Building Story Universes
Team Gramarye isn’t just looking to make books and movies with spin-off merchandising. We’re looking to expand storytelling across channels — movies, new media, games, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and more — with interlocking pieces that stand alone while building on and expanding big universes.
Each piece is like a square in a quilt. While each channel can be experienced and enjoyed on its own, they combine to create a larger picture.
Each channel provides a new point of entry for the audience, each channel supports and expands the others, each channel provides a new opportunity for revenue.
Most importantly, each channel supports fan communities in the ways that are most meaningful to the audience.
Reducing Production Costs
The incubation process enables us to eliminate the “sunk costs” of development. As a part of the same process, we can eliminate much of the overhead built in to the traditional studio system. We can also take advantage of a lower cost of business in Georgia and some of the nation’s most generous tax incentives.
The Gramarye Virtual Studio
Gramarye will build an advanced virtual production facility, including a volumetric motion capture system and post production facilities, allowing us to significantly reduce the costs of tentpole/event films and more.
Most significantly, this technology lets us create assets that can be used across various media channels, including film, television, animation, games, AR/VR, location-based entertainment, and even toys and merchandise, all for a single below-the-line cost.
In the traditional models, where content channels are in silos, the same asset might be created three to five times, each with its own cost structure. We’re streaming that process while ensuring that each channel interlocks with the others to tell a compelling and consistent larger story.
Distribution
In entertainment, the old cliché says that content is king. While that’s certainly true, it’s also true that distribution is High Emperor Above All Kings.
Literally thousands of films are financed and completed every near that never find distribution agreements — and so never find audiences. Without even a limited theatrical release, it is difficult at best for a film to generate revenue through streaming and home markets.
Distribution is, quite literally, the single rarest commodity in entertainment.
Gramarye will acquire a significant equity stake in a new entity created to fill the product vacuum left by the major studios by creating a disruptive new motion picture distribution and finance company.
This unique business model will allow Gramarye to optimize revenue and minimize risks. The concept focuses on the one area in the movie business that has consistently been a massive profit center for studios — owning and controlling distribution. This has the least amount of risk because Gramarye will be able to collect from first dollar gross directly from the box office and other revenue streams.
To facilitate this unique concept, the core elements of this business plan are:
Domestic distribution allowing Gramarye direct access the largest world market directly, reducing distribution costs for its own films, and driving distribution fees for itself and third-party movies
Direct international distribution in the eight territories that — with the U.S. — cover 90 percent of world markets, replicating the benefits of direct domestic distribution
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An internal foreign sales agency ensuring sales in the remaining 10 percent of world markets;
Production financing and control for each project financially and creatively
Marketing (“P&A”) financing to guarantee worldwide theatrical distribution for each of our movies, reduce marketing costs, and participate in gross revenue theatrical and other streams.
Expanding Stories, Expanding Audiences
Gramarye will make use of emerging technology to not only reduce the costs of making event films, but also to open new revenue streams.
Working with our technology, we can film key scenes, and even entire films, using a 27-camera volumetric motion capture system, allowing us to capture complete, 360º holographic images. We can then add virtual sets and even virtual props and costumes in real time. That allows us to capture every possible camera angle at the same time, reducing production time and cost significantly.
At the same time, we will be capturing assets for video games, mobile apps, AR and VR experiences, and more … without adding additional cost. We can 3D print action figures and toys. Each represents a new revenue stream. We can even shoot identical scenes with various international casts, using the same virtual sets, costumes, and effects, to create native language versions for world markets — without dubbing or subtitles.
Story Drives the Technology
At Gramarye Media, we’re building the production company of tomorrow, reinventing the studio system to reduce risk and costs. But we’re not about the technology. We’re about creators and audiences.
We never forget the primary idea … every franchise begins with the written word. We empower storytellers to engage with audiences in new ways, creating the core, generational stories that unite us all.