and I really enjoyed how, how the tech side of post-production was evolving and could make so many more things possible than, you know, just what it is capture on set. Now, so much respect for what happens on set. I just was not of that same, you know, mindset and stamina to be working those kinds of hours. and so I found my way into the post-production side of advertising and worked as an EP at a couple of different post houses and along the way I met Carlos and we decided to start Forager

together after working together for some time and I was getting ready to move into the freelance world which he had been occupying for his entire career up until that point before moving from New York to Portland. So that was what, um, gave the idea to start Forager as a remote collective of post-production artists. Uh, we saw at the time that there was a real need to give a platform for individuals in the post space who were not represented by legacy post houses for any number of reasons, you know, they enjoyed being freelance. They liked the autonomy having their own brand And they just needed that production support, which I could bring to the team and which we've built alongside the producers at Forager along the way. And different, already different tech was available to us at that time, like Slack and Frame.io that made it possible to collaborate in real time from anywhere.

So we launched Forager with this unique perspective on bringing together the best talent, no matter where they were located. Um, so we're pioneers in that sense because it was still, um, different to say that we didn't have, um, a brick and mortar place to go to for clients to go to, to supervise. And then that was January, 2019, a year later, it became the norm during COVID for everyone to work remotely. So they're a little bit ahead of the game there. And we've taken everything we've learned from building this network of great creatives. And Carlos will give his intro on how we started building Bitcoin into the picture as well along the way.

Yeah. Yeah, essentially exactly what Ali said. I think Bitcoin surprisingly entered our radar very early on, almost by chance, because we started the company in 2019, the pandemic hit 2020, and we were down, of course, as everyone else for a little bit. And at that moment, I was starting to just research what stocks to buy, like every person back then. and i stumbled upon bitcoin at the moment just from like an interview that i saw on youtube

and um and yeah i bought it personally not knowing much just kind of like bought it personally as an opportunity uh ali and i are good friends so i i talked ali into buying some personally as well uh and we were so small and informal we were like you know why not buy it and put it on foragers balance sheet uh and this was before uh even a sailor had appeared on uh on x it was like i think june 2020 when we first bought and we were small we just bought i think one to begin with um and yeah then uh we saw the whole strategy thing happening we were like oh this is gonna be a thing so we we started buying more um still a humble treasury uh but um But yeah, of course, we rode the whole thing up to the $60K.

Then we felt a little silly when, you know, it went all the way down in the bear market. But that was kind of like our introduction to Bitcoin, like we were buying it almost naively at first, not knowing much. But then you see this thing going up. We learned what it was. We got orange billed in the process and we thankfully held it for this whole time. It was only earlier this year where we were, like, dealing with some liquidity crunches that we were, like, you know, we have built this treasury. We want to maintain it.

And we thought, what if we were to leverage that treasury in order to raise some funds so we can survive and, like, you know, get through this rocky period? And so we did that. But we also announced to the world, you know, like, we are proud Bitcoin holders. and we we have a mandate now of holding this bitcoin treasury and uh and growing it uh and and that's on the forward year side and eventually comes the film studio part which is like our next chapter yeah yeah it's funny this is uh a bit of worlds colliding for me because my wife she actually she did post-production for mccann erickson for i think 12 years and she was on the microsoft account and i alley as you're describing those long nights and post prod i

mean there was weekends where she'd be working till 2 a.m every night and i think her team specifically did localization for global campaigns yes yeah the the her coming home after those long nights just describing i was like what did you what do you guys do it's like we just sit in a room and re-watch the commercial uh about a thousand times and try to nitpick and make sure everything's compliant i learned a lot about post-production basically from doing localization initially because yeah you have to really understand all the files that you need to to you know to update the graphics the voiceover i had some really late calls you know trying to get voiceover um from the team in china you know those sorts of things are yeah it's um very

technical you do watch the same thing over and over again but you get the you know you get the detail-oriented part of it and why it's so important there's like funny intricacies like france or south korea i forget you can't have electronics in the same still as water or something like that it's right you learn you do learn a little bit about what what plays in different markets yeah what is and isn't allowed yeah so not to say that post-production doesn't have late nights it certainly does um but it can be a little little different still and how much you can control the different factors i feel like yeah but like tying this into what your initiative is now like she ran them she was on the microsoft account for i think five or six years and i got

somewhat i got like an arm's length perspective of just like the world of like big corporate sort of ad spend and like how much money they were putting into it and what was actually being produced and put together great commercials um but it was always insane to me like how much they were spending on all this and uh when you think of trying to compete with that it becomes becomes hard and in this post-covid world that you guys described it seems like it's becoming easier but you just need to combine a bunch of tools and creative thinkers to to really be the upstart competitor with these behemoths whether it's in the corporate world doing advertisements or um in the film world with the the major studios um and so i think that's a good jumping off point

for the white paper uh for white paper uh the studio and how you guys are thinking of basically arming indie creators with the financial tools to to make sure that they can get their art out into the world yeah um so like you said from all that we've learned competing with these big companies and holding our own because we could see that we needed to be nimble and that really is the name of the game especially with how quickly um things like ai are moving every every week it seems like there's a new development something that is making the expectation that you should be moving faster and doing things cheaper um that is affecting every part of filmmaking and as we've seen through

putting bitcoin on our balance sheet forager it is the one thing that's actually preserving our hard work in the long run and when we realized we could have a model to help filmmakers with this Because we still need great films that are telling human stories that are made by people with people and not just leaning into AI to make things faster and cheaper because there just isn't any isn't the same amount of funding available anymore. Let's incorporate the tech and the tool that is Bitcoin to preserve those efforts. And like Carla said, and, you know, we can talk about more separating the investment from the art to a degree, you know, bringing in a whole nother set of investors who are interested in the returns that can be offered from our model and not just waiting for a film to make money. Of course, the hope for everyone is that the film will sell and be seen and generate returns. But, you know, let's lean into the Bitcoin backing to bring in more money and then we can use the returns from a sale of a film to reinvest in the company and back more films and continue this cycle. and continue to invest in our stories and our people and not just um participate in a race

to the bottom which is what we were feeling we were becoming a part of yeah so i do want to touch on the ai stuff we can do that later but i think just digging into the problem that indie filmmakers have right now let's sort of paint that landscape for for the audience what do like when we're the biggest pain points that indie filmmakers run into i imagine capital is one of them but um like what how hard is it for them to compete i guess is the question um yeah i mean i guess As a first step for context, I think film is perhaps one of the riskiest business you can get into as an investor in the sense that you can have a great recipe for success with a great script and great talent and a great director, and the movie can still flop. It can still get no traction. So, of course, there's a lot of pressure on the investing side.

And I think you touched upon a little bit on the episode with Johnny, but yes, especially in slower times, I think Hollywood and even the streaming networks, they're betting on safer projects. There's a lot more bet on sequels and spinoffs and just any project that will guarantee some sort of success or return for the investor. So, of course, that leaves artists with original ideas and riskier projects that have no track record of financial success at the bottom of the list. and uh we we think that betting on great talent and original ideas is a winning formula but you have to give it time and you have to like experiment and try and uh i think there are There are not many companies betting on that kind of raw story or film at the moment. We really like, for example, A24, what they did, especially in the early days. They were thinking very long term, betting small amounts of money, but on really risky

projects, just trying to build the IP for the future. And I think they were very successful at it. They built a brand around it and even a cult following. But, of course, as you grow and you become more established, that kind of risk taking can only last for so long. And, of course, they had to take investor money in the last, I forget when it was, that they took like a big round of private investment. And, of course, that changes the recipe, right? Like, now you have people depending on you to make your numbers, and that affects ultimately the artist, right? Like, there's less funds going around for new, risky, original IP.

So that's kind of, like, the biggest problem that we set out to solve with this. Ali, I don't know if I missed something. No, bottom line, I do think the biggest issue is access to capital. And the reason why is multifaceted. But if you're talking smaller than A24, it's finding those investors. And I know that a lot of our independent artists are relying on angel investors, friends, family, Kickstarter. you know it takes a lot to bring together a production and there's often no guarantee that the investors are going to to make their money back and this is how people have to start you know you gotta start somewhere um i think very few get into the industry right away with name recognition and a lot of backing and investors who know for sure they're making their money back so

So along with the other challenges in this industry, I see this contributing to a diminishing amount of available funding for original ideas. like i said it it does feel like a race to the bottom and um we just we've like said we've only seen bitcoin preserve our you know the value that we brought to our clients and our companies so let's bring that you know make it available to independent artists but also it's not just about um you know convincing people to invest in bitcoin because most people still obviously do not feel comfortable and so let's make this appear as um accessible as possible for for investors so they can look at it as an alternative to their their stocks or you know the 401k or whatever might be giving them between five and ten percent you know and they can also contribute to the arts because

i do think that there is a large selling point from the conversations i've had of saying hey we can preserve original storytelling and potentially beat the hurdle of AI that is coming for all of the films and the content that we're consuming. And they want to be a part of that. And it's great that then they can make some money and potentially beat inflation along the way. Sup freaks. This report of TFTC was brought to you by our good friends at CoinKite. They make the cold card queue my favorite hardware wallet the most secure hardware wallet on the market as you can see it's got the blackberry form factor full keyboard it's got two secure enclaves you create your private public keys offline the device never has to go online never does go online so you

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sats helping you think in a bitcoin standard it works on amazon zillow x your bank account quickbooks you can convert everything to bitcoin it's really cool it's also 100 open source mit license we don't collect any data all of the conversions happen in your browser on your local device it's a great way to recalibrate your life and begin thinking in sats go check it out at opportunity cost dot app that's opportunity cost dot app let's dive into the mechanics of how you guys are envisioning bitcoin as a funding mechanism actually work so is white paper just building a big treasury and using that to fund films or is there intent because when you guys dm me and you sort of explain the top level of the idea in text i

I couldn't help but think of a company that we've partnered with, 1031 Battery Finance, but they're focused on the commercial real estate market and their credit fund. So they raise dollars into a credit fund, underwrite projects, give them, lend them dollars with a portion of those dollars, 10% to 20% being put in Bitcoin held within the loan structure throughout the duration of the loan, typically 8, 10, 15 years, whatever it may be is your model similar in that sense where it's a combination of dollars and

bitcoin and you're sort of underwriting individual products and making sure that they're bolstered for the mini bitcoin treasury uh yeah essentially we uh we took a lot of inspiration uh from sailor and also the the original bond that we created ourselves for forager but basically let's say that a film needs $50,000 for production like a short film we raise a bigger amount

than that and a portion of that amount raised goes directly into Bitcoin which we use to repay the investor and the rest goes directly into production

but by doing that Bitcoin split investment we are able to repay the original uh the original loan plus the interest which is five to ten percent uh so essentially yes we're growing a treasury uh that allows us to grow more and more uh but then every film financed has a bitcoin portion uh attached to it uh and it's running in the back and its function is to repay the original investor and we're not paying the investor in bitcoin we're just paying them in dollars uh and we have a few variations but it's between five and ten percent uh now this is not something to make someone rich you know from these bonds but it is essentially uh uh comparable to like uh high yield savings or like uh or like a

treasury bond. But on the end of it, you not only get your five to 10% annualized return, you also get to finance a film. So, and on the artist side, we are able to tell them, you know, we are in charge of repaying the investor with our Bitcoin strategy. And you guys can just focus on the art and you will not hear any notes from the investors. They have no say over the creative uh so that's uh we like that separation because we think that's how like uh great films you know can be made that's a very important separation right so you guys are sort of acting as the the how would i describe this um the wall of safety between the artist and the capital and handling that it makes sense so like i guess from the investor's perspective

it's like all right i'm comfortable doing this because i have this funnily enough counterintuitive to most people but it has proven to be true historically de-risking by putting a portion of my principle in the bitcoin that will be that will at least preserve its bursting power if not potentially increase and then they've got a call option on the movie being a massive success i imagine um in getting royalties is i imagine they get equity in the films themselves as well so it's funny right now we have three variations of the product and it's kind of like different for different risk appetites the the five percent yield one has bitcoin uh securing the loan not the full obligation but the the capital uh and you get your five percent you know return

But if something were to happen to the company or anything, you know, that Bitcoin is pledged to you and that Bitcoin is from our treasury. We have on the higher risk side, we have the 10 percent annualized and that one has no early redemption. All these are set to five year long loans so that, you know, we can let Bitcoin appreciate and we're not liable for all the fluctuations. uh so we have those products right now and so far nobody has asked us about uh equity in the film surprisingly um and i think it's also because of our early investors uh they didn't even care so much about the films they were just kind of like oh i have mutual funds giving me this i could just park it here and i get a better yield and uh and oh that's fascinating so it is kind of opening doors to capital that would never touch films uh but of course i think we

have a whole gamma of potential uh people that could you know like that may also want some yield as you're saying like some kicker from the film yeah is there uh is this model catching on is anybody in the film industry or just creative industry in general see what you guys are doing and being like oh this is interesting are they deriding you are they cheering you on Um, I would say that the, the response has been really positive. Um, no one has come for us and said, what you're doing is crazy and you should stop doing this. Um, maybe they think it, I wouldn't be surprised, but, um, it's been very positive. It might be catching on. We don't know, but like you said earlier, we're really only aware of angel studios incorporating Bitcoin on the balance sheet

entertainment company, we aren't aware of anyone else doing something similar. I think that it will eventually become part of the strategy for most companies. And that's a broader conversation, I suppose, on Bitcoin treasury companies. But as far as we know, we're one of the earlier movers and maybe people are waiting to see how, you know, what kind of results we get from this. i mean that's a good question because when it comes like sailor and his strategy just bitcoiners who've gotten to bitcoin early generally and typically takes a bit of time for their conviction to be validated and so like at what level would you consider the strategy a success for you guys

well i think once we have repaid our first loan like we're very new we just launched um it's white paper anyhow what you know forger's been around for six years but um white paper we just launched a couple months ago and maybe less than that actually so our first two short films just filmed this last weekend so we're going to head into post-production we'll have something to share hopefully by the end of the year we'll start submitting to festivals i think in the next year we'll really start to see the how things are received how the bitcoin element is you know is part of the marketing or not part of the marketing or it's not pushing that i'm not trying to say you know everyone has to be talking about how it's backed by bitcoin i think it's an interesting

talking point personally um you know obviously but our artists aren't you know we're not asking them to go out and spread the word about the bitcoin backing unless they you know want to talk about how it's made it possible to fund their film i think in the next year or two we'll um start to see how you know it's changing the way that the industry is funding films um and for us it'll be a first test of the model yeah and i also uh i think we right now we're dealing with shorter form projects, but I think the goal is to get features soon. And we think that in theory, as Bitcoin grows exponentially, so will our treasury and we'll have even more funds to play with then. And I think another portion of it is that we do want to make everything

public and put kind of like um the treasury life but also how every film uh how every film is attached to a bitcoin back bond uh online and we want to show also the performance of each bond so people can see oh this film is being repaid live you know like uh with bitcoin in the bags so it's not just uh it's i think it's a new way to measure a film's uh success it's not just box office it's not just um you know uh fees uh it's uh art can be you know funded with bitcoin's performance yeah building in the open that's massive over 10 000 investors downloaded the original how to position for the bitcoin boom when bitcoin was just 27k and it called for 120k plus that target's now hit so what's next turdem easter is back with the 2025 edition refreshed for the

mid-cycle moment packed with new data, new insights, and TUR's latest price outlook. Plus, you'll get exclusive access to charting our way through chaos. TUR's new 30-minute Q3 2025 presentation explaining why this bull run might be only just beginning and what forces could push it to the next level. Read the first ever mid-cycle report from Adamant Research at unchained.com slash tftc. That's unchained.com slash tftc. And also, if you're using Unchained, you can use the code tftc for fifty dollars off any of their services go check it out on to the very interesting stuff like what what do you think the film industry is lacking right now in terms of types of movies that are being made um themes that are avoided stories that aren't being told

that you guys are excited to back that's a really good question i'll say this i'll add this just for some context because my wife and i and our brother and sister-in-law we were having a conversation a couple weeks ago over dinner uh how we all four of us have young children we have between us four soon to be five under the age of 10 and we were sort of complaining to each other that there's no children's movies these days that actually have like real people it's all like animated stuff and we were reminiscing about the 90s movies that we love like dennis the menace home alone

honey i shrunk the kids you name like a bunch of really good children's movies um yeah what was the stephen king movie uh about the boys um can't believe that's escaping my name uh my mind but regardless it seems like we were just we have nonchalantly noticed the sort of fiatification of kids movies where it's like all these animated movies which some of them are really good but um you're like god i wish the kids had had like live action films like we did growing up that um they just seemed to be missing out on and that's something that we were just a couple weeks ago saying i wish somebody would fund movies like that yeah i i mean that is a great point um i also have a couple younger kids and i love

animated films i was originally drawn to filmmaking because i loved the look of stop motion films and then also realized i could never be a stop motion animator also a very hard thing to do all day long um but so I love animation I love what you can do there but you're right having live action and just seeing other real kids on screen I know we're supposed to limit their screen time I agree with that but sometimes necessary and like my one-year-old daughter loves to hold pictures of her family and I think just seeing the real people in a photo is like still kind of novel especially with the screens and you know all that they have access to these days yeah we uh we had uh we had a friday night movie night the other week and the kids watch meet the

parents and it was just funny watching them react to it uh they got emotional in some of the parts and uh it's like gosh it doesn't it feel and that came out i think in like 2000 or 2001 and so you don't have any great movies like that anymore and then carlos you mentioned it we talked about it with johnny it just seems like hollywood these days you're just stuck in this sort of superhero universe sequel machine it's like okay i don't need another marvel movie let's let's get something interesting here yeah i mean i was gonna mention i i got into filmmaking because of all the auteurs in the 90s like uh paul thomas anderson tarantino uh even sofia coppola um and i feel like there was a cool trend back then of betting on artists with great vision and you

just bet a lot of money on them and hopefully one of them will be a great film um i feel like that was a risk-taking form that doesn't exist as much anymore of course there's still the big festival circuit and all that but um not a lot of studios betting on a tours and uh just uh trusting you know the the uh artist's vision in that way and i think it's uh against what we're talking about yes like less risk-taking overall yeah like there's no modern day mall rats or airheads exactly it's uh dogma because i love those movies growing up and just and it seems like the deprecation of that risk taking happened pretty quickly within the last 15 20 years which may seem like a long time to some people but really isn't that long a period of time no and and on a

similar note because i think what's kind of underpinning you know your examples and and is comedy and you know with the cancellation um late late night with steven colbert i was listening to a podcast about how comedy and like adult comedy films also has seen i don't know it's been it has not been something that studios have been investing in for a long time we used to have you know like anchorman and those sorts of movies that have just become classics and they're so good but they don't invest in comedy the way they used to and it also seems to be tracking this trend of of comedians having their individual platforms on social media yeah that's actually a really good point like how much

of the landscape has shifted because of the emergence of social media and these different mediums because everything's gone to like one two minute clips uh and you see it like on not that i'm on tiktok but people share them on twitter and you see it on instagram like these individual creator accounts that have like a certain shtick and they make like a minute video it's pretty it's not incredible production but it's enough to grab your attention and a lot of eyeballs are going there and i think that's another another sort of theme that's been discussed between my wife and our brother and sister-in-law is like the attention span um like bringing back like longer form content and like putting your phone down actually engaging

in a piece of art for longer than 120 seconds and uh extending that to 120 minutes is something that i'd like to return to and we actually we went and saw the f1 movie a couple of weeks ago and it was uh it was actually fun it was a fun movie i really liked it and it felt good to be in the that was the first time I was in the theater, I think since COVID or actually now last summer, we took the kids to see a movie, but I've only since COVID, I think I've been to the theater like three or four times maybe. And, uh, going to see movies in the theater is something that I think is becoming a lost sort of practice in society.

And that's very sad because it is a fun experience. Yeah. I saw this fascinating interview with Nick Glaser. the comedian and uh yeah she was basically saying that she lives for the for the youtube clips or the tiktok clips um and that's how people really consume your media and that's how also they assess if you're successful at something like if you are walking red carpets or if you have clips here and there um but when it comes to the numbers nobody even though all these comedians have these hbo specials uh very few people actually watch all that like the media really really really lives and the in all the clips and all the secondary content that people extract from

all those specials um which is a little sad because we we of course want to make long films and and proper features uh but yeah then then you're competing with the attention span of the the new generation yeah and i mean this ties back to bitcoin too because it's really incentive driven um all those platforms are trying to sell ads and they just need volume of one to two minute clips getting millions of views to sell ads into in the monetary sort of incentive disruption that's how it manifests exactly yep i do think when we skim over tv a little bit because we're like we're marrying this you know the short commercial side of things which is like what forager has done and now with white paper we want to see a re-emergence of original ideas and film

i actually consume like more tv than film and there is still a lot of great content in tv and watching some really funny shows as well um so i i feel like maybe that's where hollywood's been hedging its bets a little bit in the streaming and the tv because it does still um i guess apply to our shorter attention spans and we don't have to go to the theater and make a whole outing out of it and you know spend two and a half three hours and it's also been an interesting thing is that the movies have gotten so long it's like to get you to commit to going to a theater and spending four plus hours um it's like it's kind of completely in the other direction and i don't know if that was uh if that was intentional but uh it definitely keeps me from going to the theater

not that i would be able to as much anyways like you were saying too it's pretty hard when you have young kids to find the time to go and make those arrangements but then thinking okay if we're going to go it's going to be a three plus hour commitment it's a lot because everyone's pretty busy yeah like yeah like a 90 minute movie is perfect and yes i'm just a recent car last year mentioning tarantino i think i think one of my favorite films of all time is reservoir dogs and okay just looked it up now we're in 40 minutes probably longer back then but yeah if you can get like a 90 minute quick hit and that's like that's where the artistry really comes in is the people that have the ability to like tell the story in a 90 minute span and really get you

emotional and have you thinking after yeah and i'm gonna watch something like game of thrones or house of the dragon like wait i basically did watch a movie so i'm telling myself i can't go make time for a movie i mean it's definitely easier to sit in front of my tv and stream something than go into the theater but some of these shows are are really long and they captivate you and you go oh my gosh i can't believe i've been sitting here for you know over an hour i think there's a balance to be struck to there and again finding that like you said consolidation of a story into 90 minutes which is what when i was growing up that that was a full film for me too yeah i'm curious what the uh the short films that you guys are funding

now via white paper what what type of themes and stories are they leaning into if you're free to disclose yeah um so what we're looking at right now we do have um some comedy so it seems to be again underpinning the discussion and i think we're all looking for a bit of escape from the day-to-day and that's what comedy can provide so we have two short films that are um comedic in nature uh once the satire as well um on the fashion industry and so i'm really i'm really excited to see that one come to life um and then we've got more of a coming of age story that will be in development next year also um or like deeply rooted in like the political polarization of our country um so that's interesting because i do think those themes are avoided um

for no obvious reasons in hollywood this time and then another project that will be finished up early next year then it's more like a documentary series and there's a couple episodes for proof of concept there so it runs the gamut really trying to find a balance in our our slate or portfolio yeah and especially i feel like we're always uh trying to look for uh projects that don't seem like that are as commercially viable or that wouldn't uh seem as attractive to a traditional film investor and like one of the projects that we just shot this weekend is that it's basically just physical comedy and it's two people physically fighting over a piece of length that they found uh that fell on someone's shoulder uh so it's no dialogue pure fighting

uh yes and and it's just in my opinion it's just original like uh it doesn't have to fit a specific genre um so yeah we're kind of playing yeah with the whole gamma of like content oh yeah and they would be remiss of me not to bring it up because we mentioned it earlier but what are your thoughts on this explosion of ai generated content and how do you view it as people working in the industry is it a tool that you see yourself leveraging or do you think there's going to be a market for like bolts to nuts beginning to end produced shot acted produced by by humans that people will want to consume instead of the ai because hand up we've been experimenting with the uh the ai generated content just to tell stories that we don't think are being

told a little two minute clips uh in an attempt to draw attention to a web browser extension that we launched and it's been fun experimenting with that but there is like a part of me it's like ah this is cheap relatively easy it's having it's getting us good exposure but um there is the romantic in me that that thinks that we need to preserve like actual human filmmaking acting and storytelling for sure yeah i mean go ahead no i mean i think it's a very sensitive subject of course in our field because uh as much opportunity as there is of course a lot of people on the artistry side also feel the threat because these programs were getting better and better every day and

I personally think that you still need a good amount of taste if you're gonna be creating these creative videos or images just because there's still a lot of AI that looks a little bit plasticky a little bit. If you don't know how to prompt it, but also if you don't give it good references, it ends up looking still artificial. All of that's changing. And still, I think a lot of people are treating it as more individual frames or individual clips, not so much like storytelling like i've seen very few uh actual sequences that tell a story that moves you or have a beginning and end so that's still i think uh in the starting uh phase but i see a lot of opportunity especially because uh we have uh this artist that we collaborate with a lot and he's

much into AI and he only sees opportunity. He's very tech savvy as well. And he was like, you know, in the past, if I had this idea of like spiders, robot spiders coming down from the ceiling, and I wanted to propose that to a client or to like another creative, it would be a whole discussion, right? Like you would pitch it and they would be like, okay, well, do we need a whole VFX team in India so we can outsource it because it's a lot of work, a lot of man hours, and

it's discussions with the VFX company. So it's a huge, long process just to come up with spiders coming from the ceiling. And he's like, with AI, I can do it overnight. I can just work on my prompts,

I can be in the zone creatively, and I can accomplish my vision just myself. with a computer uh so in a way that's really empowering i think for a creative as well uh the question is does the ai overtake that everyone like even even the person creating making those decisions i think that's the debate oh sorry ali done i was gonna say i was gonna say it's been fun experimenting it with like but even what we've produced like it's obviously ai we haven't crossed the uncanny uncanny valley

either and i'm under the belief that like all the agi as i talk coming out of silicon valley from like the sam altman so the world is more hype than actual oomph like i don't think ai is going to be able to replace human creativity so like the idea that you're just going to launch these models and they're going to come up with these unique stories that let humans actually connect with i'm a bit skeptical of even with the crazy advancements that we've seen over the last few years could be wrong but i just have a hunch that you can't create consciousness in in the digital world in the machine world if you will no matter how vehemently sam altman and others are telling you that that they're doing just that yeah i and you're right it is

not a replacement for humans ideas and and good creative you can augment it it can be a great springboard we've used it to concept things you know before they need to be sent to someone to really bring that vision to life because it requires so many different tools even generating images like carlos has done for certain projects just again like templates see what we could do someone wants this thing and you know in the shot to move faster or to behave differently you know what would it take what could it look like it's great for that kind of experimentation and stress testing but it's not a magic bullet and you know we were we're pitching on a job last week that has a really tight turnaround and needs a lot of efx help and the you know the thinking is that

oh because it's such a tight turnaround like let's just plug it into ai and make it happen right it's not like that you know there's you have to take into consideration continuity and carlos have brought up at that point during the pitch you know every time you you generate the image again something's going to be a little off and you can get really good at prompting you can only take it so far before someone else has to come in another vfx artist to you know make everything perfect and consistent take certain things out and add others in so that you're not ending up with a new set of variables every time so it's a great tool it has definitely sped up some concepting for us and for clients i know that they are leaning into it and advertising you know just

to generate customer research and and stress us whether a certain demographic will respond in a certain way to their idea they can collate all of that research to you know ask the i the ai if it's going to work or not i don't know how well that's going to serve them in the long run but it's interesting because like you said building consciousness that seems like too tall of a task i think they're trying i think they might get pretty close um but overall it is not going to completely replace what we're doing and and we love novel things and and computers have to be trained on something and then know what to deliver consistently um and so i don't think anyone's going to react to ai content um in the long run like in and engage in it the same way

um if we didn't have anyone coming up with the ideas that would make the content different or more um you know more relatable for certain situations or what's going on in society so there's always going to be a human driver but it is um causing the industry to contract because like carl said things can happen faster they can happen with fewer people and so the entire industry and by industry i'm being you know mostly speaking from uh you know post-production in the advertising space but then you know further into narrative as well it we need to to reorganize ourselves and understand that it's going to require even more um nimbleness and more modular with our relationships and our vendors then even before you know before and that was that's been

foragers entire you know foundation is being nimble and um we still find ourselves going okay let's keep up with this new tech and what does this mean what do we really need to invest in that yeah i feel like you guys are ahead of the curve just in the business model being nimble small um in a boutique maybe that might be the right word or the wrong word but it's the word that comes to my mind and hopefully what i would imagine is there's definitely disruption going on people worried but hopefully that that wall of worry turns into people recognize like oh there's a lot of opportunity here and you see like the uh the world of a thousand flowers bloom where instead of having the major studios dominate everything people recognize the cost of being

cut and they can compete and they a world of 10 000 foragers emerges and you have this sort of competition for storytelling um maybe a combination of human uh ai production maybe there's there'll be some there's like ai only others that are human only um and it could create like a really cool competitive environment that ultimately should lead to more creativity and better better film out there yeah definitely and i was having a conversation with another person in our field a few months ago and and he equated an entirely human production in the future being like shooting on film now like i really want to shoot on film it's going to look so authentic instead of you know just using a digital camera um and then it's like okay well let's think about

that we have to you know this is how you have to treat film and process it and this is the lead time it takes and if we just you know if we're short on time and money we'll just use the digital camera. And I think that it is a very good analogy to use for, you know, as we move forward with AI and it gets better and better. It's like, hey, what is it? You have time and money and you want to make something that's entirely human, no AI, et cetera. Great. But do we, you know, need to make some sacrifices or, you know, cut a few corners and bring in the AI? And that's just something that's going to be part of everyone's thinking when they're doing their concepting and strategy yeah and as you guys are proving a white paper like bitcoin can be the tool

to enable that that those teams that want to like be the film of the next era uh recording on film of the next era which is doing everything with humans only i think that's enabled with smarter and um smarter capital or funding for these for these films yeah yeah like they said in the beginning it preserves the effort that we're putting in today and you know our industry has seen a bit of a race to the bottom because your money doesn't go as far and everyone's companies say now operations have been contracting for a number of reasons so your nest egg for making that film might only get you half a film by the time you get around to making it so that's the other thing is it takes a long time to to raise capital and set up a production and and you know

you just can't keep up you can't really keep up and so you've got to find ways to do it cheaper and faster and unfortunately that doesn't um support like original good creative filmmaking go on yeah it's exciting like i said in the beginning this is i love having you two on because i think it's a validation that bitcoin is breaking out of the relatively small bubble it's existed in its first 16 years um since the protocol launched and i'm a true believer in um sort of people seeing a company like forager and white paper doing what you guys are doing getting inspired and as it pertains to like bitcoin's adoption over the long run i think it's projects like the ones that you guys are working on that are like sneaky edge cases they're

going to have profound effects on others because for the longest time like i said it's been cypherpunks and austrian economics nerds and it really leaned into bitcoin but i think we just need to normalize bitcoin as a tool for for anybody not just those who are either economically or politically uh considering end up on the an extreme side of of the spectrum of economics or politics uh bitcoin is simply a tool that anybody can use and i think what you guys are doing at forger and white paper is an incredible example of that thank you thank you so much um yeah no and and and you're right it's it's a tool for everyone it's still very hard to uh get bitcoin across to our circle because

it's very early on just explaining our concept to fellow filmmakers it sounds too good to be true sometimes also you know like you get to make your art no need to worry about the investment

the investors will give you your returns you don't need to worry about the film's performance so you can only accomplish that with a tool like Bitcoin so hopefully it catches on and uh and we can make some great stuff yeah where can uh anybody listening to us find out more about what you two are up to

yeah so um you can follow us um on x and that's going to be a white paper and for our purposes It's spelled W-H-T-P-T-R underscore studio. Also, Instagram, great for more of our behind the scenes and actual teasers, the better visual medium for us there. It's also at whitepaper, W-H-T-P-P-R dot studio. Either of those places are good ways to follow what we're up to. Awesome. we'll make sure we link to all that in the show notes carlos alley thank you for coming on i think what you guys are doing is incredibly cool number one incredibly important number two really leading

the way and showing people that this stuff is possible and it could have profound positive effects on preserving certain art forms in this case film um which is something that i'm passionate about i like movies and i would like to see better movies out there so the fact that you guys are using bitcoin in an attempt to fund the directors and artists who are not getting attention from the big studios is really exciting thank you so much thank you so much marty appreciate it all right and so we got today freaks peace and love okay freaks thank you for listening to the show i hope you liked it if you did like it please make sure you subscribe rate review the show it helps us out a lot and also if you like these conversations i've come to realize that

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