Braid Movie - False Claims about being first Blockchain Movie (Article Attached)

This post is partially inspired by this article on The Merkle where the producers have been caught red handed making claims that is is the first blockchain financed movie.

The Take away

If you don't read the rest of this post. The film is trying to sell 100% of its tokens to investors and plans on only paying them 30% of revenues past investment. They are selling 100% ownership but think they can retain control of both business choices (distribution, who gets hired, who gets fired) and Artistic. Wrong.

Background

I was told about this movie, Braid, yesterday. It immediately set off alarm bells in my head. The team behind it had clearly never produced a feature film before as their road map was for distribution was not only impossible it made a lot of assumptions.

A little about me

I am an Actor, Director, and Producer with over a decade of experience in the entertainment industry. I have produced two low budget indie features. I served as DP and head of Post on "Gravedigger" (a fun little Jersey Horror film made for almost no money), which is now distributed world wide. I also wrote, directed, and produced the somewhat larger small budget psychological thriller Grinder, which is currently in the festival circuit and screened in India last month. I have also starred in over 30 episodes of TV, almost a dozen made for TV movies, and worked under famed indie directors Jerry Zucker, Fred Olen Ray, and Jim Wynorski.

Disclaimer

Films are high risk investments. Investors should be wary especially if they are providing seed money. You will likely never see your money again.

Why an Investor should be wary of this ICO

1. Seed Money. Someone put up money for the sizzle reel, which likely cost upwards of $10,000. They will want this money back but it is not accounted for in their initial offering. How many more people are owed money before people who invet in tokens get their money back?

2. Red Flag #1 they list the submission deadline for Sundance. Everyone in the festival world knows that the festivals are completely programmed by the final deadline. Most of my acceptance letters have arrived days or weeks before the notification date because there are a lot of logistics that need to be put in place for a film to screen.

3. The road map is unrealistic. Not only do they list Preproduction as when the ICO is released, but they are planning to shoot immediately. It takes at least a month to crew up a 1.4$ Million feature and can take two to three times as long as that to put all the moving parts together.

4. They are also making very big assumptions on cast availability. I assume they will not be recasting from their sizzle reel, but that is not a guarantee they will be available at the snap of a finger to do this film (unless they are being paid to play and that is a whole other blog). Agents will also know the budget once the tokens are bought and may hold out for higher fees.

5. Red Flag #2 You can see from the projects IMDB page and the directors bio on their website that this is a first time director. I am all about taking chances on people, but the budget they are looking for does not match the people involved including cast. Further, the director is clearly coming out of the "art world." Making a commercial art film with no name actors is no way to make back the initial token investment

6. Red Flag #3 They shot a sizzle reel but do not have the cast listed on the IMDB page. This indicates to me that they are very fluid when it comes to the casting. If you can't be good to the none A-List actors who shot your sizzle how can I trust you to be good to me the investor. Sizzle Reel for Braid

7. Typical investor comparable chart. The movies they are comparing themselves to are of course all successful films, but the horror film genre is over saturated with movies at the same budget point which did terribly and lost everyone their shirts. Insider tip: Blair Witch is terrible to compare yourself to especially when it comes to sequels.

8. March 9th-18th is listed as "secure distribution." For those of us who know the festival circuit those are the typical dates of SXSW. I see no letters of guarantee on their pitch site showing that SXSW and/or Sundance have accepted them.

9. My final and biggest Red Flag. They are planning to pay back investors first +15% after which invetors are only entitled to 30% of revenue... 30%.... I don't know a single company that would try to pull this one over on investors or investors willing to be involved in a scheme in which they are not equal participants. Further 100% of tokens will go to investors and not the company or participants. This means that investors hold 100% the ownership of the film, but will only be allowed to reap 30% of the profits past investment. Anyone who has ever founded a company will tell you that shares are sold from the 49% you give to investors so that the public company holds the controlling number.
   

In summation

Do your due diligence on any ICO or film project you look at investing in. I find too many problems with their plan to make this a wise investment. I wish this production team the best with their film, but if I was approached by a group of investors interested in it I would warn them away.

Legal

This is an opinion article and is based around my personal experiences producing films. Any advice I offer is offered with the understanding you will do your own research and come to your own conclusions. I am not a registered investor. All screengrabs in this article are used under fair use doctrine and are publicly available on their investor platform.

If you liked this post check out some of my others:

My Introduceyourself where I talk about my life in New York as an Actor, Photographer, and Filmmaker

My first cooking blog about making a Whole Roast Chicken with Stuffing with pictures!

Or my first NSFW post following the story about how I ended up doing Late Night softcore movies

Unless otherwise noted all photos used are the work of Brandon Ruckdashel or official publicity material released by the projects I have been in.

Follow me @Bruckdashel for more of my Rants, Raves, and Recipes!