INTERTAINMENT:
Lights, Camera, Internet Action

Revolution USA - A new film, shot on location in New York City, owes a lot to the internet community.

Paul Sweeting reports on what Threat could mean to filmmakers.

While rushing to finish the soundtrack for their independent film Threat, filmmakers Matt Pizzolo and Katie Nisa hit what should have been an insurmountable problem. The digital audio tapes containing newly recorded tracks from the rock group Atari Teenage Riot and others were supposed to have arrived that day from Berlin via FedEx. But FedEx hadn't arrived.

Up against a deadline, a friend mentioned having recently read something about a then-new format called MP3 being used to transfer music files over the internet.

Within a few hours, the filmmakers had tracked down an MP3 decoder, taught themselves how to use it, walked their colleagues in Berlin through it and had the files on their hard drive long before FedEx ever located the missing package.

That sort of resourcefulness has helped put Nisa and Pizzolo at the center of a growing filmmaking collective known as King's Mob Productions (www.kingsmob.com), which relies heavily on the internet for both production resources and distribution of its movies.

The gang's first film, Threat was shot on location in New York City, and offers an unflinching and violent portrait of clashing street cultures in downtown Manhattan. Jim, a white, pacifist, straight-edge kid, and Fred, a young, black, hip-hop revolutionary struggling to raise a son, become friends by working together at St. Marks Comix. While their friendship seems to promise to bring together their two separate and sometimes hostile subcultures, a misunderstanding sets off a spasm of violent clashes between the groups that ultimately overwhelms Jim and Fred.

The film isn't subtle about its politics - it is a scathing critique of the institutional and cultural divisions the adult world imposes on kids. But then, Pizzolo and Nisa aren't subtle about their creative agenda, either. "It's getting to the point where you don't need the Hollywood machine anymore," Nisa said, "and we want to do all we can to help it get there."

Pizzolo and Nisa financed what little budget there was for Threat themselves, working various odd jobs around New York City. But the filmmakers relied heavily on a community of voluntary collaborators, recruited through the internet.

The group has 25,000 kids registered to its web site and maintains an ongoing dialog with them. "We'd get an email from someone who had an Avid, so we would use his Avid," Nisa said. "Then through him, we'd find someone who had something else we needed. It just grew like that." The filmmakers started with a crew of four, in fact, and by the end of the shoot had over 200 people on the set.

"It became like its own film school," Pizzolo said. "People would come to the set and not know how to do anything, but they would learn. That's what we want King's Mob to be."

The internet has also been critical to getting exposure for Threat. "When we took the film to Sundance, we just sent out an e-mail, and somebody would e-mail back saying, 'You can stay with me,' and then they would set up a screening," Nisa said. Though not an official entry at Sundance, the group took over a shoe store across the street from the festival's main theater and drew an eager audience.

King's Mob is now planning a 12-city theatrical tour for Threat, using the same do-it-yourself approach, and will soon begin selling Threat from its web site, and, ultimately, via streaming video.

Independent revolutionaries have come and gone, of course, and the Hollywood machine is as ravenous as ever. But the internet has already let King's Mob draw on a far wider pool of resources than the friends-and-family plan beginner filmmakers have traditionally relied on. It's also brought attention to the film at very little cost. While it's unlikely that an ad hoc filmmaking cooperative is ever going to shake the walls of Hollywood, something along the lines of what Pizzolo and Nisa are trying to do could be just the opening independent film needs to regain some of its independence.

In recent years, much of the so-called independent film world has been swallowed up by the big boys, such as Disney's acquisition of Miramax and Universal's purchase of October Films, producing a whole new set of not-very-independent expectations and leaving few places for truly independent voices to find the resources and outlets they need to be heard.

Whether or not King's Mob succeeds in creating an ongoing, self-sustaining cooperative, it's already helping point the way toward a new, grass-roots type of filmmaking that Hollywood probably wouldn't buy even if it could.

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