Gauche Encounters   Bad films and the UFO Mythos by Martin Kottmeyer. This is a classic and much quoted essay that has never been published before. I'll be adding some pictures to this soon.
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INDIEPIX.NET - UK LAUNCH 
report by Jamie Garwood

bfi Monday 17th Septemeber 

A new company incorporating Indiepix and NetworkedPlanet has been launched in the UK this morning, Tuesday 18th September, with the target of re-organising the economic distribution and commercial transaction of films  making productions more profitable for the film-maker and gaining greater access and visibility for the audience who want to see these films. 

Bob Alexander who has previously worked in consultancy companies in New York City comes across as a passionate individual for independent film and he took the stand first explaining how it is an aim to connect the film-maker with his audience, the audience with more films and making it more cost effective for all parties. 

Mr. Alexander explained how the user would log onto the website and would pay to download a film that is on the extensive catalogue which is close to 3000 titles currently - another aim is to eventually reach 10,000 - pay $15 or equivalent to buy or view the title, $10 of this goes directly back to the film-maker, so they get immediate results and continued support and purpose.  The program has the ability to download in a one button transaction, download a film legally. 

‘Independent cinema has been relegated in the league of audience expectations’, to illustrate this point and blame Hollywood for sucking the room out of the competition Bob uses the examples of ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ and ‘The Lives of Others’.  Bourne had a budget of $138m plus an ad spend of $50m and in the first six weeks of release has gained approximately $500m worldwide.  The Lives of Others had a budget of $2m and so far grossed $25m worldwide.  In its 6th week in the US, ‘Lives’ took $800,000 its best week on release, ‘Bourne’ took that in the first 36 minutes of release.  So there is a necessity to combat the mainstream market which is seemingly aimed towards bigger Hollywood productions, but as Bob made the point it does not seem financially viable to be involved in Hollywood.

So which films are put onto the site? ‘There is no current criteria; if the film represents the world of independent film, has performed on the blossoming festival network, screened by an expert panel, examined by an expert jury and been successful, but generally we are open to all submissions. And we welcome short films, where there has never been a commercial opportunity for them and this is an alternative to the film being a calling card.’  He adds that they are in collaboration with NetFlix to create a short film compilation DVD in production with Ingrooves.com, based in San Francisco. 

Kal Ahmed, the founder and co-creator of NetworkedPlanet (a 3 year old company from Oxford) that focuses on connecting concepts and content, talks to us about how the search engine works. Unlike tags used on search engines like YouTube, this site uses topics as its search engine giving content to the tag and becoming bi-directional - for example, a film is directed by ... and he directed...- therefore hooking concepts of films together.  So it was a big process using all the metadata, mapping them into the network, analysing the network before refining.  It is a system that is not patronising towards its audience and does not seem to point you in a certain direction, the system wants the audience to find something new and different.  'This is a system for an informed consumer', says Ahmed in reaction to an audience that is culturally relevant and prevelant.  Ahmed is an ambitious person and says that the turnover of going live with this website from the actual greenlight was three months, extraordinary turnover for a new project of this scale. 

Attempting to create connections

Currently the website gains 120,000 hits a month, a growth of 30% a month.  With purchases up 25-30% a month.  Monetary objectives is to work towards a target of $5-7m within two to three years, they are now working at $1m/year.  'And if 60% of that income goes back to the filmmaker, that is a significant source of income for the individual so this is a change of direction in film-making and production in reflection of the filmmaker's voice', explains Alexander. 

This was the UK Launch, in fact it was the worldwide launch of this collaboration with three launches occuring in the US in October in New York, Pacific-Northwest and San Francisco.  The project is ambitious and i think will be capable to succeed, there is a passion amongst the people involved for film and for the film-makers to get greater recognition for there films on a national, international even global scale - which can only be good for filmmaking in general. 

All the films are able to view, research, explore or even purchase now at www.indiepix.net
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