Lotawana is the first movie ever minted and sold as an NFT. The Lotawana NFT film is an independent movie created by the creative minds of Trevor Hawkins and his team. Trevor Hawkin saw the opportunity as NFTs with blockchain technology have allowed an entire movie to be minted as an NFT.
The story of Lotawana is about a guy named Forrest who does not like to live a modern and monotonous life. He then decides to discover himself while living on a sailboat in Lake Lotawana near Kansas City, Missouri.
Later he meets a girl named Everly, a simple and unruly girl who happens to have a similar life view. They become a perfect couple to do a thrilling adventure to find the true meaning of their life. Their goal together is to make their modern life go by their own rules rather than follow society.
Being an independent filmmaker, Trevor Hawkins, along with his team, had many challenges during the production of his first movie, Lotawana. He does anything related to the movie production in his neighborhood near Lake Lotawana and even sacrifices his house’s mortgage to help finance the movie production.
With his tiny crew and cast, Trevor Hawkins did all the movie stunts in wildlife by himself. He accidentally had a near-death experience of almost drowning when they did the underwater cave scene. They also had some struggles in the casting that they lost the lead actress twice in the middle of production, which made them have to delay it and shoot some summer scenes at the beginning of the fall season.
The first lead actress disagreed with something during the movie's production and decided to leave. The second lead actress also left because her mother, acting as her agent, did not like some scenes planned by the independent filmmaker.
The third and final lead actress candidate, Nicola Collie, had finally found and interviewed through a social media platform, Instagram. The independent filmmaker team had to try many different things to make the movie production go as it should be. The actress turned out to be the perfect actress to play the character in the movie.
The lead actor, Todd Blubaugh, had to take a lot of scenes without the lead actress because of the previously mentioned problems. He also professionally did his stunts and even captained the sailboat on-screen even though he only had a tiny experience with sailing, let alone doing it on set.
Struggles often create some better rewards. Both lead actor and actress Todd Blubaugh and Nicola Collie enjoyed making the movie and had great chemistry during the entire movie production. They then fell in love with each other and decided to get married in real life and live together in Los Angeles.
The biggest problem independent filmmakers have with their movies is monetization. The financial problem appears during the production while distributing the movies to viewers and after the movies are released.
Independent filmmakers probably can make sacrifices to produce their movies. But during the distribution, they have to earn so little since they need to use middlemen. NFTs allow independent filmmakers to sell their movies straight to their viewers.
The independent filmmaker team of Lotawana became the first filmmaker to mint its movie to be sold as an NFT, which was a brave decision considering no one ever sold an entire movie as an NFT. Nevertheless, that decision turned out to be the best. The team is glad that they kept the movie to themselves and did not use any middlemen.
A total of one thousand copies of the Lotawana movie have been minted on one of the most popular NFT trading platforms, OpenSea. The selling price of a copy of Lotawana is 0.57 Ethereum, which is close to making no difference of $1,000. Collectors who buy a copy of Lotawana NFT film industry will get a part of the ownership and profit shares of the movie.
$1,000 for a copy of an entire movie does not seem a lot compared to some digital art NFTs worth millions of dollars. But, if all of the Lotawana copies are sold out, which possibly takes a lot of time, it would make about a million dollars.
Not only that, but NFT also allows the original owner of the art to have a royalty. If a copy of Lotawana is sold again to another investor, the original owner, Trevor Hawkins, and his team would get a percentage from the transactions. It would happen again to the next transactions in the future. The money that independent filmmakers get from NFTs will never stop coming. That allows those creative minds to produce many more movies that they can share later on a blockchain as NFTs.
Lotawana has paved the way to solve the financial problem of independent filmmakers by taking advantage of the booming trend of NFT. If you are one of those independent filmmakers, you can use Lotawana as your mentor.
The path to the success of Lotawana was not easy, but it was a worthy experience. And with Lotawana’s struggles leading the way, it will make the future independent filmmakers have much easier paths to the glory of their independent movies.
Furthermore, Lotawana has proved that NFT is the future of independent movies and can be the biggest hope for many people afraid to begin their filmmaking journey. There is no excuse not to begin your filmmaking journey as soon as possible with the convenience we have right now.
Last but certainly not least, the number of independent movies will increase rapidly from this moment forward. They will use NFTs for distribution purposes, which means the number of people joining the NFT party will also be increased. All of those will happen thanks to the team's bravery behind the Lotawana NFT film.
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