Livetree and Polkadot Moonbeam Join Forces

Governments, corporations and social media networks have failed to provide a fair playing field for the users of the internet. Livetree and Moonbeam join forces to take on the problems we face. 

Our social media channels are dominated by biased, opaque recommendation algorithms which only go on to create dangerous echo chambers and deepen cultural divisions, exacerbate world problems and cuts down the chance we have to understand one another. Livetree’s partnership with Moonbeam Polkadot means we now have the scalability to deliver our promise to decentralise how we consume content online. 

How?

The integration will port Livetree’s Ethereum based crowdfund and data governance smart contracts to Moonbeam and a bridge will be created from Ethereum MainNet. Our partnership will have a variety of benefits for our users which you can read more about on Medium. 

Read more on Medium

Livetree Completes First Integration with Polkadot Moonbeam

This will be the world’s first blockchain-based crowdfunding social network dedicated to data rights management & licensing for film, TV & video content announces an integration with Moonbeam. 

Livetree — a video based social network dedicated to crowdfunding video stories based on the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is pleased to announce an integration with Moonbeam. Livetree is a video streaming platform with a web 3.0 decentralised infrastructure and video data protocol for crowdfunding, data rights and video licensing. Moonbeam, the Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform on Polkadot, provides a developer platform that enables Solidity contracts to easily be deployed with limited changes required.

The Livetree team has completed the first phase of integration on Moonbase Alpha TestNet with a successful deployment of Livetree’s existing Ethereum based contracts to Moonbeam. The full integration will involve porting all of Livetree’s Ethereum based crowdfund and data governance smart contracts to Moonbeam as well as creating a bridge from Ethereum MainNet.

Read more on Medium

 

 

Music from the New Jungle

“We don’t want to be here. No one wants to leave their own nation, to be far away from their home country, to be away from their mum and dad. But leaving was our only choice.”

Continue reading “Music from the New Jungle”

I Bought My Own Rainforest

The Amazon is in danger – so how can you make a difference?

In 2019 there were a record number of fires in the Amazon rainforest. The Amazon is home to ten percent of the world’s species and its decline could have a serious effect on the global climate.

So what can we do about it? As fires and deforestation destroy large parts of the Amazon rainforest, many of us have been looking for ways to protect the world’s richest and most varied biological reservoir. Check out our room Save the Jangal on Livetree to join the conversation now!

It is easy to feel powerless in the face of the hurdles and difficulties that come with conservation efforts, but what if we took matters into our own hands such as in the  “I Bought My Own Rainforest”  documentary on Livetree?

To protect the land from illegal loggers, wildlife photographer Charlie Hamilton James bought 100 acres of the Peruvian Amazon… without even looking at it first. Upon arrival he found that the reality was very different to what he expected. He had in fact bought an illegal coca plantation, and key to all this was Elias, an logger who lived on the land with his daughter.

Follow his journey of discovery across the Amazon in “I Bought My Own Rainforest” on Livetree, as he works in illegal gold mines and cattle ranches, lives with the Machiguenga and even takes mind altering brews as a Shaman’s assistant.
This fascinating documentary is a powerful and honest look at the complexities of conservation and poverty in the Amazon. It is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and by watching on Livetree you can make a real impact and help bring it to light.

Livetree gives you the power to go beyond watching and engage with millions of like-minded people. To find out more about “I Bought My Own Rainforest” and discover more impactful films about world issues, head over to Livetree and become part of a community that cares.

Livetree

Livetree is your home for documentaries, feature films, TV series and your live video stories that shine a light on world issues. Everything from the environment, poverty innovation, diversity, overcoming adversity, equality and the 17 sustainability goals. You can watch films, TV, chat, interact and form a real community to make a positive social change.

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Poverty Within the Eyes of a Child

Sometimes we forget how fortunate we are, and the lack of social support has left some of the most vulnerable children in terrible situations. In this revealing documentary, ‘Poverty Within the Eyes of a Child’, we’re introduced to Kylie and Becky, two eight-year-old twins who live in a household of 12. Their parents are unemployed, and the girls are having to face adult responsibilities long before they should. The children are unable to go to school and face imminent eviction due to circumstances out of their control. Find out more here on the Eyes of a Child documentary.

Continue reading “Poverty Within the Eyes of a Child”

The Wider Sun returns to LiveTree!

Before we launched our film and TV streaming service, LiveTree was a fully operational UK-based crowdfunding platform for two years. Some of the great films developed during that time are coming back for exhibition on our streaming service.

‘The Wider Sun’, a Scotland-set debut short directed by Sophia Carr-Gomm, raised its budget on LiveTree, going onto show at the Cambridge Film Festival and make a big splash in Edinburgh in November. The premiere, however, was at the BFI, which Carr-Gomm credits to the LiveTree’s association with the legendary organisation. Continue reading “The Wider Sun returns to LiveTree!”

What is Qravity? How does it help independent filmmaking?

 

Qravity is a new decentralized platform for creatives working in film, TV and video content industries to come together, network, collaborate and, most importantly, initiate royalties contracts. The smart contracts facilitated by blockchain technology allow for a project’s revenues to be distributed transparently, instantaneously and automatically, cutting out many of the costly middle-men of an antiquated industry structure. Continue reading “What is Qravity? How does it help independent filmmaking?”

Livetree touches down in Chennai, India!

LiveTree arrives in Chennai, India this week for the IndiEarth Xchange 2018 festival.

IndiEarth is an online network of creatives and artists working film, TV and music. With over 40,000 users it is the beating heart of India’s independent scene. Continue reading “Livetree touches down in Chennai, India!”

How Do You Get a Film Funded?

During the Golden Age of Hollywood, five gigantic studios produced almost every major motion picture. Producers, actors, directors, cast and crew – even screenwriters – were all contracted employees of single studios and were assigned to many projects a year by the big execs. Most films earned respectable returns, and the runaway hits more than covered the losses of the year’s biggest flops. As long as the film industry ran, studios were in business.

 

After the vertically integrated system broke down, big studios downsized and esssentially became backer-distributors rather than production companies. They would hire production companies or freelance creatives to work on their projects. With less control over the production process and monetising at fewer stages, studios took fewer and fewer risks, ultimately leading to the highly formulaic, reliable, massive-scale tentpole productions we see from the big studios today.

 

This opened the doors for independent cinema to fill an artistic void in the film industry. However, this meant people were specialising in essentially unreliable and largely unprofitable films. Small-scale film financing largely became a gifting economy, forcing the best creators into a network of boozing, schmoozing, nepotism, connections and wealth. Any original talent without access to this network will have a hard time indeed of getting their film made.

 

So where does that leave a prospective filmmaker today? Crowdfunding, when it emerged ten years ago, presented a radical new alternative to outdated industry standards for funding. Even some big names like Charlie Kaufman ($406K) and Spike Lee ($1.4M) turned to crowdfunding to realise their passion projects. However, crowdfunding ultimately depends on fandom and altruism, and could never become a fully sustainable model for film funding.

 

Here at LiveTree, we are revolutionising the way films are funded. Because we are using blockchain technology, small financial transactions can be made throughout the world with great efficiency, meaning that royalty contracts remain profitable for financiers on tiny scales. If the LiveTree community notice a pitch that they love, want to see more from a new director or need to see a sequel to a sparkling indie flick, they can pool together and fund the project with Seed tokens, the world’s first film and television cryptocurrency.

 

The blockchain enters each backer into contracts of rights and royalties with creators which cannot be altered or dishonoured. This is of great contrast to the purposefully opaque and notoriously unreliable royalty agreements made through studios. Audiences can fund the content that is meaningful to them, and then earn their share of the profits. Meanwhile, creators can be assured of a scaleable fanbase for their content. Fewer middlemen and fat cats leads to a fairer, more reliable, more equitable deal for creators, as well as much greater creative control.

 

The alpha version of LiveTree’s own streaming channel, Blossom TV, launches 5th November, so why not register now, stay up to date and discover the future of entertainment.

Discover the true value of storytelling.

CREATIVITY UNCHAINED by Cheryl Clarke

CREATIVITY UNCHAINED by Cheryl Clarke

The thing about creativity is that it isn’t a product. You can’t capture and bottle it like an artisan gin or an indigestion remedy. Creativity comes from people’s hearts and minds. It’s about confidence and self-belief, and it’s fragile and elusive and easily scared away.

How strange, then, that a large part of the global entertainment industry — with the noble exception of high-end TV drama — is committed to commoditising creativity. The reason, of course, is money: media corporations run on profit and predictability. Creativity doesn’t. It’s random and erratic and prepared to starve in an attic. From the corporates’ point of view, much easier to reign in those pesky creatives and replace their dangerous, disruptive ideas with nice, safe content that looks much like everybody’s else’s. It may not win you awards or inspire your audience or add to the watercooler conversation, but it won’t frighten the horses — or more to the point, the bean counters who now run the show.

So yes, it makes sense on paper. But it’s still a really bad way to go about creating content that people actually want to watch.

Admittedly, the entertainment industry is up against it at the moment. It’s battling on several fronts, including broadcaster risk-aversion, digital disruption, the crash and burn of the traditional business models, too many successful format franchises clogging up the schedules, and a me-too broadcast culture that no longer has the time or money to invest in development, or the patience to give shows time to take root and grow.

But I believe the core problem is today’s one-strike-and-you’re-out approach to the creative process. Somewhere along the line, we’ve stopped giving our creative talent permission to fail. But those brave enough to dream, and whose dreams are ultimately the stuff of our entertainment, need the freedom to cock up, make U-turns and chase wild geese in their pursuit of the new, the different and the original. What they don’t need is to be punished for putting their hopes and imaginations on the line.

There are two things wrong with this. The first is that judging content purely on the basis of its commercial potential makes life difficult and dispiriting for the creative community. And the second is that it doesn’t work. The irony is that audiences crave the shock and excitement of the new, not the predictability and safety of the old. Which is why those once-in-a-generation shows that come along and change the game are always, always driven by creativity rather than profit.

The blockchain’s ability to take the creative control away from the corporates and hand it to the makers and consumers of content is, for me, one of the most exciting aspects of the LiveTree ADEPT platform. Thanks to the power of the network effect, it will be individuals who decide what projects get made, and who makes them. In this brave new marketplace, the viewers will be the commissioners, and their criteria won’t be profit and shareholders and targets but what they want to see and feel and experience.

At that point, it won’t be about them anymore. At long last, it’ll be all about us.

 

For more information, or to register to participate in the LiveTree ADEPT token sale, please visit adept.livetree.com