Hollywood studio sees cost-saving benefits of bitcoin Bitcoin’s sordid stories may soon be coming to the silver screen, but if one savvy media company has its way, the currency will be taking a starring role behind the scenes as well. Film and TV production and post-production studio Kaufmann Media Group (KMG) recently announced plans to implement bitcoin acceptance as part of a wider initiative, one that will help it clip costs on upcoming projects such as the Melissa McCarthy comedy vehicle Tammy and the sequel to 2011′s medieval action flick Ironclad. In an interview with CoinDesk, Jodi Levy, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles- and North Carolina-based coloring, mixing and editing company, discussed how bitcoin is uniquely suited to the world of TV and film, where shoots happen worldwide. Also, directors, producers, actors and their families travel to destinations without easy access to banks, plus, production staff are consistently burdened by the costs of currency exchange. Levy explained: “One hundred departments, times three installments, times the price of a wire transfer, sending and receiving – leads to considerable savings. Not to mention other transfers to pay for incidentals, supplies and overages … Productions have so many layers involving fund transfer, exchange of currency, etc, which might be amazingly streamlined by bitcoin.” Due to bitcoin’s ability to solve these problems, KMG hopes the digital currency will soon become its preferred method of payment. This may sound like an ambitious plan, but it could be viewed as par for the course for KMG’s founder and owner, Sam Kaufmann, who quickly took to the Hollywood lifestyle in the early ’90s, composing music alongside the legendary Michael Jackson shortly after graduating from Boston’s famed Berklee College of Music. With a job that requires him to be on the cutting edge – Kaufmann’s worked with Charlie Sheen, William Shatner and Roland Emmerich – and hobbies that include metal collecting, it’s perhaps unsurprising that bitcoin quickly drew Kaufmann’s attention. But what’s unique about Kaufmann is his ability to see the big picture benefits bitcoin can bestow to business, when others at the company were prone to mixed thoughts. “He understands the potential challenges, however, Sam is confident that bitcoin can prevail as a beneficial option to the USD,” Levy said. Kaufmann believes that someday, bitcoin will “become as commonplace as writing a check” in Hollywood due to its obvious accounting advantages. But, for now, KMG is focused on the smaller steps. Levy indicated that its production music library, Vault768, will benefit from the ability of paying artists without the hassles of exchange rates and currency fluctuation, and that it hopes to convince more artists to accept bitcoin for payment. So far, however, KMG can only speculate on the savings bitcoin will bring. As of yet, it says it has not tested bitcoin payments on a specific project. View Hollywood studio sees cost-saving benefits of bitcoin on CoinDesk. November 11, 2013 at 01:54PM ift.tt/1iZa8zy
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 13:21:23 +0000
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