Shooting People.org is an email digest, delivered daily to your mailbox. The digest is made up of messages - questions, answers and information - posted by other members, relating to any aspect of independent filmmaking in the UK. While of course you can be a sleeping member and just "listen in", you can also easily send your own postings to the group, or reply to queries from other members - either by replying to the whole group or by sending a personal email directly to another member.

By joining Shooting People.org you are instantly connected to hundreds of other people working in film. Members discuss the latest film technologies, make direct contact with distributors and agents, buy and sell film equipment, find film crew, promote their films and projects, talk to festival organisers, raise finance, produce and co-produce with partners from all over the network.

Launched as an email network, Shooting People aims to bring actors, directors, screenwriters, producers, arts funding bodies, festival organisations, financiers and film/web technologists into a discussion space together, to exchange information, to make contacts and ultimately, to stimulate the production of independent film.

By offering a fast, accessible, open forum for filmmakers to network with others in the industry, Shooting People aims to broaden the opportunities available for independent filmmakers to get their films made, financed, marketed and distributed. The creation of a film community online also means that Shooting People can open doors for regional filmmakers, and others, whose participation in the industry is offset by the difficulties in getting access to infomation and wider networks.

In launching an email network, Shooting People is an example of how the net has the potential to significantly change the way the film industry operates. By helping filmmakers contact distributors directly, for example, especially distributors in foreign markets, the net can become a powerful tool for expanding the independent film business. Shooting People aims to use the Internet, both as a means of creating a dynamic independent film community, and as a tool for widening the filmmaking process available to that community.

The flip side of new emerging technologies, has been that the face of filmmaking itself is changing colour. Filmmaking has always been costly to enter and digital technology has led to a new decentralised approach to making film. The democratising effect of cheaper and easier-to-use technology (digital cameras, cheap editing software, home PC's) has allowed filmmakers, who do not have the contacts or finances, to create their own footholds in cinema, effectively widening the control over the creation, ownership and distribution of independent film.

With the significantly lowered cost of digital technology, comes room to play. And with room to play, comes room to innovate. Shooting People aims to be at the forefront of new innovations in UK film, by stimulating independent film production, by widening accessibilty to filmmaking for filmmakers throughout the UK, and by bringing together filmakers with technologists in an effort to expand the very nature of the filmmaking process itself.

Who is behind it?...