This proposal asks for up to 100.000 USD to co-fund Longevity Hackers, a documentary by Filmmaker Michal Siewierski.

Synopsis

"Our mission is to help promote the fields of longevity and healthy life extension in this film, and help generate additional exposure for the industry with the goal of helping it achieve its funding goals in order to speed up research on anti-aging drugs, treatments and procedures.

Another goal is to empower and educate the viewers about the latest advances in the fields of longevity, health span and radical life extension as well as lifestyle and dietary interventions that could potentially increase the chances of people living long enough to take advantage of the upcoming exciting life extension therapies of the near future."

Michal Siewierski - Filmmaker

Summary

VitaDAO, through it’s Community and Awareness working group, has been responsible for not only building our community of token holders and advocates, but also for taking a leading role in producing communication and educational content to establish the importance of credible science in the field of healthspan and longevity research.

Between numerous online articles, journal club sessions on Clubhouse, Twitter spaces, and YouTube content, the Community and Awareness Working Group has been successful in raising awareness of both VitaDAO and its mission. However, the impact of this awareness is limited to those who already have an interest in the longevity field or web3 space.

The proposed project continues to support that community growth and educational theme, but with the goal of both extending its visibility to a wider community, as well as investing in and receiving financial returns from the production of a feature length, independent film to be released later this year.

Background

Longevity Hackers follows Emmy Nominated Filmmaker Michal Siewierski on a journey to discover the latest research and science breakthroughs in the field of longevity and healthy life extension. Featuring the top experts, scientists, researchers, startup CEO’s as well as celebrities and critics in the longevity space. Many of the interviewed experts believe that we are on the brink of being able to dramatically increase human healthspan and lifespan within the next 20 to 30 years, and others more extreme believe humans might someday become immortal. This fascinating field entices human curiosity and creates hope for a longer and healthier life in the not-so-distant future. The film gives the viewer an unbiased view, with balanced perspectives and opinions on the topic.

The Company

New Roots Films is a US-based independent filmmaking company located in Phoenix, Arizona founded by Emmy Award nominated filmmaker Michal Siewierski and business partner Ruben Figueres.

Michal Siewierski is a world renowned documentary filmmaker and TV producer. Michal has received multiple Emmy Award nominations and won several Telly Awards and Hermes Awards. Michal has over 20 years of experience in the fields of television production and filmmaking, having produced several globally renowned feature documentaries, including, Food Choices, Diet Fiction, Takeout, among others. His films have been translated to over 20 languages and some played in over 150 countries. Michal has also produced hundreds of TV commercials over the years for many prestigious clients including several fortune 500 companies and presidential campaigns. His productions have played on several TV stations throughout the United States and around the world. Nowadays Michal’s focus is in creating documentaries about topics that can benefit people’s lives and create disruptive positive change to our society and our planet. Michal is also passionate about longevity, science and health.

Ruben Figueres is an entrepreneur, media expert, best selling author and accomplished Ironman athlete. Ruben Figueres brings over two decades of media, business and advertising experience to the table, with his work ranging from fortune five hundred companies to presidential campaigns. Having executive produced hundreds of TV commercials, TV shows and infomercials. Ruben recently joined the New Roots Films team as a Director of business affairs and co-producer on "Longevity Hackers".

Why “Longevity Hackers” Matters?

Since June 2021 when VitaDAO was launched, there has been a considerable increase in interest in the field of longevity and healthspan related research. VitaDAO itself was formed to allow a web3 crowdsourcing approach to IP development and investing for advancing the science of healthspan research.

While this growth has been impressive, the community itself still is quite small - this is surprising given that billions of US dollars are spent every year on cosmetic, sometimes scientifically questionable, and oftentimes marginally effective treatments to satisfy the popular desire to mitigate age-related ailments. So while popular interest is obviously there (as well as the commercial interest), the understanding and access to the science of longevity and healthspan research is limited, and consequently dramatically underfunded relative to other medical areas.

To harness some of the popular interest in longevity as well as redirect some of the financial interest into our community, a wider net needs to be cast to show that there is serious science being worked on in the field and opportunities to participate in its development.

In the past six months, VitaDAO as well as other members of the longevity eco-system have had several Clubhouse sessions on the communications surrounding the Longevity field, these conversations have further highlighted that there needs to be a proactive approach to managing the narrative around the longevity field, discouraging and calling out “snake-oil” science, and showing that many of the researchers and people involved in this field are as serious, capable and scientifically rigorous as any others involved in medical research.

An investment in a high-quality production looking at the field in an unbiased way will lend credibility not only to the longevity field but also support VitaDAO’s mission especially where we have made great efforts to ensure that our educational communications are scientifically sound.

It should also be noted that the cost of our Community and Awareness program is an essential expense for VitaDAO, which generates goodwill for VitaDAO in terms of reputation, and network effects. However, the potential reach and visibility from a film, combined with the upside potential of commercial success, makes this an attractive project, especially when compared to our typical expenses associated with community building and educational communications.

Opportunity

The Longevity Hackers film is a $2M project. This includes promotion, distribution, and high quality production values.

Funding has already been obtained from LongevityTech.fund as well as a number of other investors. A 1% stake in the film is $20,000. Consequently, we believe a 5% stake at $100k is a suitable amount. Given the funding that the project has received to date, filming has been underway over the past 6 months, which will reduce the time-to-market for the film and, all things being equal, for the start of returns to investors in the film which would probably occur in late 2022 or 2023.

Budget:

We are proposing that the VitaDAO community authorizes up to $100k of funding from the Treasury towards an investment in the production of the Longevity Hackers film, subject to successful negotiations and deal structure.

The official Longevity Hackers presentation can be found here

The film website can be found at: www.longevityhackers.tv

For more information, please see the phase 2 proposal and discussion on Discourse.