Glass launches the first direct-to-permaweb feature film, monetized by Solana

The first Glass feature film proves the protocol can both support long-form content and top, award-winning talent. Cabourg was awarded the 2020 Hip-Hop Film Festival Audience Choice award and is the debut from directors Orlando “Dito” Gil and Teo Marinakis, who was also the co-writer, cinematographer and co-editor of the film. In this article we look at the film’s premise, its monetization mechanism, and the technology that makes it all possible.

The film

Set in a grand, imposing villa in Cabourg, Normandy, the film follows a group of New York hip-hop artists and their manager stopping through on a leg of their European tour. The non-linear story and unsettling ambience has the viewer questioning which of the ominous events Cabourg foreshadows are a result of manic hallucination, cabin fever, frayed tensions between the cast, or the actions of the house’s suspicious groundskeeper.

Amid a mix of shaky camera footage, crisp beats and foreboding drones, the film is a uniquely gripping debut from first-time director Orlando “Dito” Gil. Plus, it was produced with a budget of just $2,000.

There’s a great interview with the crew here on Clique Music, if you want to learn more about the process.

Watch Cabourg here, embedded from Glass:

The monetization

Every video uploaded to Glass is an NFT, monetized via viewer tips and auctions. The team plan on experimenting rapidly to find the best way to make video profitable for creators. The Glass Manifesto states that this model was built to address the power imbalance between creators and platforms like YouTube and TikTok, which make it impossible for creators to earn enough to live from their work.

The Glass team has also hinted that they will introduce token-paywalled livestreams in the next couple of months.

The Ads model has made it so we’re forced to care more about the hype from views than we care about making great videos. – The Glass Manifesto

As we’ve seen in other media, NFTs are a revolutionary way to compensate artists, not platforms.

The technology

Glass enables rapid, high-quality (4k, 6k coming soon!) streaming of Arweave-stored video files via Meson.Network, Media Network, and Arweave gateways.

Video is delivered at the best resolution possible for the user’s bandwidth and dynamically adapts based on network strength, like Netflix. Different quality transcodes are handled by Livepeer.

Content delivery is optimized by a custom bundler, like the technology behind arbundles, to provide this adaptive streaming. Glass videos are broken up into small segments and bundled to reduce congestion.

A more in-depth expanation of the workings behind Glass can be found here on Mirror.

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