Hype Animation Brazil Turn To NFT Tech To Fund Short Film: Ed

Brazil’s Hype Animation has launched Meet Ed, an NFT campaign to fully finance the production of an animated feature film.

Hype Animation Studio is known for its famous 14-minute animated short film “Ed” back in 2013. Thanks to its compelling story, the short film clinched 28 awards across several film festivals at that time.

What is the short film “Ed” about?

As mentioned, Hype Animation created an animated short film “Ed” back in 2013. The animation tells the story of Ed, a very successful rabbit in his acting career. But he was not having a successful personal life and decided to end his life. The 14-minute film brings a reflection on what happiness is about and if success really brings happiness.

Why did Hype Animation turn to NFTs to fund a feature film about Ed?

To begin with, it has always been Hype Animation’s dream to produce a sequel to “Ed”. But given the difficulty of financing a film in Brazil, the studio decided to launch an NFT funding campaign “Meet Ed” to fund the production.

“With this project, we aim to bring every part of Ed’s life to life, in a new world, new perspective,” said Gabriel Garcia, the director of Ed. “We’ve chosen his craziest dreams and characters to play a role in each NFT and also pay homage to the history of cinema while preparing for a new era of the industry in the Web3.”

Through this campaign, Hype Animation will launch a collection of 10,000 NFTs featuring Ed impersonating movie classics in the film. Depending on the NFT category, NFT holders might even get to name the movie characters after themselves. What’s more, holding one of these NFTs means that you can also take part in the movie’s production.

Nonetheless, these NFTs was for grabs on the 9th of June on OpenSea.

Have other feature productions used NFT for fundraising? Several have, yes. In December of last year, Neils Juul (The Irishman) launched NFT Studios which issued NFTs to fund their film A Wing and a Prayer. A U.S.-U.K. co-pro, they promoted the project as the “first feature film intended to be solely funded by minting NFT tokens.” At about the same time, Al Pacino’s daughter Julie Pacino generated nearly $100,000 selling no-fee prints of her photographs to help fund her film I Live Here Now.

In January, First Flights was launched as a tokenized community-driven funding platform for films. Barcelona’s Miguel Faus is working on Calledita, which he says will be Europe’s first NFT-funded film. And Rooftop Production and Karlab in France recently launched their own NFT fundraising program for their feature Plush. It’s too early in the game to predict what history will consider the first film financed entirely by NFTs, but in all likelihood, it’s already in production.