Plush: are NFTs the future of movie production?

This article is also available in: French

Mise à jour du 27 avril 2023 : la vente de NFT a échoué, et le projet est désormais au point mort.
Mediapart a enquêté sur Illuminart et son dirigeant, révélé de nombreuses informations que nous n’avions pas à l’époque de la publication de cette interview : voir cet article pour plus d’informations.

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If you’ve been following the latest animation news on social media, you probably heard about Plush : an upcoming animated movie funded by the sale of a NFT collection.

Each NFT holder will co-produce the movie, and will receive a share from 80% of the wordwide box-office profits. This kind of approach is a first in the animation industry.

Of course, this generated various reactions on social media, ranging from enthusiast supporters to harsh criticism.

The team behind the project published a short video that will give you a few details about Plush (this video was created by Rooftop Production and Karlab, not by 3DVF), but we wanted to dig deeper. Which is why we interviewed Gaëtan Simonot (Head of Studio, Rooftop production) and Laurent Guittard (CEO – co-fondateur- Karlab), who are at the heart of the project. You will find their answers in this article.

Here are some of the topics covered in this interview: movie funding, scenario, how to credit 50.000 co-producers, criticism/issues with NFTs, production pipeline, and how the team intends to produce a movie in a very tight schedule (18 months).

3DVF: Our readers have probably already heard about Plush on social media, but just in case: what is Plush?

Gaëtan Simonot – Head of Studio, Rooftop production: Hello and thanks for this opportunity to talk about Plush on 3DVF.

Plush is the first animated feature-length movie that will be funded by a NFT collection. We’ve been tasked with creating a collection of 50.000 NFTs and we’ve been working on it since February. This movie project is the next step. We decided to get in touch with Karlab to get them involved in the project: we have already worked with them on several occasions, and we trust them.

Laurent Guittard – CEO & co-founder – Karlab: As a professional from the animation industry, it’s an honor to be interviewed by 3DVF! Thanks for giving us the opportunity to answer some questions about this beautiful project. In addition to what Gaetan said, and apart from the way the movie will be financed, what’s special about Plush is the fact that people will have the opportunity to get involved in the screenwriting process, to choose which ideas will get into the movie. They will also receive a share from the profits of the movie.

3DVF: Could you tell is more about the movie itself? Who will direct it, and what is the story?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: As we explained, the Plush community will be able to vote and influence which themes make their way into the movie. The community and the screenwriters will work as a team. The outline of the story is already there, written at Rooftop Production, but we left some room so that we can work together with the community on the story. Of course, professional screewriters will guide this process.

The Plush community will be able to vote and influence which themes make their way into the movie.

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop Production

Some parts of the screenplay have already been decided, such as the characters (Teddy bears) and the genre of the movie: a family comedy with multiple interpretations. This will allow us to mix humor and great causes. It won’t narrow things down too much, this way we will be able to welcome ideas from an audience that doesn’t want to just choose the content they watch, but also to get involved in the creative process.

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: I’d like to highlight that these levels of interpretation will make sure that both kids and adults are satisfied with the movie. This approach is what makes great animated films. Disney, Pixar have been doing this for years. With Plush, we want to toy with this idea of a Teddy bear design that belongs to the world of childhood, and absurd situations that belong to the world of grown-ups.

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: The audience will be able to decide and vote for general ideas addressed in the movie (impossible love, spying…), approve the ecological ones (global warming, marine pollution, biodiversity), and even put the accent of a certain type of humor, tone (cynicism, sarcasm, absurd, etc). These are just examples. After the vote, screenwriters will be able to organize the script using all these decisions in order to create a story that makes sense, that is funny and powerful.

Here’s the pitch: Honey is overflowing for Teddy. Tantrums, parties, abuse, decadence. Blinded by his success, his debauchery is matched only by his feelings of loneliness. A stunning event is about to change his views on life!

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: As I told you, this not just a kid’s movie!

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: The direction of the movie has been entrusted to Rooftop, and several people are already considered to direct. We will soon unveil the name of the director(s).

3DVF: How far along are you in the pre-production process?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: The outline of the story was crafted two months ago and is able to meet the needs of this co-creation process. The ideas from the community will be added to a strong fondation that answers the stakes of the movie and will ensure its financial success. We defined the environments we could use, the actions our characters could take and the overall concept so that it will fit within the 18 months production process (which is quite a tight schedule). Every detail will help make a great movie.

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: We can’t say too much at the moment (spoiler alert!), but these challenges are in line with our ambitions. Even before the PLUSH project, while working on various movies, we had lots of ideas to improve the creation / production process. Even though we were not at the head of these projects we still managed to apply those ideas, and we’ve been doing so with the characters created by Karlab for over 6 years. After all, which producer wouldn’t dream of getting the same level of quality, for 15-20% less! With Plush, we want to do the same whith the whole production process, and prove you can make great movies wich new approaches while focusing on the well-being of the artists (too often forgotten): we want then to have a better work-life balance. This may sound naive, but Plush will help us showcase this new approach. We truly believe in all of this!

We had lots of ideas to improve the creation / production process.

Laurent Guittard – CEO – co-founder – Karlab

Back to the topic at hand, the visual development of the movie has specific requirements, which are different from those of the NFT collection. We will jump right in the concept/design phase as soon as the funding is secured. Many talented people are willing to join the project, and we’ll make a great movie.

3DVF: Which companies/who is is involved in this project? What are their respective roles? Where will the movie be produced?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: IlluminArt studio launched the project. They are the ones who created the original designs, who hired us to create the NFTs. And this project gave them the idea to go further, with an animated movie tied to the NFT collection. We were quite excited and we worked on a production model that would fit within this 18-month constraint. We were already in touch with Karlab for other projects, and since things were getting along fine, it was quite obvious that they would be a good ally on this project. Laurent Guittard and Ali Hamdan have years of experience in the animation industry in France and abroad (Canada, California, China…) and their experience, their philosophy are complementary to ours.

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: Karlab will oversee several departments from the production process, under the supervision of Rooftop. We also worked hand in hand on the marketing campaign. As usual, as always, this story is about meeting the right people. We met Gaëtan on another project, and things went well right away, because his vision is similar to what we have been trying to achieve at Karlab since 2016: to be as flexible as possible, always find solutions, to ensure each and every project we work on reaches the utmost level of quality.

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: Rooftop Production is in charge of directing and creating the movie, and we will probably work with Karlab from asset creation to the animation.

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: Our studio will grow in the near future, with new offices in Montpellier, Paris and Lyon, three French cities where we are already located.

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: Audio Workshop, an audio post production studio, located in the South of France, will be tasked with the overall sound work of the movie, including voice recordings. Fatfish Lab will also be involved: we began working with them last year and have been using their production tracker called Aquarium, which I recommend you check out. We will select our partners with care, and since the project has been generating a lot of interest, we meet talented people, useful tools are brought to our attention.

3DVF: Can you tell us a little bit about IlluminArt, the company created for this project? And could you tell us more about Rooftop/Karlab, for our readers who might not already know you?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: IlluminArt is a creative company based abroad. We have been working with them for a few months, and we hope this will last because they are visionaries and they really trusts artists and experts from the industry. With IlluminArt, everyone involved knows what they’re supposed to do, and we thank them for their trust. Combining their industry knowledge and our artistic expertise will create many opportunities in the future. Rooftop Production is an animation studio located in the South of France near Montpellier, and we sometimes also rely on cloud computing when our projects need it. The artists behind this project are senior artists, passionate about their work and with a good experience when it comes to animated feature films.

Rooftop Production was created to produce animated films, from A to Z. Our goal is mainly to gain more creative freedom, so that we can express ourselves. During our careers, we faced many obstacles and restrictions and we felt hindered, which is why we try to develop the company so that we can fund our animated projects ourselves. We joined this industry many years ago to make movies, and we have the know-how to make them. But we are nothing without our partners, and studios such as Karlab allow us to increase our production output, to find new ways to create, and to move forward very fast.

We like to invent, and we are passionate about planning, coordination. We will soon be able to tell you about our upcoming projects, and we hope many artists will join us. It’s all about freedom and the ability to create something meaningful.

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: Karlab was created back in 2016 by Ali Hamdan and myself. We specialize in the creation of CG animated characters. There are about 20 people in our team, located in three French cities. Our services include design, sculpt, modeling, surfacing, grooming, body rig, facial rig, consulting, R&D, teaching, conferences… We have worked on over 1.000 characters in 6 years, for studios and streaming services such as Illumination, Axis, Mikros, Disney +, Netflix, Jellyfish, Superprod, on shows such as Monsters at Work, Despicable Me 3, The Grinch, League of Legends, Asterix and the Magic Potion. We are also in the process of creating a new company aimed at the animation industry, along side a skilled animation director. The name of this new company will be Karanim.

3DVF: Using a NFT collection to fund a big budget animated movie is quite unusual, and it has never been done before. How did you get this idea, and why did you choose such an approach?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: “When you’re the first to be right, you are right but alone” (self-righteousness and cheeky humor, ah ah). In fact, it’s quite refreshing to open a new door. Even we have to endure doubts, it’s worth it.We are convinced this new approach will help us gain more creative freedom. Moreover, this gives us the opportunity to talk to people directly and to let them enter our world. During the production, we learned that Martin Scorces chose this approach for a live-action feature film, and more projects will follow. Just take a look at KlapCoin, a cryptocurrency launched under the helm of French director Claude Lelouch. Crypto and Decentralized finance (DeFi) can help with redistribution and the end of the monopoly of money. In the same way, NFT can balance things out, and help people create artistic projects without relying on traditional funding approaches. If you look at the traditional approach or at crowfunding, no other funding approach enables a community of people to co-produce projects on such a scale.

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: We don’t reject the traditional financing approach, but I think it’s always interesting to try new things, to show that you can do things differently, that other production schedules can also work out in the end. Both approaches have their place within the industry, I think. Our goal with remains to create the best movies possible, with the best stories possible, in order to touch as many people as possible and make them dream. Just like we have been dreaming since we were kids.

3DVF: Your goal is to sell 50.000 NFTs, for a mint price of around 1250€/$1320. Does this mean you hope to raise about 66 million dollars to produce the movie? Could you tell us a little bit about the budget/financing details? And since the movie will be made in France, will you try to secure funds from the CNC, the agency of the French Ministry of Culture that financially supports most if not all movies created in France?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: I am contractually obligated to deliver the movie, in French and English, if the PLUSH NFT Collection is sold out.

Even though we have a good overall idea of what we need to stick to our production schedule, right know we can’t know exactly how much money will be allocated to the movie, since we don’t know how many NFTs will be bought using the PushList (with a 10% rebate compared to the public mint price), and since the value of Etherium will change before the public sale. That being said, as long as 50.000 NFTs are sold, the movie will be made as planned. This budget is at a reasonable level under the budget of productions of such a scale.

For this particular project, we won’t be asking the CNC for financial support, and we don’t plan to ask any other financing entity for help either. This is why our financing model is unique. We chose freedom.

We won’t be asking the CNC for financial support […] We chose freedom.

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop Production

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars” 🙂 Karlab and Rooftop won’t receive the money from the sales directly: we are only tasked with making the movie.

When a customer comes to see me, asking how much would it cost to create a character, I always have the same answer: “I can give you a price, or three times the same amount. It all depends on what the character is supposed to do, and what your artistic references are”. Of course, the more money we have, the crazier we can get. If we are on a tighter budget, we will need to get smarter. And believe me, Gaëtan and Rooftop are magicians: with such a budget, you can only imagine what they’ll be able to create. We are confident and we have faith in this project, which is why we joined Plush.

Furthermore, if we avoid relying on CNC funding, this will leave more money to help other promising artistic projects. The CNC is a real opportunity for the French creative industry, and to help studios get stronger. They listen to the studios, and they care a lot about the work environment of the artists. They foster great ideas: for example, studios/producers have to follow a mandatory training on how to fight sexual and sexist violence if they want to get funds, and they will soon also enact environmental standards for the studios. Many people are against this, but I applaud these decisions. Creating Plush without any CNC funding will leave more money to help fund these sensitive issues, and to fund other projects.

3DVF: How did you create the 50.000 NFT from the Plush NFT Collection? Can you give us some insight into this process?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: This large PLUSH NFT collection was created at Rooftop Production, by Paul-Jules Alchié and myself. Several artists were asked to create assets, to work on the surfacing, and so on. This is a first for us, and we had to create a new workflow. We wanted to provide several environments, specific lightings, which is why you can get Underwater Teddy bears, Jungle Teddy bears, etc. Over 610 unique assets were created, and many more, at various scarcity levels. Just imagine a 300 digits combination lock: lots of combinations are possible. Thankfully, our first ideas were the right ones, and we had a very productive back and forth process. IlluminArt could check out a few hundreds combinations generated each day. We will discuss our technical choices in the near future, and we will soon be able to create efficiently many large NFT collections if needed.

3DVF: If someone buys a Plush NFT, what will they receive in exchange ? You explain that they will become coproducers: how will they be involved in the production process? And are they going to be credited in the movie? (50.000 names would make for very long end credits)

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: We advise you to check out the roadmap to get a better idea of the perks that go alongside being a coproducer, on the official website: www.plushnft.io.

Here are a few (fake) ideas we had to include these credits:

• We can roll credits halfway through the movie, superimposed with the movie itself until the end of the 90-minutes runtime.
• French actor Gerard Darmon could recite a list of wallets as a background soundtrack during the movie.
• 30-minutes long end credits. That would be ideal: with such a tight production schedule, that could help us!

Editor’s note: you will find below a screenshot from the roadmap explaining how the co-producers will be able to collect their profits. Apart from a share fo the profits, the roadmap explains that the co-producers will have access to various perks: behind-the-scenes information, the opportunity to meet the cast, exclusive details about the projects and a studio tour for the coproducers owning very rare NFTs.

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: 50.000 names on the big screen. Why not? If that’s cool and if everyone wants it, we’ll do it. I remember how proud I was when I saw my name in the end credits of Despicable Me 2 or Minions, and even more as a supervisor on Asterix and the Magic Potion by Alexandre Astier and Louis Clichy. I’m sure the 50.000 co-producers would love to feel what I felt. 😉

3DVF: NFTs generate a lot of criticism, and we felt it was important not to sweep them under the rug. One of the main criticism is their environmental cost. What is your position on this topic?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: This is a serious issue, and it’s true that this technology does have an ecological impact on our planet. That being said, “proof of work” is evolving, “proof of stake” will soon be the norm, and this will alleviate a lot of the environemental impact. Truth is, with or without NFTs, our industry and the movies we create do have a direct impact on our planet. It would have been very difficult to be part of such a project, especially since the movie will deal with climate change, if this technology wasn’t already evolving.

It’s true that this technology does have an ecological impact on our planet.

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop Production

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: Let’s not lie about it, NFTs have been similar to the wild west until now. No oversight, and so on. But things can change. You have to understand that this is only the beginning, mistakes will be corrected, issues will disappear and crypto will move towards green energy in the years to come. Some people will always try to spread fear, but we have to stay positive and trust humanity to find solutions. That’s one of the ideas suggested for Plush, by the way (even though they are just Teddy bears 😉 ). Wether you like it or not, decentralized finance is the future (or at least, I am under the impression it is), and I’m sure we’ll find a way to do this in a clean way in the end. In the meantime, we have to move forward. Things aren’t perfect, but they will be. I’m sure of it. I’m optimistic at heart. 😉

3DVF: There have also been numerous scams and “pull rug” scams, with people launching a project, getting a lot of money then running away with it. The speculative nature of NFTs is also criticized. It should be highlighted, by the way, that the official Plush website states that “a PLUSH NFT has the potential ROI of 667%” in 2 years, considering that big budget animated films “averaged over $700 million in profits”. Can you expand on this? How can you reassure people who are considering buying one of these NFTs, and what do you think about the speculation issue?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: There have been many scams in the beginning due to the lack of oversight in the NFT market. Which is why NFT projects must give as much information as possible. I must confess that the first NFT I bought was a scam, but to be really honest, it was quite obvious. Nowadays, new projects hare developped in a more open manner, and risk analysts, acting agents, lawyers take a close look at them. The 700 million dollars number in the roadmap is what it is: an average. It’s an indication to our investors who can check for themselves that with a similar budget, studios with artists of the same caliber, over the past decade the average box-office returns were around 700 million dollars. We also state that we will produce a sequel if the movie generates at least 350 millions dollars wordwide. This is yet another encouraging sign. Just go and check the box-office numbers of Illumination movies on Wikipedia, do the maths over 10 years. All of this can be checked, which is why we decided to include it. As for the “scams”, the level of transparency of the project is crucial so that people can invest with confidence. The whitepaper must shed as much light as possible to prove the project is sound. Our job is to make a movie.

Transparency […] is crucial so that people can invest with confidence.

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop Production

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: Once again, the NFT market is a fast evolving one. Goodbye Wild Wild West with tricks and gunslingers, hello serious projects with talented teams. Plush is a good example of a NFT collection that does not rely solely on speculation. There’s a real artistic project behind it, a movie! And who know, this may be the beginning of a great adventure. More movies, TV shows… And why not a French equivalent to Pixar studios. Why not. Everything is possible. 🙂 When it comes to speculation, isn’t it safer to invest your money when there is a reward at the end? It’s quite reassuring, I think. When you buy a house, you hope to sell it at a higher price later on, not the opposite. 🙂 On a personal note, I know what I’m doing and I don’t invest on volatile markets what I’m not ready to lose. As long as I can sleep, that’s ok. 😉 I suggest everyone do the same. If you can’t sleep at night, ask yourself the right questions. Otherwise, YOLO, as young people say 😉 (I’m 43 years old, in the animation industry that’s quite old :p).

Plush is a good example of a NFT collection that does not rely solely on speculation. There’s a real artistic project behind it.

Laurent Guittard – Karlab

I should also mention that the fact that many French celebrities are involved in this project (Kev Adams, Gims, Judor, Darmon, Bensetti and many more), and the fact that Rooftop is involved, really conviced us to get onboard. Our job now is to bring our 20 years of experience in the animation industry (about 20 animated films and series) to create the best movie possible. We know how to make animated movies, this is written in our DNA. If there is enough traction behind this projet, then we’ll be there to make sure the movie is well made, and that everyone is proud of it.

3DVF: An issue with crowdfunding (for example, when a Kickstarter campaign is launched to secure funds for an animated project) is that sometimes, you don’t get as much money as you were hoping for. What will happen if the NFT collection doesn’t sell very well? What will be the consequences for the coproducers and for the movie itself?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: I think it’s way easier to get an idea of the risks involved when a movie is funded thanks to the sale of a NFT collection. Financial information, information about the animation market, various sales scenarios (20%, 50%; 80%) are laid out in the roadmap. We also give some information about the benefits and risks involved.

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: Everything is detailed in the official roadmap. 😉

Editor’s note: you will find below a screenshot from the roadmap explaing what will happen given various sales scenarios.

3DVF: After the announcement of the project, the reactions were mixed, including when it comes to the animation industry community. What do you think about all this?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: Are you saying that something new is not easily accepted? Of course not, and certainly not in and industry that is so open-minded, and certainly not in France. 🙂 I’m joking because there are many indications that we are at a turning point, and many people from the animation, movie industries are joining us to explore the potential and the future of this approach. There will always be some resistance to change, sometimes a justified resistance, but from our point of view everything is going fine, we are sincere in this endeavour to ride this wave. It’s a means towards more creative freedom, which we will pursue with or without this new financing approach.
If people don’t want to join us to create Plush 1, that’s ok, we we welcome them when we will work on Plush 2.
I’ve actually been quite surprised by the amount of positive feedback I’ve received from the animation industry until now. I was expecting more resistance, even from studios such as Karlab. But in fact, people quickly understand that things change, and that it’s important. I don’t know about you, but I really needed things to change.

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: I have never received so many calls by producers or big companies willing to work with us. So I guess I have a positive feeling about all this. Lots of interesting opportunities for the future of Karlab. That being said, there have always been, there are, and there always will be people who disagree. If I had to turn around every time someone told me “this is stupid”, “this won’t work” and so on, I would not have had the same career, and I would never have left Illumination Mac Guff, where my supervisor shunt me aside, and I would never have launched Karlab with Ali, I would never have created two punk-bio music albums (yes, really :p), held motivational speeches in schools, or written a book about my 20-year career (ok, I must admit that this one is still a work in progress 😉 ). In other words, if you listen to everybody, you get nowhere. I’d rather do and fail than not doing anything. If Plush is a failure, this will be yet another interesting tale to tell, because I would have learnt a lot of new things. And if it’s a success… Who knows. 😉

3DVF: You plan to release the movie at the end of 2023, which is a very tight schedule for such an animated feature film. Why did you want to go this fast? How will you manage to achieve this? How will you adjust the production pipeline so that everything comes together?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: The pipeline has actually already been taken care of. 🙂 We know this will be a challenge: we want to adapt the project to the conditions, the rythm of a blockchain project, but not at the price of quality. When I was told we would only have 18 months to produce the movie, I laughed, then I refused. And then I remembered my first love, layout (thanks, Vincent Kesteloot!), the new ideas I always want to develop when working on a movie, the ideas exchanged within the team to improve the pipeline, to get a leaner workflow, to get a great result while sticking to a tight schedule. I’ve been working on improving all this for 10 years. Of course, I did not reinvent the wheel, but I discovered Agile and Lean development, professional tools, human beings, how to organize things. The key to quality is not to stick to predefined procedures, it’s first and foremost a state of mind.

As for the pipeline, we’ll use 3D animation. We will mostly stick to traditional tools: no real-time rendering, no motion capture. We will probably use cloud rendering. Our workflow does rely on AI, though, but I can’t say too much about it at this point. We may include 2D sequences created using these unusual tools, this will allow us to refine the overall graphic style of the movie.

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: Once again: why not? Why 3, 4 years to create a movie if it can be done in 2 years or less. But to achieve this, we need the right people, experienced and skilled artists who are used to fast decision-making methods and to create movies. In other words, you have to use a startup approach on a big project. That’s not something everyone is capable of.

Why 3, 4 years to create a movie if it can be done in 2 years or less.

Laurent Guittard – Karlab

You can’t imagine how much wasted time and energy I’ve seen in my career, just because nobody wanted to make a decision. Hours of meetings with 10 people for unimportant stuff. And when something goes wrong, studio departments blaming each other. :-/ This is out of the question on this project, we will need to make crucial decisions quickly, but without forgetting teamwork. This is the DNA of Karlab and Rooftop: to move forward, to find solutions and to take care of our teams. We’re all in this together, headed for the Moon (or for Mars if you’re a fan of Elon Musk).

3DVF: Are you looking for other companies/studios that could help you create the movie?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: We are already well equipped and we will be able to handle the launch of the project on our own, but of course as soon as the financing part is handled, we will need to hire a lot of people. With such a tight schedule, we don’t have the choice! We will announce open job positions as soon as possible on our websites and on social media. We will probably also publish them on 3DVF.com.

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: Contrary to many studios, we can begin production on day one. We don’t need 6 or 12 months of preproduction. This is why we already provide to the companies that hire Karlab. This way, a lot of time and energy are saved! Furthermore, we will of course expand our team during production. The goal is to improve the quality and speed of our work over time. That’s how we’re going to make it. We have been working in the animation industry for many years, we know basically everyone in the industry: those you want to work with, those you don’t. And the are already in touch with the best of the best! The next step is waiting for the public mint.

Contrary to many studios, we can begin production on day one.

Laurent Guittard – Karlab

3DVF: Various French actors and singers (such as Gims, Dadju, Kev Adams, Rayane Bensetti, Éric Judor, Gérard Darmon, Audrey Lamy, Camille Lellouche) have already signed to lend their voices to Plush. How did you put this team together? And could you tell us about their contracts? For example, will they get some Plush NFTs?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: I’m the hidden son of French actor and singer Gerard Darmon, I told it to French actor & director Eric Judor by mistake, and since he can’t keep a secret he told everyone else. I had no choice but to hire them so that they won’t talk!

Jokes aside, there was a snowball effect. Once one of them was convinced this was an interesting project, he talked about it to other actors, and so on. Eric Judor is a talented screenwriter and director, as I realized while watching the French TV series Platane. I’m really glad I have this opportunity to work with him. Gérard Darmon will lend his voice to one of the characters of Plush and it’s a very good sign that such talented artists are involved. We will make more announcements soon, for example Amaury Nolasco will lend his voice to a character for the English version of the movie. Actors and celebrities don’t get any NFT as a gift, they signed a regular voice-over contract. I am considering hiring some of them to help write the screenplay, though!

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: “What happens on the Blockchain stays on the Blockchain”…. Lol. As you have no doubt understood, getting in touch with the right people was the key.

3DVF: What are your feelings when it comes to this unusual movie project? And is Plush something unique, or are you hoping to create more movies using the same approach?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: This is a huge step forward for Rooftop Production. This is the direction we have been heading towards since the launch of the company, and I didn’t think we would have made it so fast. As for the way the movie is funded, this is only the means towards our end goal: to express ourselves as artists, to grow as a studio and as human beings. Things would have been the same using another funding approach.

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: The goal of Karlab is to create feature films, series, music videos, ads of the highest level of quality. The way we fund our projects doesn’t really matter as long as we can live from ou passion, meet amazing people and have fun doing it. In the end, the audience will decide wether or not they like this approach, and I think that kinda cool! After all, the audience is our real boss.

3DVF: Do you think NFTs and Blockchain technology are the future of movie financing?

Gaëtan Simonot – Rooftop production: I think it’s a wonderful alternative to regular movie financing. It’s obvious, for me, that these two approaches will coexist side by side from now on. As Victor Hugo said, “Life finds a way”. (wait, isn’t that’s a quote from Jurassic Park… ?)

Laurent Guittard – Karlab: I truly believe in the potential of Blockchain technology. I was already talking about it with some friends 10 years ago, and I invested in it back in 2017. I would not to take part in a Blockchain-related project if I did not believe in this technology. I see it as a karma thing. I think we should consider this approach as an additional way to create movies. Another tool that can be used by authors, creators to tell stories that will make millions of people dream. It’s worth a try, don’t you think?

3DVF: Plush is a project that raised a lot of questions and generated many social media reactions. We hope that this interview will help you get a better understanding of this movie project. Of course, lots of questions will remain unanswered until the NFT sales are launched, the production has begun, and the movie is released. We will therefore have the opportunity, in the coming weeks and months, to discuss this project further. Don’t hesitate to follow us on social media so that you don’t miss our upcoming articles, interviews and videos!  Facebook – Twitter – Instagram – LinkedIn – Youtube.

For more information

• Karlab’s website.
• Rooftop Production’s website.
• The official PLUSH website.