Team and Background
I am the CEO and Creative Director at VideoSparks Ltd. An Israel based video production company - we specialize in animated and live action videos for tech companies globally. My production company has had many clients specifically in the Crypto space. Our creative thinking combined with our experience and knowledge of the complicated world that is block chain and cryptocurrencies make us an excellent candidate for video projects in this field.
Project and Justification
We want to create a series of animated videos for Nervos. The style of animation will be similar to this but all digital art and completed products will be in line with Nervos branding guidelines.
The objective with this video series is two-fold. 1) to help generate interest and build a larger community, using these videos as marketing collateral to gain said interest or introduce new people to Nervos. 2) to have a strong go to library that can can be utilized in the FAQ page or other documentation. These videos can be referenced/linked as general answers.
Technical Specification and Implementation
Animated Video production can be implemented in the following steps.
scripts - scrips are delivered via google docs. Each script includes a column for narration as well as a column for description of visuals. I would like the Nervos community to play a critical roll in defining the scripts. this would act as a focal point for the community to come together and define the narrative, value and uniqueness of the NervOS blockchain.
story-boarding - we first define overall look and feel while simultaneously creating “rough sketches” of all the scenes outlined in each script (given over via LookAt - visual collaboration software). Once approved - we move into full color HD images of ALL digital assets of the video (created in Adobe Illustrator but delivered via LookAt for revisions)
voice over and animation - we give you some voice over artists to choose from and then we get to work, bring to life all the digital art we created for you and create the episodes. All animation is done in Adobe After Effects.
Idea for collaboration with the community:
We believe that using our standard system that we normally use with our clients but open it up to the community will allow for maximum value to represent Nervos. Obviously having EVERYONE make comments might become too overwhelming to we suggest a tiered filter system. Perhaps 2 community members will act as “filters” to comments as they come in, and they decide with me (creative director) which comments can make it to the draft and which ones (either for technical business, or scope reasons) will not make the draft. I’d imagine the process as follows:
we have an “upvote” system for the topics of the 5 videos. For now we can start with @madcapslaugh suggestions but if others feel there are more important topics that need to be made into videos, we should have that voting in place until “X” date
once concepts are approved - it will be my job to put out first drafts of the scripts
once scripts are up, another google-doc will made for the community to make comments. It will be the job of the “moderators” to decide which comments can be put into the script and which ones cannot. Then we repeat the writing process until the scripts are approved by the moderators (and hopefully the majority of the community as well)
we storyboard the entire script (ie turn the written text into awesome visuals) and go through a similar process as we did with the scripts.
animation + ibid
The current idea is to produce five 3-minute videos that can summarize the MAIN ideas in Nervos Positioning Paper.
One other note - all original art can be requested by Nervos for future use in other marketing material such as landing pages, ads, etc…
Timeline / Roadmap
We can work on multiple videos at a time but assume the following timeline per video from start to finish.
Script - Approx 7 business days per script. we don’t move on to storyboard until script is approved
Storyboard - Approx 10 business days per storyboard, we don’t move on to animation until approved
Animation - Approx 14 business days per animation.
My assumption is that each video out of the 5 will start 3-8 days apart from one another so start to finish for this entire project is approx. 51 business days
Payment Schedule and Budget
Grant requested for this project is $60,000 USD.
Payment Schedule can be as follows:
After initial approval, at project start : 10% of grant money
Checkpoint 1 (project is 25% complete): 15% of grant money
Checkpoint 2 (project is 50% complete): 25% of grant money
Checkpoint 3 (project is 75% complete): 25% of grant money
I think we can use the Positioning Paper as a good start and adjust the content to create a strong narrative which will answer the key questions I have heard from developers:
why should I build on blockchain
what should I build on blockchain
what makes Nervos different
why should I build on Nervos vs Ethereum (or others)
Can you give more detail about how the community will be involved in this process? I really like this idea of the videos being made for and by the community. Although the process on collaboration, decision making etc I think should be more clear (and possibly expanded in scope).
I like this idea about the videos as long you really have capacity to make them wow. There are indeed a bunch of questions, so something like this on the Nervos website will come handy
I’ll elaborate in the scope but the basic idea is that I would treat the community as the client, so we would have an open doc for comment etc where people can submit ideas and make comments on the writing and description of features.
Making them awesome will be equal parts narration style and content alongside great animated visuals - the idea is simply to make complicated concepts deliverable and consumable - which is what my team and I have been doing for 8 years +.
I fleshed out the scope in the technical details - I hope that vision makes sense. It has to be a manageable way for the community to be involved while at the same time having some form of “governance”
I’d like to add that we opened the discussion to Reddit so we can implement the up-voting system .
I’d like to hear from people what they think before we move this forward to the grant proposal stage.
I think it’s time we have a community kick off meeting via zoom to get this moving forward.
Please let me know in this thread if you are interested so we can find a time that interested parties can participate in
Don’t you think $60k is a little much for video production? Even creating the script and all that. Just seems a little high for the project. I can get the same task done with the same quality for less than 10k.
That’s a great question and I am happy you brought it up!
First of all it’s 5 videos, not one, that’s in important differentiation.
Second, the scripts are going to be community inspired, which means in reality, triple the amount of work just on the writing section alone.
Third, being that blockchain is a very “niche” space, it’s best that the video vendor has experience with the space.
Fourth, there is a premium when a vendor has to go through a grant process. this isn’t fiver, instant gratification is not in our favor
Five - quality is only as good as the director and behind it, not just the execution of the visuals. We want to attract larger masses here
Six, - agency vs. freelancer. It would be better to have an agency involved so that the production runs smoothly - if we rely on one person, the project can end up taking way longer. We don’t want that. We want control and transparency all throughout.
Seven - length per video… the videos are longer than your average video.
Eight - English mother tongue - it will be helpful to have an American voice behind this, as one of the larger goal for attracting a NA audience is speaking their language/culture
If you are also willing to do it, I am fully support you to write another better grants, tell everyone what you will do and show your higher cost-effective.
Hey all, I put together an outline for what the content of the series could include. The goal is to create a series of short videos that outline the core value proposition of Nervos to a more advanced viewer. We have discussed Nervos with many devs and crypto community members, and the hardest thing is just getting someone to take a serious look at another L1 chain. So with that in mind this video series is really a great opportunity to increase adoption.
How can we make this a community driven process?
What do you guys think of the proposed structure (~5 short videos)
What do you think of the proposed content I have outlined below?
It is a great idea, and I do think Nervos as a technically awesome Blockchain project, definitely needs to be complemented with rich and friendly tutorials.
Personally I prefer educational videos in below form, probably one of the best on youtube. Of coz it would require more efforts to produce.
