25 years ago tonight Wendy Bevan-Mogg, Tom Fogg and I arrived at Dawn & Pete’s Peeping Toms Screening Night in Soho to unveil Netribution, having announced it to nice comments on Shooting People earlier in the day. This feels a time where some reflection may be helpful, so to mark this, Tom and I have decided to make a 12 x monthly mini-edition of Netribution.
In the last few days, a theme of ‘home’ has emerged. Maybe it’s on my mind – in the middle of moving house – yet the two pieces to arrive before copy deadline were from people I lived with in the two incarnations of the site…
The first came from Elio España, who I shared a student flat with, and author of Netribution’s first interview – with Steven Soderbergh. He’s one-half of one of the hardest working documentary duos you’ve probably never heard of (making over 100 feature docs) and brings good insight into the last 25 years for indie film distribution.
The second is from Eric Dubois, who moved into my Glasgow flat as Netribution 2 was taking off – on an adventure before settling down as an art professor in Paris. He ended up illustrating every Carnal Cinema satire interview, and all of the regular writers.
25 years ago we’d cockily call ourselves ‘the home of UK film’, which I later attributed to Private Eye after they’d copied the phrase on their links page, in cheeky self-promotion. But after that Web 1 era of home pages was fully replaced by Web 2’s algorithmic home feeds, it’s hard not to wonder whose home, exactly, independent creators ended up in?
The heart of this update, however, is in tribute to Leslie Lowes, know to many as James MacGregor. originally our Northern editor – but known across Shooting People, Moviescope and the Film Finance Handbook. Les played Claudius to Alun Armstrong’s Hamlet at school (and beat him to the role of King Lear), and later was the voice of BBC Radio Shetland, and helped run Radio Riyadh. Thanks to everyone who shared memories – especially his son Robert. My planned memorium for Stephen Applebaum unfortunately must wait until next month.
– – –
We’re in this strange point as a species. The speed of change seems to accelerate while we’re over-informed about a climate emergency we’re mostly incapable of impacting. Wealth inequality is growing while the web deepens division by reinforcing bubbles of belief, making the co-operation we need to improve stuff seem less likely than ever. It feels (thinking of my young kid) it’s simultaneously hard to picture we all get thru this, YET *essential* to believe we do: we get thru this, or we’re done for.
Maybe Jacobean Londoners said the same, having in one generation gone from watching the premiere of The Tempest to surviving civil war, the decapitation of the king, the bubonic plague and the fire of London. The world must have felt almost over, but it wasn’t. Each of us are the surviving descendants of billions of generations of survivors, who got here bringing out a new release, evolving, trying again. If we only look back thru time, the odds seem ok.
Discussing these last 25 years with Tom this last six months has awakened in me a sense that this is a good time to look back. Netribution was born between the forest fire of the first dotcom crash, and the exponential growth of Web2 & smart phones, out of its smoldering, fertile soil. It feels we may be in a similar transition era – a time of shepherding the new and hospicing the old, to use the Berkana Institute’s Two Loops Model lingo.
Tom has a wonderful idea to launch a podcast interviewing everyone we interviewed or knew back then on the lessons of the last two and a half decades. The challenge is time, the story, as ever, is working unpaid: because the funding model still isn’t solved.
*Will it be? Can it be?*
I’ve only really had one question in relation to the web, publishing and film – can we fix web1’s major bug of paying creators without needing a paywall? A few years ago I got incredibly hopeful that we could, just before America split in two over the events of Jan 6, and Russia invaded Ukraine, then October 7th. The web is wilder and more fragmented now than it’s ever been.
But the reasoning that a medium billions of people gaze at and stroke rhythmically for hours every day shouldn’t be exclusively in the hands of a few unpredictable techno-feudal demigods has never been more clear. What happens next, though, is anyone’s guess.
Still, **We get thru this or we’re done for.** So, for what it’s worth, here’s a kind-of issue, or one 12th of an issue at least. Til next month…
Happy Birthday toNetribution! 25 years mean a generation of creative folks have dived into independent cinema and exchanged tips and ideas about how to fund a film.How to fund a film,that title alone rings bells in the back of my head.
I remember meeting Nic on my third day in Glasgow. Being gently interviewed over dinner to make sure I could fit in the colorful community of our near-West End flat, proudly sitting on top of Corunna St. Many years later I would learn this area actually had a name:Finnieston,now a much desirable and gentrified spot. What I also didn’t know back then, is that Nic may also have interviewed me for another dark purpose namedNetribution.
Did it ever cross his brilliantly utopist mind that I could bring my art to the website? I hope so. Because being involved as a resident ofNetributionwas pure joy. It’s now been 18 years since I drew my last caricature forCarnal Cinema, managing to illustrate all original articles before flying back to France in order to start my career as a professor of design, leaving behind my dream-like Scottish life as a foreign cartoonist. I kept drawing caricature though and the graphic family grew up over the years, but never as numerous nor wrapped in such a delightfully bizarre way.
Carnalremains deeply emotional to me until today as it is attached to a short period of my life, meeting with people who were ment to become long-lasting friends. Looking back at it now, that slot of time and space was an absolute bliss. I guess Nic still wonders until today why someone allowed to travel the world free of charge (that’s another story) chose to land in Scotland. Maybe I told him that, but let’s take advantage of this invitation to share memories withNetributionto share a piece of memories in case it can inspire anyone.
I moved to Glasgow to leave behind the person I knew I was to try and address the universe with one big-ass question:Who am I appart from that soon-to-become-Art/Design professor?By moving away from myself more than anything else with , life in a back- pack, my plan was to avoid doing what I already knew I could do, looking for any opportunity to try new stuff until the universe responds.
With no agenda nor network, there I was, sitting at my desk drawing cartoons, scanning them onto Nic’s big scanner, that my brand new flatmate had gently lend me as a welcoming gift… Looking at the sketches taped all over the walls as if months had passed, I was forced to acknowledged my natural habitat had crawled back within a week.Netributionand Nic, dressed in a loose bathrobe with shiney pink gardening boots on, were the universe answering my question.
Memories from the Lowes family (in italics) with Nic Wistreich plus Arin Crumley, Cath Le Couteur, Ben Blaine, Chris Jones, Liz Hobbs, Tom Fogg, Kenneth D Barker & Tom Swanston.
It’s impossible to forget Les’s voice. The crisp yet calm confidence from a career in BBC Radio, but anchored in County Durham bedrock. He remains the only writer I’ve known who would pitch to me the story he wanted to do, and these calls were my favourite. Not only because it made me, many years his junior, feel more important than I was (not least as I almost never had a budget), but because it was where his passion for what he did spilled through.
“I’m trying to interview Arin and Susan” he’d say. I have no idea who he’s talking about. “They’re shaking things up with their video podcast, it’s got 60,000 subscribers” introducing me to the creators of Four Eyed Monsters – makers of the first feature film to be shown on YouTube when it’s 10 minute limit was dropped for a few select accounts, during that brief period post YouTube, pre-Netflix streaming.
“So sad to hear about that news. He was always trying to get to the bottom of how filmmaking could be within reach to everyone.”
Arin Crumley, Four Eyed Monsters, Moop
Or “I’ve been chatting to a fellow who has got India’s only ever short film Oscar nomination.” Or Hugh Hancock, the guy who conceived and founder of Machinima, which defined YouTube video game content. Or some new low-budget technique for his chapter. Or the updates on the long running Scottish film studio saga.
Les was writing about YouTube on Netribution before the Guardian or Screen International – or almost any of us – had noticed it, a few months after launch. Years later I was sat next to Arin in an event about open sourcing the technology of web subtitles in NYC at the top of an Open Society building and his phone rang and the annoyed moderator Allan Gunn would tell the person to his left – me – to answer it. It’s Susan Buice and I’m a bit starstruck to somehow be mediating between these early YouTube meets indie film / mumble core clebs. But that started with Les.
Les had three passions that I encountered:
discovering talent and stories no-one else had spotted;
filmmakers who found a way with next to no budget;
and widening awareness of filmmaking beyond the traditional centres of London and Los Angeles.
Widening awareness happened on Northern Exposure on Netribution 1 and Shooting People’s UK Film Council funded Wideshot project; micro-budget achievements was there in his Microbudget chapter in the last Film Finance Handbook, but across many of the people he was drawn to interviewing.
“James was a fantastic advocate for all things independent film. He was funny, caring, and passionate, as well as a brilliant journalist. Many Shooter filmmakers got their first exposure and the chance to talk about their work thanks to James. He made a huge impact on the industry, especially for the strange, the unconventional, and the voices that often go unheard.”
Cath Le Couteur, Co-founder, Shooting People
Most people I’ve contacted know him as James. Perhaps they’ve even read the satire biography his son Andy Lowes (under the pen-name Cousins) wrote of him talking about his work making propaganda films for Churchill and against Thatcher. As I’ve reached out to people he wrote about explaining Leslie died, I often had to reveal to them James MacGregor never existed. People reference his biography like it’s true; MacGregor has a Facebook account so to the datasets of Meta he’s a person too. But who was this tireless champion of indie filmmakers and filmmaking: on Netribution, Shooting People, MovieScope, the Film Finance Handbook?
Leslie was born in Blackhill, Consett, County Durham on August 30th, 1947 to William Leslie and Edna. William was a lathe operator at the Consett Iron Company, Edna left school young to help look after her 15 older siblings.
A mischievous lad, and child soprano, at the local grammar school Les met a young Alun Armstrong and they became great pals sharing an interest in Drama. The first year after meeting in the school drama society production of Hamlet; Alun played the lead, and Les, despite being the younger, played Claudius (pictured below).
“At 17, he took the lead role in a production of King Lear. This enabled him to get into the National Youth Theatre, and would travel to London a year later to take part in their 1965 production of Anthony and Cleopatra. It was quite a year for talent entering the National Youth Theatre, and Les worked alongside some other unknowns such as Simon Ward, Barrie Rutter, Kenneth Cranham and Timothy Dalton. Cleopatra was played by a 19-year old Helen Mirren, while Leslie has the arguably far more important role of ‘Spear Carrier no. 3’.”
“I met Leslie 20 years ago through Shooting People. We were both loud and opinionated voices and I think initially we argued, if only because initially I argued with _everyone._ Some took this to heart and seem to have considered me unpardonable ever since but Les’ heart was too big for that.
Ben Blaine
“I ended up running Shooting People’s Mobile Cinema, where I’d programme a selection of short films made by members of the community and then, with my brother Chris and our friend Adam we’d tour them round the country in a beat-up VW van. It produced many wonderful stories but none quite as marvellous as when Leslie hosted us in his home in the Shetland Isles.”
“After the screening he took us for a barbecue on the beach. It was June so there was barely any dark at 10pm and Shetland being treeless, he kept a stack of Aberdeen telephone directories in the back of his car in order to light the fire. Seals bobbed in the water whilst we huddled on the sands, random names turning to cinders, dancing in the uplift from the fire whilst Leslie recounted the local folk tale of the Selkie woman. For me Leslie embodied what UK film culture could be – deeply local, a light that could draw a community together, a light by which we could see each other better.
“I always meant to go back to Shetland but never did and was truly saddened to hear that Les had died. He had the warmth of a fire at the end of the world and will be deeply missed.”
In 1965 he did teach training at Newton Park (now part of Bath Spa University) and afterwards took a probationary post at Wickham Primary School. That summer, he was back home in the steelworks as a plate layer, when he met Audrey “who Les charmed with his stunning attire of leather jacket, white jeans and tan coloured desert boots. They were married a year later in Durham, spent their honeymoon in York, and moved to Audrey’s childhood home for the next two years before moving to Southampton to work as a Youth Leader.”
Their first child Andrew was born in 1975, in November 1976 they welcomed their second son, Robert. In 1979 Les got the job as Community Worker on the Westside of Shetland and made the move the following year after Emma was born. He helped launch the local Brae community magazine: ‘Nort Aboot’ and took a part time job at Radio Shetland before going full time in 1981.
“Les found himself the only man working at Radio Shetland and became known as “Radio Shetland Man”. Wherever he went in the isles, he was recognised for his voice and everyone knew him” He was involved in creating one of the station’s flagship programmes, along with Rhoda Bulter and Mary Blance, ‘In Aboot Da Night’ is still going strong, forty years on.
“I had the pleasure of working with James some years ago at movieScope Magazine. Not only was he a great writer and a consummate professional, but he was a wonderful colleague. He was genuinely interested in my life and very supportive of my career, always ready with words of wisdom and encouragement. James’ passion for independent film was the stuff of legend… The industry has lost a talented writer and a true gent.”
Liz Hobbs, movieScope Magazine
Over time he was seconded to Glasgow and Edinburgh for BBC Radio Scotland, where he was a producer for their flagship Good Morning Scotland. This led to four years in Saudi Arabia on Radio Riyadh, leaving the family in Shetland. “With various restrictions on what sort of music was suitable, Les and one of his colleagues broadcast contry and western music with ‘Country Jamboree’. This involved some pretty dodgy country accents, achieved by putting a biro lid between their teeth as the spoke.”
“Alongside his country jamboree slot, Les did voice-overs for Toyota and was a youth world cup sports commentator. He also interviewed Buzz Aldrin and various Russian cosmonauts when producing a space programme. However, because he worked for the ministry of information in Saudi, there was always a little man in a parked car outside his apartment reporting to the government on his work.”
“Thanks James for being so accommodating.”
Kenneth Barker, WOTR, director Kingdom
We sadly could never pay him a penny in Netibution 1 or 2, only for the Funding Book. But one evening, on visiting London with his family, Tom took him out to dinner at Marco Piere White’s Quo Vadis restaurant – having pooled our pennies by way of thanks. Spending money we didn’t really have at Quo Vadis is a theme, Tom mentions it in his interview with himself and remembers the night here…
“I remember the only occasion I spent time with him. We went for dinner at Quo Vadis, on Dean Street in Soho. He was warm hearted, merry, ever so polite and he presented as a humble, decent man who’d seen a lot of life. The dinner was fantastic, as I imagine it would be today. I had a relationship of sorts with the place, with a maitre d’ especially, so no surprise I chose it as a venue. He was impressed and ate heartily. He had lamb. I remember this because we’d spoken about herds local to him who grazed wild and enjoyed fattening on kelp by the shore. It lent the meat a particular flavour.”
Tom Fogg
I remember Les always supporting us, with encouragement and a generosity of spirit made possible by hard work and humility. I remember too that night, the love he had for his son, his pride in him evident. I think he saw something in us, perhaps bravery, perhaps an authenticity, that we were less able to recognise in ourselves. How would we know? He seemed to love what he did for us too, and just for the sake of it. I’m humbled to be writing of this man, knowing of his passing. I’m pleased to also. I’m still to reach the age he was when we met. I’m a father now and there burns a desire to provide and to be a model for my son. A good, hard working and enthusiastic man who loved his family. I’d take that, if another was writing of me.
Despite his warmth, Les had an honest and direct way, in a manner that seems steeped in the North East. I remember a call with him when I was trying to get Netribution 2 off the ground and at a real low. I was camped out in a basement flat in the south side of Glasgow, a city where I knew almost no-one. I’d left London in a storm, fallen out with a dear friend, my huge ambitions of a year before – where Time Out had announced much to my surprise that Netribution was returning – had collapsed into a pile of credit card bills; and I had no work and some proper depression.
On the call Les mentioned having read my ‘purple prose’ with interest and I didn’t admit not knowing what he was talking about. Google answered, after we hung up – “overly ornate prose text that may disrupt a narrative flow by drawing undesirable attention to its own extravagant style of writing”. It was a dig, but said with a warmth, and I couldn’t dispute his criticism. He pushed me to try harder in an oddly direct but indirect way.
“When I was starting my distribution company, Wysiwyg Films, back in 2005, he was very supportive and kindly published two articles that we wrote about producing and distributing independent movies. He was a beacon of light in the world of independent film.”
Tom Swanston, WYSIWYG films
I regret I never made it to Shetland. I don’t have a memory of Les like Ben’s, I wish I did – as probably do many reading this. But it was a privilege to have shared that part of his life where he championed indie filmmakers, and jump-started a career and project or two.
A glass raised to a great man and his alter-ego – to Les and James, yours aye, Nic.
“So many people talk the talk, but only a few walk it too. James was such a person. One of the loudest voices of support for filmmakers at a pivotal time in our cultural evolution. Insightfull, caring and audacious. We are all the worse off for his light not shining”
Chris Jones, co-author Guerilla FIlmmakers Handbook, head London Screenwriters Festival, Splinter Unit Director, Mission Impossible 7 & 8
Many thanks to Robert Lowes (and the family: Audrey, Andrew and Emma) for help in producing this.
I met Leslie 20 years ago through Shooting People. We were both loud and opinionated voices and I think initially we argued, if only because initially I argued with everyone. Some took this to heart and seem to have considered me unpardonable ever since but Les’ heart was too big for that.
I ended up running Shooting People’s Mobile Cinema, where I’d programme a selection of short films made by members of the community and then, with my brother Chris and our friend Adam we’d tour them round the country in a beat-up VW van. It produced many wonderful stories but none quite as marvellous as when Leslie hosted us in his home in the Shetland Isles.
After the screening he took us for a barbecue on the beach. It was June so there was barely any dark at 10pm and Shetland being treeless, he kept a stack of Aberdeen telephone directories in the back of his car in order to light the fire. Seals bobbed in the water whilst we huddled on the sands, random names turning to cinders, dancing in the uplift from the fire whilst Leslie recounted the local folk tale of the Selkie woman. For me Leslie embodied what UK film culture could be – deeply local, a light that could draw a community together, a light by which we could see each other better.
I always meant to go back to Sheltand but never did and was truly saddened to hear that Les had died. He had the warmth of a fire at the end of the world and will be deeply missed.
Nic remembers this time well. I don’t remember. It’s not that I can’t remember, I just haven’t.
Nic didn’t let it go, and so it has remained nurtured. When I left, I severed it at the root. That’s what I tended to do then. Not him. Netribution grew out of him, it was his creation, and so new growth continued off the main trunk; it grows still. And now he’s asked me to, to what?
To Commemorate. To Mark the Time, fill the gap in time? To show my respect for you, Nic. Yes, certainly that. But also to see who I was before I ended my involvement in the business, and for some years, our friendship.
Really though, I want to talk to the young man I was from across time. I want to remember. Let’s start at where I met Nic. We were studying film production at Westminster Uni.
Tom. I love you. I remember your urgency, your impatience to Have, and your frustration with how slow it all was. You didn’t want to work unless there were others, to play with, to be with and be accepted by. And yet you didn’t choose to live on campus. You placed yourself off to the side and above (?) them. You didn’t emotionally commit. I want to make my own choices. There’s a drag to this. I can’t stay motivated. I want to be seen and I want success but it seems like such a long way off. I want to be free. Actually, I’m just lonely. I don’t know where this is going. I don’t know what Nic wants, but he seems to know. He’s smarter than I am. He’s committed. Let’s just fucking do this and see what happens.
Bless you. What are you doing now, much later, at a documentary festival? Well we’ve been invited as indie press but I don’t have my own words. I can’t describe Netribution. I don’t know this industry. I’m trying to follow the narrative but I’m also only trying to be interested in it. I like film. I love the excitement and the style of all this, this scene. Awards one night and basement talks with drinks the next. I love the lifestyle. The travel. I’m bouncing. I’m flexing Me. I get to be good looking, get to be witty. But I’m seen in a way I don’t recognise. I want to be seen as someone. I want to meet women.
And sometimes I get exposed. Because I genuinely don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m faking it, quite well it seems. I’m on a fucking panel about UK indie film. I have no idea what I’m supposed to say. I’ll borrow. I’ll blag it. I’ll look the part, play the role.
How did you end up here Tom? I don’t know. It just happened.
How, Tom. How did it happen? Nic asked me to join him. He seemed to just know and it sounded exciting, so I followed Nic. Uni was slow and I didn’t feel part of the group. I was off to one side; accepted but my peers seemed committed. They knew their stuff. I felt like an amateur, and a bit of a fraud.
Nic’s smart and fair and he’s humble enough for me to respect his way with this. We have rich conversation. I think it’s this that I enjoy most. He speaks beneath the surface of me and I’m curious.
Are you OK sweetheart? Well, I’m going to see how it goes. It’s fun but I can’t afford to live like this. Maybe I should go work with my brother? He’s earning so well in an A-list restaurant. It’s an ongoing pull. Anyway, there’s a rhythm now.
Tell me about the rhythm, Tom I interview folk on the indie film scene. I love it. I photograph them and I get to talk to interesting people. I love asking questions. I love being seen in this way. When I’m interviewing, I don’t need to perform. Sometimes it’s a bit intimidating. Sometimes they see I’m not, somehow, worthy of this but most of the time, by the end, they’ve enjoyed it too.
Then I transcribe the interview, develop the photos and design the piece for its Friday publication. This is what I do mainly. Transcribing from a mini cassette player is very long.
That sounds fun. We have AI to do this for us now. AI like Hal in 2001?
Not quite that advanced but getting there it seems. Amazing! How long does it take?
Seconds. Haha! It takes you hours! Look. Would you like to ask me a question? I’m so far from you now, but of course, we are the same.
Errm. Do I, do I become responsible, like an adult with a house and a car and all that? Hah! Sort of. You try but in many ways it’s not for you. At least, not how you are thinking about it. After Netribution you will go on to work in some amazing restaurants. It’s hard but fun and exciting. It gives you control and stability, because they are disciplined. You need that. You will start on the fringes, as a restaurant doorman but the lure of what’s inside becomes too much to resist. I won’t give the story away but you become quite successful in this world.
So, to answer your question more kindly, you try to become an adult but you just end up copying what that seems to be. Will I become a father?
Yes, Tom. We are father to a beautiful son. This changes everything, but your ‘adult’ question requires answers that you cannot yet understand. You see, I’m still learning how. Can I ask another question?
Shoot. If this doesn’t last, what’s the point in carrying on?
Good question. What you don’t yet know is that everything you do is an experiment. And more, that everything you do is exactly the way it is meant to be. In fact, I want to tell you some truths, about who you are. Are you OK with that? Of course, I want to know what to do to get what I want. OK. Well even knowing what you want requires work, because there is a meaning beneath every want. Sometimes, that makes the thing you want irrelevant. In those cases it’s really just a feeling that you want more of. The thing, or the job, or the woman or the whole package gives you that feeling. I won’t explain more on this now because I know you aren’t ready. Why? Don’t you think I’m smart enough?
No offence meant. This isn’t easy for me. What I can tell you is this; you want, so you go out and get. You aren’t conscious of this yet. It’s the way you are now and the way it has to be. You aren’t like this later in life. Fine. Say what you want to say to me.
Thank you, Tom. One. The way you ask questions, your decency and curiosity about people, just the way you are with people, beneath wanting something from them, is how you are seen. You don’t need to try to be anything more.
Two. You are naturally wild and free. This journey with Nic is an expression of that. The pull towards a better paid job and the security it offers is both natural and understandable, but the fruits of it are an illusion.
Three Only do what is in your heart’s desire. If you do something purely for money or the status it brings, the good feelings eventually wear off. You return to sad and confused and frustrated. I know this because I did it again and again.
Four Write and talk to people. It fulfills you. But there’s a condition: If you keep Wanting, they sense it and it pushes them away. Even with women?
Especially with women. How will they know if I’m attracted to them?
They will know even before you do. Relax. You are a decent, smart, good looking young man. Stop trying. That’s so easy for you to say!
I know. It’s not fair. I just wish I’d learned this sooner. Here’s a question that’s been bugging me. Would you describe yourself as a romantic? Hmm, I suppose, but I don’t like the word. It sounds feeble. Where is this going?
I don’t know. I just remember you as, you know, a dreamer beneath but blustery and a bit crass in public. Perhaps that’s inaccurate. But what stands out is you often trying to show off. Just to be taken seriously. Funny that. You try so hard to be diligent and hard working, to be a good boy, but you are anything but. What do you mean? Haha! You have a big ginger beard and shave your head daily. You wear Italian summer suits. You look like a suave pirate. You spontaneously eat at restaurants you cannot afford. I remember you meeting Keeley Naylor for the first time. You persuaded the maitre d’ at Quo Vadis to give you that beautiful, intimate private dining room. You ordered a Negroni and eggs Arnold Bennett before she arrived. Who DOES that in their early twenties? That sweet boy beneath, that I have become reacquainted with, never got a look in. But this too is unfair. How would you know? Hahaha! In truth, I have no fucking idea what I’m doing! Where am I supposed to learn how to behave? I guess I’m liked and accepted and I’m having fun. I don’t want to be like anyone else. I don’t follow trends. I always want to try something different. Why the fuck wouldn’t I do those things? Anyway, you make out it wasn’t you.
It wasn’t meant as a judgement. That’s how it landed. I get this from my brother, that adventurous dreamer thing. If there was a bit more money coming in it would prove I’m fine. I don’t like being worried about and I don’t like being told what to do.
This I know well! What would you do with more money? Go to more bars and restaurants. Buy nicer clothes, and buy nicer Christmas presents. Date fab women with abandon.
Tell me about your successful older brother. I love him but he’s always taking care of me. He seems to be miles down the road and considering things I haven’t even thought of. I’m so grateful to him but I’d love to have the freedoms he can afford. I feel like he needs to look after me. It’s a bit of a trap for both of us. That’s ok. He gets over it. Tell me about Nic. He challenges me, intellectually, morally. We go on long philosophical discussions, when we should be working. He seems so connected to the industry. He knows what’s happening locally and internationally.
Nic has strong political and ethical beliefs, beliefs that I lack. I just don’t see the world as he does. I suppose that means I’m disinterested, as though it’s all just going on around me. And we talk about food!
The night before he’ll have devised some new concoction of onions, melted cheese and potatoes and revels in the detail of the telling. He likes frying things!
And we talk about women as though we are visitors from Mars. We are both in relationships actually.
I have fond memories of both his and ours. How’s it going with ours? Oh no! You know what happens! Oh! Is she the.. No. I don’t want to know.
Good for you. I wouldn’t tell you anyway. How do you see her? Hard working. Smart. Diligent. I envy her that. Ambitious too. And she’s absolutely gorgeous. She wears dresses with nothing else on, or she’ll put something on that she knows will excite me. She walks around barefoot. She excites me, but she’s well grounded. The sex is, every time, like a great battle. It’s just ridiculous.
I remember. The best, as I recall. Is she ‘the One’, Tom? I don’t know. It’s very passionate and I think we love each other. What is love like at your.., you know, later?
Thank you, Tom. Very tactful. Love is as sweet and exciting as at your age. But it gets broader; not just for women and family I mean. My love for our son is the deepest feeling I have ever known. It rocked me. Yes, the need for the love of a woman has lessened, but I still imagine.. No. There’s a lot I can’t say, you know. Let’s get back on topic. How do you see British Indie film?Tough one. It’s seems both a bit hippy and earnest. America has made it an industry. We seem to be approaching it like an offshoot of the NHS. Lottery money has changed things but it still seems like all the cream rises to the top of the system. We are grassroots. I prefer documentary film to be honest. You guys have made some docs right? Yes. Really great fun. Not much money in it but they have a definite flavour and I’m proud of what we’ve done.
Another one off topic. What sort of dad will you make? I have absolutely no idea. I don’t know if you remember this, but I talk in the mirror to my, our, future son. In the bathroom. It’s as though I’m working through something; a shred of truth and I want to tell him. I want to help him not make my mistakes.
I do remember. It’s sweet. I tell this story even today. You know you’ll be a great friend to him right?
It’s as though, too, that I already know him…
That’s right. We loved him before he was born. Isn’t that just magical? What does that say to you about love? Maybe that’s it’s just, always there?
Something like that. OK. Be seeing you around, Tom. Time’s up. No. Wait! I need to know one thing! Sorry sweetheart. Enjoy the next 25. I believe in you x
The first Netribution office stunk of curry and rubber, I lived in it.
You reached it by groping through the tunnel with the smashed light between the tyre shop and Indian restaurant on a main road in Wembley. At the top of the dark stairs that climbed out the far end there was a narrow walkway along which a row of bright-blue industrial refuse bags that bulged with beer, wine and vodka empties marked the trail to the faded red door of a smoke-filled student flat behind which Nic and Tom dreamed about the future while I, one of Nic’s two flatmates, pulled on B&H cigarettes and loudly (and wrongly, as it turned out) defended the past.
We had all met as film students, Nic was excited about the expanding galaxies in cyberspace and the opportunity to connect filmmakers directly with their audiences. He grabbed a bottle of vodka from the freezer and talked energetically about a film studio in every bedroom and fridges with barcode scanners that would order new tubs of marge when you ran out.
“Don’t be silly”, I said, “buying things is not the reason that people go shopping. People go shopping to get out of the house, meet their mates and browse the racks, you can’t do any of that at home, on your own, sitting in front of your computer. That Amazon website is never going to take off”.
As history ran past, giving me a kick in the nuts on its way, Nic and Tom’s Netribution project steadily expanded: lists of film festivals and funding bodies assembled on the site, young film journalists started sending in reviews and interviews, bewildered couriers emerged from the pitch dark between the tyre shop and the curry house with boxes of merch and other freebies; Nic started making exotic trips to Paris and meeting American financiers in SoHo. Netribution was soon out of the bedroom in Wembley and into a proper, grown-up office from where it sailed ahead, into those online galaxies, which would eventually swallow us all.
A decade later Nic and I were walking through the East End, embroiled in another argument about film future. This time it was YouTube that Nic was excited by, and the realisation of his prediction that the internet would connect films and audiences, emancipating creatives from the shabby commercialism, gatekeeping and exploitation of the old industry and its parasitical middlers. I demurred.
As a working filmmaker and owner of a production company, I couldn’t see the economic logic. I worried that it would incentivise a race to the bottom, that it would make anything that didn’t pander to the maximum possible numbers uneconomic and unviable and that artists who produced creative, intelligent, difficult or niche work for a naturally limited audience would be reduced to hobbyists. And I worried that the film business would become a sub-branch of the tech sector. In that argument, unfortunately, I think history has proved me right.
When Nic and Tom launched Netribution and I launched my studio, Spiritlevel (together with a different Tom), the DVD boom was in its summer. This, in hindsight, was genuinely a golden age for film, and particularly independent film, because the economics of DVD made spectacular sense. Films could achieve a wide theatrical release through back-end security: a disappointing box-office showing could be made up on DVD, a box-office hit could be sold to the same audience twice, once at the cinema and then again on DVD. Films that couldn’t achieve theatrical distribution or TV acquisition could find their audiences by going direct to DVD, and could turn enough profit to earn producers a decent living.
There was, of course, the quiet foreboding – that what had happened to the music industry, when the Mongol hordes of file-sharers and tech disruptors swept in to pillage and burn, could come to the peaceful valleys of the film business, with its glorious DVD boom, but the technology was not there yet and so why worry before you have to?
Regrettably, worrying before you had to is precisely what the industry did. Clearly unable to withstand the sweaty pressure of a latent threat, studio executives collapsed in anxiety, and burned their own house before the tech hordes got there. They embraced streaming too quickly, prior to rationalising the economic model, and killed-off DVD sooner than necessary, with knock-on effects for theatrical.
Initially, the arrival of the streamers provided a fillip. They were hungry for content and competed with linear TV to drive up acquisition fees, their novelty stimulated audiences and generated excitement, they provided additional revenue streams and encouraged AVOD platforms like YouTube to develop competing business models that might provide producers with greater rewards and an opportunity to revivify their back catalogues.
Alas, as time marched on it became clear that the economic vandalism of tech “disruption”, which has a habit of colonising industries and leeching the value, would accompany the streaming revolution. Physical media was buried, theatrical exhibition destabilised and linear television placed on life support.
Now, it may be that all this was inevitable, technological change is the indelible fact of human and economic development. But it is not the inevitability of technological change that is at issue, but whether that change provides an environment that is as good, if not better, for the producers and artists whose hard work and ingenuity power the creative industries.
Like other disruptions, the streaming revolution has struggled to make sense of its economics, and the film and television industry has been in a state of emergency for the past couple of years. The catalyst for the present crisis was the Covid pandemic. It’s complex and multi-faceted, so rather than attempt to litigate all of it, I’ll share a representative example.
Amazon Prime, initially a decent source of recurring revenues, had been arbitrarily reducing the royalty rates that it paid to producers for some time as, like all the other streamers, it struggled to identify a sensible business model. Then in early 2021 Amazon abruptly purged all nonfiction content, hurling indie producers, including us, into existential crisis. What appears to have happened is that Amazon’s limited income from fixed subscriptions collided with it’s potentially unlimited outgoings on producer royalties. As audiences sat at home during the pandemic, consuming unheard of quantities of streaming video without paying a penny more for the privilege, Amazon’s royalty payouts went through the roof. You see the problem.
How the industry will emerge from its current malaise is an open question, but I imagine that it will track quite closely to what has happened in other sectors: there will be a period of consolidation. Linear television will end once and for all, the streaming marketplace will narrow, and various players will either cease to exist or become absorbed by a small cartel of emerging superpowers. We saw this happen in music, and the first phases are already in evidence within the television industry – the rise of Banijay is an obvious example.
What does this mean for independents and creatives? I’m afraid that there are reasons to be concerned. Experience shows us that consolidation produces cartels which quickly seek to dominate their industries. Independents are often faced with a choice between abandoning meaningful autonomy, and going to work for the cartel, or remaining independent but struggling to make a living.
Another interesting phenomenon that has attended the streaming era is a neurotic fixation on “IP”. This arose in part because streamers were vulnerable to having content pulled by producers who would either license it to rival platforms, or retain it as exclusive to their own, competing streaming services. It wasn’t long before the leading streamers addressed this by moving from exhibition into production.
But the intense focus on IP is much bigger than simply ownership of production and/or content, it narrows the scope of the types of productions that are likely to attract finance and support and, in my view, is an enemy of creativity. It sets pre-conditions, insisting that some form of proprietary rights should be engaged by production, and it has a tendency to favour re-production, the repeated exercise of those rights in an effort to sweat the property asset. It has also led to a more jealous, litigious culture in which rights-holders seek to aggressively guard and police their “property”.
These tendencies have been intensified by the emergence of AI, and the fear that the tech sector will imminently plagiarise creatives into wholesale redundancy. I think the concern is justified, but I would caution creatives against becoming over-protectionist and property-obsessed: that is a game that favours capital and plays into the hands of the cartels.
The counterpart to both the move of film and TV to online streaming and the obsession with IP is the role of data. And here I again see blaring red warning lights. The fastidious insistence on being “data led”, a concept absolutely intrinsic to the tech sector, naturally leads to an effort to re-create what has worked in the past, rather than create what might work in the future. The whole purpose of data analysis is to minimise risk, but it is in risk, difference, unknowability that creativity thrives.
However, there may be some causes for optimism. It’s true that filmmaking has become ever cheaper and more accessible, and it’s possible that Nic’s vision of a truly decentralised independent sector, connected directly with audiences, economically viable and able to thrive outside the tyranny of the cartel could still happen. It certainly remains the dream.
But while the past 25 years have been characterised by a revolution in the production, distribution and exhibition of stories, I think that it will be storytelling itself that is transformed over the next 25. Online life has completely reconfigured how we communicate and interpret story; accelerated demands and abbreviated attention has already led to film form becoming more immediate and concise, not just on TikTok, but in mainstream studio cinema, where narrative construction and pacing is different to what it was a couple of decades ago. And whereas audiences, in particular young audiences, once viewed subtitles as an impediment, now young people, conditioned by viewing primarily on social media, prefer video to be accompanied by text.
It will be interesting to see how these themes evolve and I look forward to kicking the questions around with Nic. We’re both now fortunate enough to live in decent housing, although one of the ironies of the past 25 years is that the drive to get out of the smoke-filled bedrooms and into proper offices has been usurped by remote work and a civilizational march back to the bedroom. I no longer smoke, though, and with an additional 25 years on the clock, immoderate vodka sessions are of course inconceivable.
Netribution turned 25 years old on New Years Eve. The ltd company doesn’t reach that date until later this month, and the hard-launch of the first website wasn’t until 2nd Feb 2002 – but it’s soft launch onto the internet was December 31st 1999 (an ambition to launch ‘last century’).
Netribution had three 8-ish-year long acts – focusing on Publishing, then Research, then Development. I know most people here from projects associated with one of these stages but perhaps most from the first act – publishing – and within that, again most from the first scene – Netribution v1 – which ran for 99 weekly issues.
Netribution 1 grew in the fertile ashes of the dotcom crash, before learning during my two years as Shooting People’s employee #1 how free user-generated ‘content’ can build a business. Netribution 2 took that knowledge and naîvely attempted to implement it on a Joomla CMS from January 2006 while a new world of Web 2.0 titans, built on AJAX, gamification and dark patterns emerged, flattening and hoovering up any who stood in their way. People still posted there until 2014 (mostly filmfests, PRs and spam farms) – and I shared half-baked thoughts for a few years more, Netribution 2 peaked towards the end of 2008, when I began to shift focus to R&D, mostly staying there for the next 16 years.
Netribution 1’s editor Tom Fogg and I have been discussing for some months how to mark these 25 years. Netribution 1 had the antiquated but fully curated format of a weekly issue and email; Netribution 2 was rolling 24/7, open access, with low barriers to posting. This time we fancy something in between, perhaps one single curated issue marking the 25 years towards the end of the year, with a rolling work-in-progress website and periodic (no more than monthly) email updates.
Why now?
There’s obviously a lot happening in film and TV with AI threatening artists, creators and copyright holders, while also offering the potential of studio-grade CGI to the masses (plus the carbon footprint of a small country or cryptocurrency).
But the big subject for me is we (web evangelists, optimists and hopers) failed in delivering on the web’s promise from 25 years ago. We never succeeded in building a viable independent space for creative media, connecting filmmakers directly with audiences. Yes you can connect via a handful social media platforms, but you’re forced to accept their business terms, perform and conform to satisfy their algorithms, while keeping your audiences forced to consumer whatever messages the platforms want to wrap around your work, this week. This isn’t like the indie video store, fleapit cinema in town or the late night pic you VHS’d off the TV; this is very opinionated free cable TV with some small perks for the most prolific (and a couple of lottery-winning super-influencers to keep everyone else motivated as they work every waking hour while mostly not making minimum wage).
But ignoring the money (and I know one indie production company making £2k/month from YouTube for their back-catalogue, so it’s obvs not all bad) – one specific thing is worse than before the web came along…
Entities that controlled IP and audiences in the old media world were known as vertically integrated studios: they could shoot films on their own facilities, from a library of IP they own, then release on their TV channels, video stores and cinema chains (and theme parks, retail stores, etc). But alongside sat an independent sector that controlled only one side of the equation: IP (the indie producer or distributor) or audiences (the arthouse cinema, TV channel or video store). And the indie and studio sectors crossed over – they weren’t separated in their own bubble. Producers had access to public market data on success and failures so financiers, commissioners and development execs could make informed decisions about what to fund next, and share in (rare) profits.Independently financed film could get an audience and pay back its investors (or satisfy its public funders) enough to get the next film made.
But none of that really exists online for video: there’s only vertically integrated studios controlling IP and audiences: be it shorter-form ad-funded (TikTok/YouTube/Instagram/etc) or longer-form subscription funded (Netflix/Prime/Apple/Now/Max/YTPremium/etc). That studio/indie structure from last century doesn’t exist for TV, film or micro-budget influencer video. Platforms control IP and audiences, there’s no way around that – and – it really wasn’t meant to be like this. At every step of Netribution’s first act I was convinced it wouldn’t end up like this, until 2008 – struck by the dominance not of Netflix, but of Facebook – it became clear that film has a monopoly problem online.
However there’s an exception to this: media spaces online that have thriving indie and mainstream sectors separate from each other: Blogging – powered by RSS; and Podcasts – also powered by RSS. Both have lots of indie platforms, players, apps, tools and service – and people make their living blogging and podcasting, mostly without being tied to one platform.
Without jumping into a technical discussion, there’s lots of smart people working hard to try to bring the decentralised simplicity of RSS (which stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’) to everything online – social media, video, music, chat-rooms, commenting – everything. In these developer’s visions of the web you could follow your YouTube subscriptions from your Instagram App, and post your content on your own website but get it seen on all the platforms.
They want web-based media to be less like one tech baron’s soapbox, and more like email – which like RSS is based on a protocol, and so isn’t controlled by a single corporation, app, site or service. They’ve been working on this for many years, and I only realised how advanced they were four years ago because as they’re not funded by the big tech giants they don’t spend on marketing. I won’t say it gives me hope, as 25 years online has left me seeing most hopeful new web tech enshitified, killed or ignored. But it’s still one of the more hopeful web things I’ve seen in these 25 years, and it’s been a part of my focus for most of Netribution’s third act.
But it’s not interesting enough to bring out a year-long special edition of Netribution. It only made sense to try to bring out a new issue when I started talking with Tom. Tom – currently spending winter on the Greek island of Paros – is one of the best conversationalists I know. This makes him both a brilliant interviewer, friend and coach. He’s interested in opening conversations with the people we interviewed and worked alongside 25 years ago, to find out where they are now, and what they’ve done or learnt or wish to share. What could they have told their younger selves? Some might not remember us – others may want to forget the gap between their ambitions and reality – but it feels quite compelling in a world where AI, war and climate crisis are forcing us to reflect on the future – to instead pause and consider the recent past: the web before smart phones, social media and mass video streaming.
So that’s the plan… will keep updating here, or you can join our no-more-than-once-a-month email list. Or – better, say hello to 25th@netribution.co.uk.
