Writers and actors have taken to the streets in Hollywood, on strike to fight for more equitable pay models and to protect their jobs and storytelling. What comes out of Hollywood enters the homes and hearts of people around the world, informing the collective cultural psyche, yet the stories that are told are determined by a powerful few. 

Straith Schreder, who was the executive creative director at VICE Media, moved into web3 to help solve this problem. Now the Chief Creative Officer at Candy Digital, which recently merged with Palm Studio, Schreder sees web3 as a “once-in-a-generation chance to build an entirely new medium for creativity.” 

Schreder believes there are two important things missing in traditional entertainment: experiences that are unique to individual fans and are participatory in nature. Encoding rights and remuneration for artists, and giving fans a way to participate in the stories, are experiences only possible through web3. 

Read more: Gala Music Is Deepening The Artist/Fan Relationship Through Blockchain Technology

It’s a shift in focus from expression to ownership, Schreder said. “Creating for ownership is a profoundly different experience,” she said. “When you’re building for people who are collecting what you own, that’s a different way of approaching storytelling because it’s an inherently deeper type of engagement.”

She continued, “It’s not just passive, like viewing, watching, or liking something. It implies and enforces a relationship with the creator and elevates the type of digital experiences that you build. When you’re working directly with a collector, it has to be personal and specific.” 

While at VICE, Schreder learned the “specific reveals the universal,” which is applicable to web3 storytelling because the fans are also the asset owners and co-creators. It’s recognizing them as humans, not audiences or consumers. To be able to give people agency and the ability to see themselves in the stories, in many cases helping to shape the narrative, Schreder believes, is extremely powerful. 

Blockchain as an artistic medium 

It's every child’s dream to become the superhero of their fantasies. Palm Studio has worked with DC Comics to make that a reality, allowing fans to own and create their place in a superhero universe. Collectors of Bat Cowl, for example, get unique access into everything DC, whether that’s Comic-Con signings with DC president Jim Lee or advanced screenings or voting rights to shape the narrative of new comic books. In fact, voting on the third installment of an original comic book series called Batman: The Legacy Cowl, has just wrapped. 

Web3, Schreder has discovered, is a more horizontal structure that equally empowers artists, fans, communities and culture, and is “a medium that’s as flexible as you are creative.” She believes decentralization is one of the most critical issues of our time, in Hollywood and beyond. 

Being able to decentralize and democratize the creative process will have a rich impact in terms of the types of stories that we tell. The change won’t come from the technology, but rather the people using it, Schreder added. 

For creators to be able to bypass powerful execs and studios, to create powerful, profitable worlds of their own, while rewarding the fans, is a paradigm shift – but one Hollywood’s crying out for. Talent is decentralized but access isn’t. 

“We could talk about web3 as being a technological revolution and a watershed moment in terms of innovation, but there’s no revolution without people behind it,” she said. “The most important thing we can do is create a place and a platform for other people to influence. It’s only by creating systems that the full spectrum of people can see themselves in that we’ll understand what’s possible in terms of the technology that we can build.”