25 years on – Netribution @ 25

Carnal Cinema - five cartoons in the style of Trainspotting

Carnal memories

Written by Eric Dubois on February 1, 2025. Posted in 25 years on. No Comments on Carnal memories

Happy Birthday to Netribution! 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 named Netribution.

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 of Netribution was pure joy. It’s now been 18 years since I drew my last caricature for Carnal 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.

Carnal remains 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 with Netribution to 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. Netribution and Nic, dressed in a loose bathrobe with shiney pink gardening boots on, were the universe answering my question.

Éric

Tom Fogg, in B&W lying on the beach in a photo taken by his son.

Netribution Revisited: an interview with my younger self.

Written by Tom Fogg on January 30, 2025. Posted in 25 years on, Discussions. No Comments on Netribution Revisited: an interview with my younger self.

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

A line of blue refuse bags filled with empty bottles line up outside a student flat. Photo: Elio España

The Ghosts of Futures Past

Written by Elio España on January 29, 2025. Posted in 25 years on. No Comments on The Ghosts of Futures Past

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.