Short description: 10 short documentary films (4’ to 12’) and 2 feature films (40’ to 55’) about Kusama
Council present and future, its members and their opinions on the democracy process and institutions.
1. About the team
My name is Miguel Marques and I’m a senior independent documentary filmmaker from Portugal. Most of my films are observational documentaries about public institutions. In 2013, I produced and directed a documentary about the economic crash in Iceland and how its citizens organized their demands to create a more participative democracy. (With a Copyleft licence and distributed on YouTube: https://potspansdocumentary.wordpress.com/).
At the beginning of 2015, I discovered Fair Coin, its economical ecosystem and the possibility of designing new economic institutions. In August of the same year, I discovered Ethereum.
Investor without considering myself one, in 2016 I started to be a modest but full time beta tester, studying decentralized projects that I considered to be developing fundamental tools for people organizing outside the current social contract. At this point, I started thinking about making a film on decentralized on-chain democracy and its institutions.
I’ve been a volunteer in the Polkadot Ambassadors Program since December of 2019. I’d like to give my contribution by documenting and videographing the political activity within Kusama.
https://potspansdocumentary.wordpress.com/about/
https://twitter.com/MiguelMarques70
Mariana Teixeira studied Languages, Literature and Cultures. She’s a member of the artist collective Licksickdick. Mariana will work as Editing Assistant, she is going to help keep the track of the footage and all operational details of the project.
Lights-on-e is going to do the music, the audio correction and the audiomix. He is an experienced musician from Porto, Portugal.
You can listen to some of his previous work here: https://soundcloud.com/lights-on-e
2. The project
To represent passive stakeholders, Kusama introduces the idea of a "council". The council is an on-chain entity comprising a number of actors, each represented as an on-chain account. A lot of the time, stakeholders don't know the stake behind their representatives. There are also moments when the stakeholders want to diversify their votes or are not satisfied with their elected Council Members, but they don’t even know each and every single CM in order to change this situation. I would like to help fulfill this gap, not with the kind of knowledge that we get from reading a text, as suggested in the Direction Riot Room, but with the knowledge we get from seeing the way people express their ideas and points of view and all the experience involved in it. I want people to build a relationship with their representatives. I want them to have the explanation from the source and not mediated by any point of view. For this reason, I will be using video and audio techniques that are more suitable to achieve this.
However, having the privilege and taking the time to talk to every Council Member, it would be great to go a bit further than the smaller original set of questions made in order to know a CM and to go deep about on-chain governance and matters like web3, 4 years into the future of the Kusama project as well as to get some insights of the inner beliefs of our intervenients in this context. This way, my proposal includes the making of 3 sets of documentaries: two 40-50' films (The Kusama Council Members (on their own words) and Inside The Polks and Dots (of Kusama)) and a series of short documentaries that will be released each week.
In this very objective short films documentary series, we choose to put the best answers given by our participants. There will be featured aspects referred to democracy, governance and general aspects that could be used as tools to promote these topics to all audiences interested in having more knowledge about the process of how things are done. The short film series is important because most of the people want objective information and these films will follow a strict guideline of the messages transmitted. It can be used in multiple channels to promote such ideas.
Also, as a filmmaker, I believe that films and talks change people, the way they think about the world and about themselves. Documentary films can be a voodoo art, in the way they change the inside of the brain of the audience without the need of physical presence. So, my intention is to ask our intervenients a couple more out-of-the-box questions about Kusama, add depth and subjectivity with music and other footage and re-edit the material in order to present another documentary film that, this time, will have the complexity to be called cinema. Its goal is to be seen world wide (outside the Polkadot ecosystem) by all audiences interested but with little knowledge about blockchain technology and decentralized governance.
3. The films
Feature film presentations
The Kusama Council Members (on their own words), 40’ to 50’
Goals:
Summary:
Profile and track of the council members activities. Their roles in the Polkadot ecosystem. What makes them want to be in the Kusama Council. Ideas about the direction of Kusama in the meantime and what they have been doing on Kusama.
Inside The Polks and Dots (of Kusama) (Temporary Title), 40’ to 50’
Goals:
Summary:
In the past years, the media has been talking about the coming of an important technological revolution. We love it, read about some of the features but nobody is pointing out the concrete tools and how people will organize themselves and in what ways. Will this be the end of Capitalism as we know it? What kind of system will emerge? What role will Kusama play in this set?
Short films Presentations.
Goals:
Kusama Governance, 5’ to 10’
How governance works in a decentralized setting, its mechanisms and its implications. What role can governance play in blockchain. Avoiding bad governance decision making mechanisms and how to deal with possible serious infractions from Council Members. Referendum related questions.
Kusama, Society module, Commons (Temporary Title), 4’ to 8’
The possibility of organizing citizenship around the Society module. Digital identities in the Kusama Ecosystem. The concept of Commons inside Kusama. Society Module possible dangers and related questions. The importance of using open source in the projects that use Web3 Foundation's funds. The way of distributing Kusama without ICO and its implications. Kusama as the people governance chain.
Democracy in Kusama, 6’ to 12’
Democracy and Social Contract in Kusama, present and future. Quality control tools. New visions of the justice system. Technology’s role in a competitive society. The referendum, its uses, implications and possible problems that may arise. Kusama Council improvements over time. Understanding the referendum function and its democratic use. Resolving web2 model issues with Kusama Council.
Inside the treasury, 4’ to 8’
Technological development. Treasury funds requirements. Treasury proposals - how they work and for what purposes, and its relation to Web3 Foundation grants program. How to propose changes to technological development.
Inside web 3.0., 5’ to 10’
Big visions and dreams of web 3.0. Web 3.0 relations to the real world. Its differences from web 2.0. The roles of Kusama and Polkadot.
Kusama Social Agenda (Temporary Title), 5’ to 10’
Decentralization of Kusama and Polkadot. Blockchain roles. How to deal with the new digital elite. Blockchain possible dangers in this prospect and how to prepare for them. How to incentivize social innovation.
** Cyberpunk Agenda**, 8’ to 16’
Discussing the idea of Blockchains as political entities. Our position in the capitalist kingdom. The future of the economy. Ways to fight the system where we give our data to the digital feudal lords in exchange for their technology (digital feudalism). How to gage the Cyberpunk values in Polkadot. How to incorporate non-financial values like interest, dedication and cooperation into digital currencies, and have some kind of value in the decision making process. The possible end of capitalism.
Kusama Governance long-term (Temporary Title), 5’ to 10’
Re-imagining CM as representatives of token holders' need for expertise. The automatization of governance processes and its implications over time. Some considerations on the evolution of Kusama Council over time. Possible future threats to Kusama and how to avoid them.
Oracle Committee and Spontaneous Subject Committees, 5’ to 10’
How the Oracle Committee works and its uses. How Spontaneous Subject Committees works and its uses.
Kusama Future, 4’ to 8’
What will Kusama look like in 5 years. What will Polkadot look like in 5 years.
4. Procedures
We will be contacting each Council Member asking for an interview and we will send them all the questions referring to the film The Kusama Council Members (on their own words) as well as a general reminder of the topics that we will be discussing. In this particular film, we expect that, after editing, each Member will speak 5 to 6 minutes maximum.
The interviews are scheduled to last up to 120 minutes, including a 30 minutes margin error that will most likely not be needed.
We will be using zoom to record the interviews.
In the short films and in the film Inside The Polks and Dots (of Kusama), we will be choosing the best answers given by the intervenients.
The films will be released one by one each week, starting with the The Kusama Council Members (on their own words), in a three month video campaign.
In order to prepare the launch of the second long feature film, a designated Member of the Council will be invited to see the final version, testify that the film is done and make the final payment.
If you want to see and discuss the the films before they come out, help to organize screening and participate in the release process, you can become a friend of the the project by reaching out to miguel.marques70@gmail.com.
5. Budget and payment conditions
5.1. Investigation.Collecting relevant information. Writing the project. Interview guide. EUR 650.00
**5.2. Contacts with participants and preparation. Image collection and interviews.
Image classification and archive. **
1 Month. 1400 Euros Director + 800 Euros (Assistant) = EUR 2200.00
5.3. Editing and post-production (Sound and color correction, audio mix, film credits). Final copies.
1.5 Months: 2100 Euros (Editor) + 1200 Euros (Assistant) = EUR 3300.00
5.4. Original Music EUR 800.00
5.5. Video Effects Editor EUR 850.00
5.6. Rental Adobe Premiere Pro 3 months x 25 Euros = EUR 75.00
SUBTOTAL EUR 7875.00
**5.7. 10% buffer ** = EUR 787.50
TOTAL EUR 8662.50
USD 9516.22
KSM (5,351 USD/KSM) = KSM 1778.35