Good evening and very early morning future, Hive colonials.

This goes out primarily to @blocktrades and the other witnesses and devs and dApps that have decided to move to the Hive chain. It also goes out to all the artists on here as well.

After the official announcement of Hive I became excited. Inspired even, and I wished I could do more to help launch this new project. After all, I can't code or design a website with ease. What I can do is create cinematic experiences and tell stories.

Questions came to mind. How do we separate it from Steem? How do we get noticed? How do we create a campaign that would be cheap to make, and get the biggest bang for our buck? What is something short enough and weird enough to send to a friend?

So, I thought I'd do what I do and immediately moved to create a small, commercial proposal of sorts to promote the new blockchain.

THE PITCH:

My goals to make the audience want to know more about Hive by creating a series of small adds. I will marry Hive with a counter intuitive aesthetic to create an air of mystery and intrigue about the new blockchain and social community. I will do this by begging the question "what is it?" by providing as little information as possible, leaning heavily on the iconography of bees, beehives, flowers (nature) and the Hive logo. It will also acknowledge the strangeness, the newness of a blockchain social network by mixing the style of old, 1970's public service films, documentaries, technology and new age music with cult-like overtones.

What you are about to see is an experiment.

That's it! When I see it, I feel like I want to know more. It's weird and unapologetic. It's vintage, but new. It's lives in a world that one imagines the future to be, kind of like the Arboria Institute propaganda film within the movie Beyond the Black Rainbow.

Skip about 30 seconds in.

I imagined that the commercial itself was discovered in a vault, that it had been shot 50 years ago and what we're seeing is a full telecine scan of an original 16mm print, complete with its optical track.

THE DOWNSIDES

I'm the first one to acknowledge that sometimes I get a bug up my ass about something creatively and I just have to see it to the end just to satisfy my own creative urges no matter how far out there I go. That said, I can see how the message is definitely oblique and could serve to be more confusing than intriguing.

With that in mind...

COMMUNITY SUPPORTED

I only want to move forward with this project if the community is behind it. If the community at large doesn't feel like they really want to share the commercials or embrace the aesthetic, I want to move onto other possibilities to help the network.

If the community at large is interested, I will come right out and say that I need some help getting more of these done, especially if we want to create enough to have an impact. I can't do all of this on my own.

FEEDBACK

If this kind of advertisement campaign is something that the community finds desirable, I could use your feedback to refine the idea a bit. I still have questions, like:

• Do we put the web address at the end or just leave it as is? Make the audience really work for it?
• Is it too long?
• Is this the right logo to use, or is there a more interesting one? I saw the one on Hive.io, but I preferred the one on the Twitter account. It was cleaner and honeycomb shaped, so it fit better aesthetically.
• Do we want spoken word?

THE ASSETS

Some assets in this creation are free, some cost money and some we cannot use. The goal here was two fold.

1. I just wanted to share my thoughts on a campaign as fast as possible, considering how close you are to launch.
2. I wanted to find a way of having the community help source some of the assets.

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HOW IT WAS CREATED

Using Adobe Premiere and Photoshop, this particular commercial was created by layering Creative Commons licensed, PSA films shot on 16mm on top of a Pond5 stock video and stylizing it. The optical track and film sprocket holes come from that PSA film. Vinyl record scratches were used to make the futuristic soundtrack feel old.

If we use the Pond5 stock video, I would need to buy the footage for about $60, but if anyone here in the Steem / Hive community has access to beehives, maybe that person could grab shots for these kinds of commercials. If not, we'd need to find a way of funding the purchase of stock footage.

Also utilized are free film grain and scratch overlays.

MUSIC

The track itself is by Trip to Ganymed (Kielokaz ID363) by KieLoKaz. Because it is a Creative Commons Share Alike Non-Commercial license, I am forbidden from profiting off of this or even the next version should we end up buying the stock footage.

The music from this would have to be replaced unless we / I obtained special permission from the artist.

So if there are any musicians on here that are interested in sharing or creating music that is similar tonally to this, let's collaborate!

WHAT I CAN PROVIDE

Obviously I can provide writing, directing and editing. I can also provide some design elements like the logo I created. I can also source music if I'm unable to find someone in the community to provide some.

I can also manage the Hive Creative Repository for Promotional Video. That's a fancy name for the Google Drive I'll upload stuff to. 😁

SHARE AND SHARE ALIKE

Anything we create or source will be made available for anyone in the community to use so long as they're used to promote Hive and Hive dApps. Sorry Steemians, this series of commercials wouldn't be made for you. Where possible, all elements will be released under Create Commons license with no restrictions save for the exception above. That means any music or images or video shot or logos made would be provided to the community as well.

Thanks for having a look and considering my proposal. I'm excited for this week. The coming of Hive is the best news I've heard during this whole Wuhan Flu pandemic and Justin Sun catastrophe.

I want it to succeed and I think I can help.

Phil

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Sorry to tag you all, but I wanted to jump in with both feet! Please let me know what you think.

@vachemorte, @ashtv, @therealwolf, @jeffjagoe, @pennsif, @good-karma, @roelandp, @blocktrades, @anyx, @ausbitbank, @yabapmatt, @gtg, @steempress, @cervantes, @themarkymark, @yabapmatt, @netuoso, @thecryptodrive, @dtube, @dsound, @steemhunt, @steempeak, @openseed, @aggroed, @theycallmedan

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Continue the discussion on Distant Signal's forum's. Powered by Steem!

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CHECK OUT THE TEAR!

The Tear is my cosmic horror short film and cinematic universe.
http://bit.ly/tearlinks

WHO DIS IS

If you want to know who I am and what Distant Signal is, check this out. It's sort of a manifesto. The TL;DR is that I've won an award for producing, make a lot of reality TV, live in LA and think that artist and media incentives are misaligned and serve large corporations and not independent artists.

DISTANT SIGNAL SOCIAL:

WEBSITE: https://www.thesignalisstrong.com
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/adistantsignal
LBRY: Direct LBRY App Link!
INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/distant_signal/
MINDS: https://www.minds.com/DistantSignal

MISSION

In 2019 the goal is to produce the short horror film, Changelings, the world of that story and to build a community of filmmakers that are enthusiastic about filmmaking and crypto currency.

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PHIL ABATECOLA'S PERSONAL SITES:
INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/abatecolasan/
WEBSITE: http://www.philabatecola.com