Steven Spielberg’s 1985 movie Young Sherlock Holmes was a flop…

It grossed only $19 million at the domestic box office.

Coincidentally, Spielberg was executive producer of Back to the Future, the highest-grossing film in 1985. It generated $381 million in ticket sales.

While Back to the Future was a critical and commercial success, history remembers Young Sherlock as an unremarkable movie.

But cinephiles know it for one remarkable innovation: a medieval knight made out of a stained-glass window.

Guinness World Records considers the knight to be the first fully computer-generated character in motion picture history.

It took animator John Lasseter six months to create the knight, even though the character was only in the film for 30 seconds. Lasseter later co-founded Pixar Animation Studios.

You may know Pixar as the studio behind the 1995 blockbuster Toy Story – the first full-length movie produced solely using computer-generated imagery (CGI).

In the past two decades, the biggest blockbusters of all time – films like Avatar, The Return of the King, and Avengers: Endgame – have relied heavily on CGI to render photorealistic visuals.

The most expensive movie ever made – the 2015 blockbuster The Force Awakens – used extensive CGI and cost $533 million to make.

Here’s why I’m sharing this movie history with you: It’s insanely expensive to create a movie or TV show using CGI.

But through the combined power of artificial intelligence and Web3, the costs of movie production will come down substantially… allowing anyone with a laptop computer to make Hollywood studio-quality films.

AI Will Eventually Win an Oscar

Before I became co-editor of Palm Beach Pioneer with Teeka… I was the director of photography at ad agencies Goodkrak and VaynerMedia.

During my time in the industry, I’ve shot commercials for brands such as JPMorgan Chase, Budweiser, and Unilever.

I also spent time working on shows for cable TV network HGTV, including Rescue My Renovation, Property Brothers, and Daryl’s Restoration Over-Hall.

So I know as much about filmography as I do about blockchain technology.

And I can tell you this: Modern-day filmmaking uses a great deal of digital technology.

You need massive computing power to create even small-budget movies or even TV commercials – not to mention major blockbusters.

And for smaller digital content creators and independent filmmakers, it’s difficult to render quality CGI without access to major Hollywood studios like Warner Bros. or Disney.

Rendering is the process of taking two-dimensional (2D) images and turning them into photorealistic three-dimensional (3D) models using computer software.

Rendering has applications across industries, too. And where we see CGI really exploding is artificial intelligence (AI).

According to Next Move Strategy Consulting, the market for AI will show strong growth in the coming decade. Its value of nearly $100 billion is expected to grow 20-fold by 2030, up to nearly $2 trillion.

The AI market covers a vast amount of industries… Everything from supply chains, marketing, product making, research, and analysis. Many more industries will adopt AI in some aspect within their business structures.

All of these AI applications will require some form of 3D rendering.

But even if we just focus on the cinema and video gaming industries, the opportunity is still broad.

The global market for generative AI in animation alone was valued at $900 million in 2022. It’s projected to achieve a remarkable CAGR of 35.7% during the period from 2023 to 2032 and is anticipated to reach $17.7 billion by 2032.

The combination of AI and CGI will be so powerful, research firm KPMG predicts a movie written by AI and using CGI will eventually win an Oscar in the next 20 years.

Web3 Will Combine AI and Blockchain Technology

The technology that will combine AI and blockchain to reduce the costs of moviemaking is Web3.

Web3 may sound futuristic, but it’s simply the next generation of the internet.

With Web3, you won’t just be able to send data to other people… but also anything of value. More importantly, you will own and control these assets.

At its simplest, blockchain technology is an online ledger. And like any other ledger, it tracks transactions.

But the blockchain has three main advantages over traditional internet networks.

  • It’s decentralized: Data is distributed instead of stored in one location… making blockchains much harder to hack than centralized databases.

  • It uses state-of-the-art encryption: This makes transactions much safer.

  • It’s peer-to-peer: This allows individuals to transact with one another without an intermediary – lowering costs.

Here’s the thing about decentralized networks: They allow anyone to tap into underutilized computational power cheaply and efficiently.

That simplifies the standard processes of rendering and streaming 3D environments and other visual effects.

As a result, Web3 will become an essential building block for next-generation digital products and services in the metaverse and AI.

Right now, only a handful of businesses have access to the massive computer farms needed to render high-quality CGI effects.

Web3 solves the problem of high costs and time-consuming tasks for independent filmmakers and digital content creators using blockchain technology.

Ultimately, anyone will be able to create 3D assets from an iPad or laptop and pay for remote rendering from a robust computer network using crypto tokens.

How to Learn More About Web3 Moviemaking

In Pioneer, Teeka and I have already identified a Web3 project that will allow anyone to render movies. And another that will use AI to revolutionize the music industry.

Out of fairness to our paying subscribers, I can’t reveal the names of these projects here.

But Teeka recently held a briefing on how Web3 will completely disrupt the internet over the coming years. You can watch the replay right here.

During the event, he explained what we see happening in crypto and what to expect in the year ahead.

Plus he shared details on a massive move in crypto we’ve never seen before. You’ll also learn more about three other altcoins we believe will get a boost from this catalyst.

I know combining Web3 and AI sounds like the far-off future. But Web3 technology is advancing at a much faster pace than the internet.

So if you want to be early in this trend, you need to act now.

Regards,

Graham Friedman
Co-editor, Palm Beach Pioneer