Web pioneer Cath Le Couteur on digital utopias, closing Shooting People, film collectives & the future.

It’s hard not to be nostalgic for me about that, that period of the web, because I felt like when the dotcom crash happened, which is sort of early naughts, like early 2000, there’s this sort of period of time before social media and smartphones change everything in say, 2008. Can you remember that time? I mean, did you, is it just me being nostalgic or, or was it actually quite special? No, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t think it’s you being nostalgic. I think, I think the early days, early days of internet were absolutely utopian. Like they were, and there was a lot of you, you utopian. And I don’t mean that in a, in a kind of a fantasy, you guys all wanted a, a kind of, you know, idealistic world where everybody could, everybody anywhere could learn anything they wanted. But it was, it was a very, um, promising, hopeful place that, that wasn’t based on ad revenue, that wasn’t based on click bait and wasn’t based on extraction or data. It was about the productivity of, of connecting and sharing. So it was a really wonderful place to be in in terms of, it’s the general kind of what we, what we felt the future could be. But it changed pretty quickly. I mean, the Internet became a shopping mall pretty quickly. Yeah. Um, but I think, you know, in, if I look at it through a kind of shooting people lens or ethos in the same way, I think that non-mainstream film will always continue. I think people that are different or are looking for something different or are looking to be able to express themselves or get their stories out that perhaps aren’t part of mainstream will always find gaps. And it’s why even now after we circle back to, to, to right here and now, and we’re obviously looking at another tipping point with AI, I think there will always be people that find the gaps. And, and the big question I think is yeah, how can you new continue to empower and enable people and not extract is, is the danger of where things are heading now. But, but I, I have faith Nic, do you know what I mean? I don’t, I don’t, I kind of feel like, and I look around and, and yes, Shooters is, is closing at this point after 27 years. But, but for me, the big kind of, the big part of that, the really great part of that is proof of concept. You know, 27 years without institutional funding and online independent network of independent filmmakers wanting to tell their own stories worked. So I kind of think it will also continue to work. And it’s, it’s about kind of finding the, the, the gaps and the, you know, the side rooms and, you know, if you, even in general, I mean, you’ll be really aware of this, it’s like, what is it 12% of people that are working class working mainstream filmmaking right now?

You know? And, and same for queer Bipoc women. It’s like, it really hasn’t changed that much. And where do those people start? They find the, they start their own collectives. They find the side doors, they find the ways to kind of reach out and find each other and start their own kind of networks and spaces. So I kind of feel like there will always be people looking for ways to kind of connect and come together that, that, that exist outside the mainstream. But I do think, um, it’s hard. I think it’s increasingly hard in, in today’s world of how, how to be sustainable. And that’s where I think, um, we need new ideas and, and, and I think the people that run the collectives have got the ideas. It’s just well, from others to kind of think about what might be possible in terms of, you know, supporting the grassroots. ’cause I really believe that if you just pour millions from the top down, you don’t grow anything. And actually you get a really vibrant film culture in this country and you get fantastic stories and you get the kind of, um, money back if you like, if you fund what’s happening on the ground.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. In some ways it should be the perfect time because Kit is ubiquitous. You can shoot 4K on your phone. Yeah. You know, it’s like the totally, the tools are here, don’t need the budget. The tools Are here, the tools are cheaper, is the opportunity. No, it’s not. Why.

Yeah. Yeah. You’ve got a global audience you can distribute to the world. Yeah. High speed broadband, no problem. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. But the opportunity isn’t there. And you know, and part of that is the kind of capricious extraction, kind of new modes of thought and thinking from the streamers. And also a lack of kind of innovative thinking, I think around government. I think there are absolutely, um, options that could, uh, change things for people on the ground. But in the meantime, I do believe people on the ground will continue to kind of find the gaps and ways to connect.

Yeah. Government seems to have just basically for this whole last 25 years kind of gone, we don’t really understand this so we’ll, we’ll allow these powerful people who come to meet with us tell us how it, how it should be. Oh, it’s, I went to a school, to a primary school tour yesterday and they were talking about homework and they said, yeah, we do the homework via Google Classroom. And it’s like, how did Google get into running primary school classrooms? It’s an ad network, I had no idea. I’m so naïve. Right. That’s fascinating. Fascinating and terrifying, yeah.

And this, I think probably the same with to an extent the way, yeah. If you speak to a teenager today who wants to be a filmmaker, probably a lot of the things you and me would say based on the last 25 years, they’d look at us like they just don’t. For them, it’s just like, how do you get more people to follow you on one of three platforms? I guess Instagram, TikTok or YouTube. That’s probably their only kind of question is how to get more follows or, But I think their questions will be more than that. I think their questions will be more than that. I think their question will also be, is there a space where at nine o’clock on a Wednesday night, I can put out a call and say, has anyone got a fog machine? And somebody is gonna come back and go, yes mate, I do. How can I help? And that is that that kind of scrappy scheming sharing I think doesn’t go anywhere. And I think the desire for that doesn’t go anywhere either. Um, it’s, it’s how can these spaces work? And, and you know, you’re right. It’s like, you know, on the bigger kind of political level, it’s like, why don’t we have film common spaces? You know, there’s plenty of high streets that aren’t being used, so why can’t local councils kick in and let’s have some flexible film spaces. There could be a script room in the morning and a castle rehearsing space in the afternoon and has a lock and key for people to share kit and all the rest of it. Or why can’t we take a 0.0001% of the streaming profits and, and put that into micro budget collectives? Or, you know, why can’t we have kind of a way for what I think is frustrating? And I see it because I see it right now. There’s so many amazing collectives springing up loads and loads and loads of them, and they, it’s really difficult for some of those people because most public funding requires people to have a limited company. You know, and then there’s all the admin and overheads and all of that that comes with it. So again, why can’t we just skim 0.0001% of streaming profits or 0.0001% of the tax credit and, and put it into some pots where people can apply just to run flexible grassroots collectives up and down their country. Yeah. And small bits of money can, you know, can make such a big impact. And I think your teen who does care about how many views he is getting for the film that he’s made, will also want to be part of a group of people who are also all trying to kind of get stuff made that doesn’t change, really doesn’t, I just think, um, we have to be the people that own it. You know what I mean? It’s not Google classrooms. It has to be owned by the people who are doing it or shaping it, I think. Yeah. Top down kind of communities just will, will never work. Support the grassroots and you’ll get a fantastic flourishing of things and ideas and stories and work. And you know, if you look at this really interesting stats, if you look at the BFI stats on, there’s some really amazing percentage. It’s like 42% of everyone who’s made a feature film, their first feature film came from a collective or small grassroots community. It’s a really high stat. So if you want to be supporting your kind of future culture, then let’s come up with innovative ways to make that sustainable.

It sounds like Shooters closing isn’t coinciding with you stepping, stepping outta the, the indie film space or, Or I mean, I don’t know there as I Yes, there’s lots of projects that I would like to get my teeth into properly. So, um, and, and you know, I live, I live, I love film, I love cinema. Absolutely love it. And I absolutely believe in community as a way for much better, um, opportunity for everyone.

Regional filmmakers, working class filmmakers, people that don’t just have, you know, money and connections basically. I really believe in that stuff that that is how you actually get really interesting culture and you kind of have ways for, um, as I said, people to open side doors. But yeah, first time filmmakers feature filmmakers and it’s amazing statistic, how many, how many of them came through grassroots collectives? Yeah. I I didn’t know that. That’s some amazing, yeah. I’ll, I’ll pull, I’ll pull. I, I, I think, um, I think Steven Fellows may have sent me that one, but yeah, you’ll find it. I think it was published, it was publicly published. Yeah.

And, and, um, are there any collectives you, you would name, check or re recommend people look into because there a lot? Oh, Well, yes. I mean part of, part of the legacy for us is leaving up behind a handpicked curated list of about 80, um, different organizations. So that’s kind of handpicked curated list. But, um, if I was, uh, coming up with ones off the top of my head, um, absolutely Isra Al Kassi and the T A P E Collective, it’s a brilliant network collective, um, that interestingly hasn’t just been kind of championing independent voices but is now itself going into distribution. I think Bounce is really cool for its energy and, and getting people out into the cinemas and seeing lots and lots of different work. Um, We are Parable, the Black Collective, um, there’s the Queer Filmmakers Network. I mean there’s lots, there’s that list of resources. If I’m allowed to like plug anything, I would love to plug shootingpeople.org/resources because there’re amazing people out there, um, doing amazing things. And that’s how people be able to find others to continue doing the good work. So though the site is is, or the list is no more that, that list will remain the Yes. So we’re leaving up, we’re leaving up that which is handpicked, um, list of just amazing, um, orgs that are building spaces for community to flourish. And that’s right around the uk lots of regional orgs there as well. Um, we’re leaving up a database of funds and opportunities ’cause we, um, for a long time have kind of, um, tried to see whatever fund or opportunity comes in. Um, we’ve pushed that out to the shoots community. So there’s quite a good database that we wanted to leave up because even if the dates might change next year, people will still be able to scan it and go, oh, is that fund still running? And so that database is being, um, left up and we’re also leading, leaving up, um, uh, just short film highlights. So we ran the New Shoots filmmakers competition and the new Shoots actors competition. In fact, um, for years and years. Um, you might remember May, perhaps when you were with Shooters, it was Film the Month. Mm-hmm. Okay. And then it became shortcuts and then it became new shoots. Um, but basically we’ve left up, um, the kind of best of short films across that, that competition that’s run for years and years and years. So people can just watch some of the, um, short films that, uh, have done really well. So those three things stay up. Yeah.

Super Nice indefinitely, however long that, that, that is useful for people. Yeah.

Okay. These are the two very quick, probably quick answered questions, but like, did you get any offers to buy shooting people? Um, ’cause that, that presumably, uh, we got, We got asked for the data. Yes, yes, yes. Had three people saying, can we buy your data? And we went, no, no, you can’t. So yeah, I mean, interesting isn’t it, it wasn’t ever offers to kind of by Shooting People, but it was, we would like to buy your data and no, you’re not having it, Just the mailing list. No way that they want the, the list archive so they could sort of, I dunno, feed it into a learning, into A No, it was people, we weren’t, we weren’t, we weren’t all your people and their email addresses and no, you’re not having that. Yeah. I mean, I, I never in a million million years do that. Um, but yes, that’s also the way of the world, I guess. Mm-hmm. S what people and, uh, so no, we turned all of that down.

And you, you said it’s a great, um, example of something that, that that paid for itself. Uh, yeah. So I have to ask it. It’s ending not because it would hit a financial block in the road?Nope. No, it’s end, it’s ending because 27 years is long enough. But in truth, I mean, it, it got harder and harder to keep it sustainable. I mean, one of the big things, and Jess and I were always felt certain and sure about this, was that Shooters had to be accessible, had to be, in order for it to be accessible, it had to be really low cost membership. Um, I think over that 27 years, we raised the price three times. And as of 2027, you could still join shooters for 20 quid. That was the price that we had when you started. So you could come in as a first timer and join shooters in 2027 for 20 quid. So that was always really important. Um, what that meant was that in general about, in, in terms of running costs and all the rest of it, membership kind of probably was about two thirds covered, two thirds. So we always had to find a third of extra income for it to just break even, basically. Um, and again, you’ll be, um, very well versed in the number of different ways that we brought in that income, whether it was books or DVDs, whether it was doing deals with, uh, the first Netflix in the day. What was it called for? What was the DVD set? Love Film – Love film. Um, whether, and you know, that how we’ve done that extra income piece has changed depending on, you know, and we just had to be nimble basically, where could we kind of get money? And I would say the last eight years really that income has come through sponsorship. So that’s people, you know, partnering with us to sponsor Shooters. And increasingly that got difficult. I mean, post COVID, most people’s marketing budgets were completely slashed. So it’s not the reason that we’re closing. No, but it got a harder and harder battle for sure. And, and I was never going to do that thing of doubling membership fees or anything like that. So if we can’t make this work by keeping it low cost accessible and then drawing in income somewhere, um, then we shouldn’t run. But, but, and, but we did and we did, and we had some fantastic partners. You know, we had a really, and we had long partnerships, very long partnership with Nikon right up to us closing, very long partnership with Zipcar. Um, very, very long partnership with Puma, in fact. Um, but you know, in a, that stuff does get hard. It always gets hard because people change at those companies and, you know, marketing budgets change and, but yeah. Anyone that looks at our accounts will know that we’re not making a fortune that we, we were just breaking even every year. And I’d have liked to have made more because, you know, you make more money, you can do more. Right. Yeah. Always had more ideas than we had, um, funding to kind of do them. Um, but in the end, yeah, it, it, it needed, um, it, it needed more for us to be able to do everything we wanted, but that’s okay. We broke even. Yeah. Good enough.

You mentioned Jess though, and I feel it would be sort of wrong to not like mention her just Yeah. Dear beautiful darling, Jess.

Yeah, It’s quite, uh, it is still a bit of – somehow a bit of a shock, even though it’s been, Oh, I think it’s a shock to hundreds and hundreds of people still. Yes. Yeah. Her death was just, um, yeah, horrible, awful. But, you know, she did it in the most amazing ways. Only Jess would go calling herself a lucky f****r and, you know, putting on massive celebrations and parties. She was amazing. And, you know, she just wouldn’t have happened without Jess and she just probably wouldn’t have happened about the friendship that Jess and I had because we, we really loved being silly and a big part of shooters was just being able to have fun. Yeah. And the community responded to that, you know, they, they were always super, super game. And maybe that’s the other benefit that you have when you start a creative community is that people are up for stuff.

I think that’s, that’s the, that’s the side that I, I think I was quite privileged to be in this early stage where it was, there was no office, there was just, it was either your flat or Jess’s. Yeah. Uh, well it was her mom’s house for the start and then later on her flat That’s the best place To start things, right? Yeah. Yeah. Kitchen tables, flats, over a kitchen table. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, Yeah. And yeah, it’d always be, you both were really busy, but it’d always be, I had this crazy idea, what about a filmmaker-on-board sticker that we could put in the back of, and I’m pretty sure that like when I saw that post that you have announced, I was like, oh, I’d forgotten that. Yeah. Didn’t, didn’t we print those and hand them out to everybody who came to the party so they could stick them in the Yeah. But Again, it was like being able to work with people like you who were like, yeah, let’s do it. Yeah. It was very, Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do it, let’s do it. Um, and I do miss, it’s funny, you know, when you talk about kind of those early days, because I think about how possible it was for most people in, in the early nineties to kind of, you know, rent was cheap, right? Space was cheap. We weren’t paying a fortune on rent. We weren’t paying a fortune for spaces. We could rock up to any kind of bar and say, Hey folks, we want to kind of get a, a bunch of people to pile in here on a Wednesday night. You good with that? It’ll be really busy par They’d be like, sure, no problem. You’d never have that. Now it’s like, how much are you gonna hire for your blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, and and back in those days when rent was cheap and space was cheap, um, creative culture was really thriving. And there was part of me that kind of thought, gee, post COVID, there’s all this dead space everywhere. Are we gonna see, is it gonna kind of evolve and we gonna see an amazing kind of thriving upswell of creative possibility because space is now cheap again, or accessible, or people just give you access to space. Hasn’t happened. I’m still, there’s Good point. But I I there’s so many. Yeah. Because if, if this is cheap, things can happen. But then I think, is it also, there’s a kind of fairly depressed vibe in this country and I, you know, I would try, but I think going to speak to local councils and saying, Hey, by the way, this shop that’s, that’s not being used for the last kind of three years. Can we have it to do some community creative like meetings and networks and groups like that? I fear that the answer wouldn’t be yes, I wish it was. I think that there’s a kind of thing, things feel less free on one level, but then maybe it’s up to the next generation to kind of find their wiggle their way through, scrap their way through, um, duck and dive, um, squat places. You know, go back to the, the kind of days of, of, you know, ducking and diving in order to make those things happen. Because if they do, and I think we are seeing that, we are seeing it in new collectives that keeps springing up, um, doing the best that they can with the resources that they’ve got, then that will mean that culture continues, the spirit continues, and then people find each other work gets made and so on.

You’re totally onto something with the, the council has access to so much space. Also, there have so many links of property developers who have also loads of places sitting empty who they can probably tell you, look, you’re not gonna, we not keep giving you more license unless you give this to some local collectors until you manage to rent it. Um, yeah. And it’ll come from the next gen knocking on the doors and going, come on, don’t be insane.

Yeah. I think that’s all. I think that’s maybe the only job. Uh, and I, I recognize obviously your earlier web than me. I kind of really didn’t get properly didn’t have on my own site till 99. So I, and I only kind of really, and –that was earlier tho Nic.

You it’s still relative. – It’s early – relative to the young people today. Yeah, but still. Um, but I, I feel we, one job we have is to try and remind people that it is possible. ’cause I think if you scroll and you’ve grown up with only smartphones and these giant American networks, American and Chinese networks, you sort of can’t believe that there’s anything outside of that. There’s no alternative way. And if that’s constantly telling you things aren’t possible, then you will start to believe that. And we come from an era where you could live through 15 years of Thatcherism and still find, you know, squat party raves and a completely thriving film co-op culture. Totally right.

In the heart of sort of Thatcher era didn’t totally didn’t stop it. Yeah. Um, And actually my my own kind of, and this is based on absolutely nothing. It’s just based on a kind of like sense vibe thing. I think as you know, AI comes in stronger and stronger. I think the desire for people, including young people to meet up physically is growing. I think physical spaces are gonna become really special places, places that, that, uh, become increasingly important. Um, and, and that, you know, there is only so much, I’m not, you know, I’m not an anti, um, tech person by any stretch. I mean, Shooters was built on technology. Um, but I am, uh, mindful that we want technology that doesn’t extract, we want technology that enables people. And I think physical events and more of that, is it going hand in hand with tech that can enable and empower people? Is is the future and the future for film, the Future for culture, really. But it will come, I’m, I, I really believe it will come from next generation kids coming through. There’s a, there’s enough who are like, I don’t want this as my future. I want something else. And I want my stories to be told, and I wanna find my people and I wanna scrap around and get things done. And I don’t have much resource, but I would be able to do it if I connected with others.

Technology that doesn’t extract, that enables and empowers us. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it is the thing though, isn’t it? It’s like all tech now that is just about click and extraction. Mm-hmm. Revenue. It’s like, no, let’s turn that around. I mean, we’re seeing festivals being run on Discord servers. I like that stuff. I’m like, that’s brilliant. Let’s use it. You know, Discord servers that have been used to run festivals, why not? Brilliant?

You mean to manage the festival? Or actually people go and watch the films on different – Yeah. Just set up Discord Festival. You know, I think stuff is exciting and I think there’s more fluidity, you know, in a way I feel like closing Shooters now at the end of 27 years. I think, I think it’s the right time as well. I think the ways that that people are connecting now are so much more varied and so much more fluid. And actually that’s good. Hmm. We don’t need kind of, you know, big monolithic, um, things to be the answer. We just, we need to be part of fluid things that pop up and pop down and pop up and pop down and the people, the humans, um, in the ways that they need at that time.

Temporary autonomous spaces.Yeah. Yeah. Fluid, being able to respond fluidly, I think is is is key. I just think there could also be, I mean, for someone who’s had to be innovative and entrepreneurial in order to be able to kind of survive for as long as we did, um, it isn’t easy for others. It really isn’t. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty hard if you’re running collective community these days to be kind of sustainable. Yeah. So I do think there are ways that government, public money streamers, people like that could be thinking about the benefit to them of actually supporting. And it’s not much money supporting in a small way, grassroots collectors, because that’s when you get future interesting culture, you know, all the big, all the really innovative, interesting films. Most of those people have come through shooters. Like there’s a reason that people find their people.

Yeah. But if there’s support for, for that, so that communities and orgs like tape or bounce or we are parable or, you know, can actually get a bit of support or a bit of capital support, then things would be thriving even more.

Yeah. The, the whole architecture is great if you’re, um, a Hollywood studio wanting to shoot with the exact amount in the UK to get your tax incentive. And you’ve got an accountant who can figure out that exact amount that you need to shoot here to get that. And we, the taxpayer give them hundreds of millions to do that. That’s right. A tiny fraction of that. They, they not just like chuck a grant into a collective pot for grassroots. Yeah.

Just be a raffle. It could just literally be like the shooter’s raffle and you just randomly assign it. Yeah. Or to people that are building spaces and, and ways for people to come together. I think, you know,

The BFI could be doing that. I mean, collectives seem like a, an obvious place for them to support a diversity of film culture. That’s Right. And it feels old school, but it’s not. People are, you know, this is the future. It’s just, it’s just more fluid and more varied and in a way that’s kind of good. But if I, if only the way to support those things didn’t have to be so kind of, you’ve gotta have a limited company. You’ve gotta have been running for two years, you’ve gotta have a office address, you’ve got, you know, all these things. Yeah. But in the meantime, I think those, those, um, you know, those, that energy, that energy and that shooters energy in a way I is is will carry on. For sure. Yeah. A hundred percent break things, a thousand percent break Things.

How’s it felt since it stopped? Do you, have you noticed a sort of like a gap? Or do you like now getting new energy or, Oh, you’re sweet Nic? No, I feel, I feel excited. I feel excited for a bit of brain space and a bit of time to kind of think about what’s next for me. I mean, it’s, yeah, you run, you run a company really for a really, really long time, and you’ve just, there’s always, always things that you need to do. So it’s kind of amazing to be able to go, wow, I can just take a pause.

Um, you gonna travel or I’m, I’m gonna do all the really boring kind of account stuff and close stuff up, up kind of properly. And then start to look at, um, yeah. Whether I, which creative projects I’d like to put my head into next and how I’m gonna fund those and do those agile question

I have to ask about your tomato movie. Did what? Where did that get to? Oh, that lovely tomato movie that never got Tomato Festival movie. Yeah. Never got Its funding. Never got its funding. But again, it’s one in the drawer that I’d love to kind of pull out and go, actually now maybe I can put some time into seeing if I could get that funded.

I have this very nice memory of visiting you in Paris, um, when you were a Cine Foundation. Oh Wow. That’s a good memory.

You were staying in a sort of apartment with the other filmmakers. Yeah. Yeah.

And um, it, one of those moments, I remember specifically the quality of the tomatoes, bread and butter was like French just do the basics so well, that’s –Actually pretty much what I remember. Like the amazing breadsticks that were outside the flat. Right. And the fact that you could oysters were about 10 p and just shuck them on the floor. Yeah, no, that’s, my memory is definitely food of that as well. Wow. It was Brilliant. Cine Foundation, I went back to, I was back in Paris for the first time, you know, ages, um, when was it? Like about four months ago. And I went and visited Cine Foundation, um, because I had such kind of good memory. So it’s still there and it’s still taking filmmakers and the Cannes Film Festival is still running the residency and still doing great things. There’s a kind of house for filmmakers basically that just hosts them. And then Yeah, they would describe it Residence. A residence where they kind of select six filmmakers from around the world. But then, yeah, you live together in a big apartment with a wonderful space bedroom studio each and shared living and shared kitchen. I remember at the time, actually what was amazing, I was with two South Korean filmmakers, Sri Lankan filmmaker, French Moroccan filmmaker, and we kind of, we’d have discussions about how you could make a film cheapest. We figured out that the post-production was Sri Lanka that directly in stuff was in South Korea. I don’t think anything was in the UK at that point, but yeah. That’s a great memory you’ve got. Yeah. Cine Foundation was brilliant. We’ll, see,

I guess that’s a good entry into the sort of going back to the very roots of Shooters because it, it, it was reminded me in this, in the closing event that it came out of a, a specific film project you were working on. Yeah. It specifically came out of me and Jess meeting and becoming best friends almost instantly, and deciding that we wanted to make a film together. And then thinking, God, wouldn’t it be brilliant if other filmmakers that we know who are doing it themselves would be able to advise us, help us. ’cause of course, we didn’t have any skills or contacts or money. So Absolutely. It was out of Jess and I wanting to make a film together that Shooters was born. Be like, how brilliant if we could get all the filmmakers that we know in one space where we could just trade information directly. And that was the beginning.

Okay. So the network came before you were actually even making the first film. ’cause that was, that was, was that Spin? It was 1 7, 4 film with, um, Sally Phillips. I think it came Post Us, I think in the, it was kind of, which shot the film. And I remember having a discussion about God, wouldn’t it be brilliant if we had other filmmakers that could help us understand, and maybe we wouldn’t have made as many mistakes as we made, and gosh, it’d be really, really brilliant to kind of find out how we could, you know, get a, uh, some posts sound done on this. So I think it was kind of through the making of 1 7 4 that Shooters started around the same time.

Were, were you experiencing that kind of hive mind effect through email lists and IRC or other kind of online networks through the, through your day job? Yes, exactly. So I was working at Cyberia, which was the first internet cafe. Jess was at Channel Four doing TV stuff. And yeah, absolutely early, early, early internet days. And my job at Cyberia was very much a kind of cultural, um, community job in a way where it was using these latest technologies, how can we build kind of community with it? So in a way, I was exposed to a lot of ways in which kind of new technology was able to kind of shape communities in different ways. So it seemed natural to me that you could start effectively a, a email list that had lots and lots of different people on it that would be able to contribute their thoughts and ideas that that seemed kind of quite natural, even though Yes, it was early, early, early days. I mean, people still didn’t have email around 98, I think.

Yeah, totally. Um, so c how did you get into Cyberia? What was, what was the sort of path to to to that I, I’m just kind of, of fascinated. Well, I’m, I’m trying to go a picture of this era, I don’t even know how to answer that. Um, a cyber girlfriend in Australia who was a kind of cyber artist and had email, you know, before anybody in the world had email. And so I’d gone to this cafe to communicate with her because she’d insisted that, that I must obviously communicate when I was in London with her. So I was like, okay, well I’ll find out how you do this email thing. And I just walked into Cyberia, the cafe and happened to meet the big boss there, Eva Pascoe, who was brilliant. And again, a bit like my first meeting with Jess, we just hit it off. And I guess those were also the days where you could kind of chat with someone like each other and suddenly someone’s offering you a job. And I had no idea about anything technical at that stage. I just knew that I liked the idea of how could you use technology to kind of bring different communities into this space. I was up for that. Um, we liked each other and, and that started my first kind of like paid job in the uk.

What sort, what sort of year was this? Do you have a, an idea…? A dyke girlfriend in Australia is the answer to your question.

Right. Okay. I’ll put that down. Insisting I write to her. Yeah.

And, and then trying to find a, a net cafe to, to do that, right? Yeah. Finding a net cafe to do that meeting over, getting a job there, meeting Jess, making our first film. And then it kind of felt very natural to, um, you know, we’re felt natural and also exciting to have a space where kind of, you know, other filmmakers could share information and get films made and seen.

This was like middle nineties, Uh, 95, 96 is when I started, uh, at Cyberia. 96 and 98 was when we started Shooters. So I had two years at, at Cyberia, and then, yeah, we started Shooters, but I, I was using a lot of the team from Cyberia. So our first servers and stuff, I was borrowing servers that Cyberia was running on and saying to the tech boys, come on, gimme some space. Host this thing for me.

Is that where you met Stu? No, that came later. So, uh, we set Shooting People up and then Jess and I ran it out of our bedrooms for about three years. I had left Cyberia by then and joined the startup team of BBC Online. And that’s where I met Stu. Stu was the CTO of, um, the very early, very beginnings of BBC online.

I Didn’t know that. I knew he was, because he was at another.com when I first knew him or He’d been running that. Yeah. Yeah. He was one of part of that early, early UK infrastructure tech setup. And also he came out of philosophy degrees, which most of the early tech guys in those days did. Um, they were kind of philosophy tech thinkers. So yeah, I met Stuart at the BBC. Um, and then I think, and then by 2001, I’d left the BBC and was started taking Shooters with Jess to subscription. And we were running, we were off and away. Yeah. Somehow sometimes I forget that.

Yeah, Stu came out a bit later and he, had he done something Fax Your MP? Was that, was he involved in that? That’s Really great you remember that? Yeah, that’s was brilliant. Yeah, he was absolutely involved with that.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember he was the one who put me onto Cory Doctorow as well in about 2003. <Yeah, no, yeah. He wasn’t that famous. Yeah. Yeah. No, there were lots and lots of people that, that, um, Steve Bobrick was another big kind of web, um, tech guy that is still a very, very old friend of, um, Stu’s that was part of kind of early nineties or mid nineties kind of tech.com UK land.

It Must have been a really small community then. I’m trying to picture the size of it, but It was tiny. Yeah. It wasn’t, well, it felt, it felt tiny, but then actually it was, it, it was bigger in the sense that Wired was kind of very big at the time. So, and Wired were doing loads and loads of events and very excited around technology. And so different groups kind of split off depending on, you know, where your interests were. And Cyberia was kind of in the arts kind of cultural side of things. And then Wired was also kind of in the arts cultural, and then there was a group called Haddock, which was much more kind of hardcore tech, um, that all the early kind of startup guys that were, you know, part of ISPs and all the rest of it would join. But no, it was, um, it was fun. It was the, as as you know, it was the optimism of, of what this thing could be for People.

Yeah. That’s the the thing, the sort of the the come down we’ve been living ever since, you know? Yeah. And just, just you, your time at the BBC that you said, that was when BBC online was still kind of a startup, it was a sort small team as well. Yeah, it Was just starting. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And, you know, some of the questions and thoughts about how they could structure BBC to be online was always really, really interesting. You know, should they have different online in education and in news and in also they just have this one space. And of course they began with this one space, and then it kind of filtered out. But again, I felt lucky because I felt like I was able to do early days of Siberia and, and be part of shaping a lot of the arts cultural stuff. Then I got to be early days of BBC online, and then got out as it got codified and more kind of institutional, and then joined the Imagineering bit, which was much more experimental, and then decided, actually, no, I would run shoots full time. Lucky in terms of timing, kind of managed to kind of arrive at a time when yeah, things were just starting and new ideas was the kind of flavor and how could we do things and questions was a big part of it.

Hadn’t got to giant corporate meetings yet. It was still Hundred percent no. Yeah.

And it feels that Shooters were very lucky or probably wouldn’t have happened without that. Um, but it brought that into, into the indie film world, most of whom would not have really got any of that, I think for any other means. Maybe some of them on reading Wired. No, I mean, it, it, it was an extension of the film co-op community, right. Which was the London based big kind of like film community that, that you would locally kind of show up to kind of meet people, share information, find out if someone’s got a sound recorders. So it was obviously still happening, um, in lots of different ways, um, local physical, um, communities. But this was the first joined up where you could kind of be part of something that was UK wide. And it didn’t matter where you were, you could still find out from someone else how to shoot something on a DV camera or how you could use a mini disk at the time to do your sound recording. So yeah, it was the first time I think it was joined up kind of UK wide,

And it was, was just a, um, like a Mailman, uh, like a GNU Mailman mailing list. Right. Yep. And we would, I mean, what is fascinating to me about really how Shooters is run is I was always, always surprised that no one seemed to copy the core idea, which was, let’s just take in everybody’s questions and answers and thoughts and events, and then just push them out once a day to people.

And we did that from the day we started to the day that we’ve closed. And when we first started, yes, it was mailman lists, but I would manually pop them all in to the list and then, and then we would send them out. And then as the tech advance, we were able to do that automatically. It, it always felt, that was one of the things that I think a lot of other people attempted this, and they would, for whatever reason, just have zero curation, or they’d have so much curation, it would take weeks and you’d be waiting for, for something to appear. But a, you were doing it every day, but b you were really caring about the quality of what went out each day and trying to emerge people. Yeah. You were part of That. You were one of the editors. Yeah. And we would debate it, right? We would, we would, we took that very seriously. How can we, um, ensure best practice? How can we, um, make sure there isn’t too much repeat stuff? Because people can go and use search engines or look at the previous bulletins if there’s too much kind of repetitive stuff. So how do we keep it fresh? How do we keep it not lightless? How do we, um, yeah, make sure that the tone is kind of good. I mean, I think in general, we really didn’t do a huge amount of saying, you can’t post that to people ever really. But sometimes we would say, do you know what, maybe asking for someone to work on your film for free when you’re also saying that you’ve just pumped 10 grand into Kit. Isn’t that great? People might feel cross about that. You might not get the best responses to that. Have you thought about maybe you don’t have to have a crane and you could pay someone. Or at least recognize that if you are asking for someone to collaborate with you on a film, it’s a really, really big ask and ask yourself what are they gonna get out of it? And then think, how can you pitch that in a way that, um, is going to make people want to kind of collaborate with you? So we were really big on that actually. And, and, and in a way big on it because our judgment and you as a filmmaker’s editor would know that too. It’s like you would read it and go, well actually no, that’s, that’s, that sounds just a bit off. Mm-hmm. So I’ll just gently go back to that person and say why it feels off to me as a filmmaker. Yeah. And invariably, we really, really rarely had people coming back going, what do you mean? You’re telling me that I should, you know, consider reposting in this way. Most people would just repost. So, and in general, of course, you’d then have less and less and less and less of that because it’s self generated a kind of tone and a way of kind of asking people for things that the other people then embraced. That was good.