Meet No Media Kings Jim Monroe, and check out his collabo-film today in Toronto

You may have noticed a surprise new blogger artist gent who’s popped his head in here once already to plug us into a DIY Fashion videocast, and to point us in the direction of his own highly helpful indie oriented site, No Media Kings. Yes, meet Jim Monroe, a novelist who left Harper Collins to the go indie route, a cool community developper guy; Jim got in touch with Indyish because he heard about our Assembly 1.0 and it’s 7’s (7 writing teams, 7 filmmaking teams, 7 musician teams participated in the first Assembly.)

Anyway, turns out, we have lots in common beyond a general interest in multi-media indie collaboration: Jim also has a film which he wrote and was produced by 7 different filmmaking teams! Also, it turns out we both used Celtx to facilitate the complexities of the collaboration!

Jim’s 7 part film is called Infest Wisely, it’s previewing tonight in Toronto, and here’s what Jim had to say about it in recent emailing and interview:

INFEST WISELY is about a new, chewable nanotechnology that lets people take pictures with their eyes and cures cancer. But the early adopters find out it’s hard to uninstall something after it’s spread through their bloodstream…

I wrote it with a Voltron-inspired story structure. Seven 12 minute episodes directed by seven different directors stand on their own, but with an ongoing narrative and interconnecting characters that allow it to combine to form a feature length movie.

It came together as beautifully and as strangely as the giant robot itself. Check out our brand new site and watch the trailer here:

http://infestwisely.com

If you are in Toronto the advance screening (AKA the Infestor’s Meeting) is happening:

Friday May 18th, 7pm
Innis Town Hall, U of T
2 Sussex Avenue, S. of St. George Stn.

For $5 you can be one of the first to see it on the big screen, we’ve got lots of fun stuff planned: you will not go away empty handed. It’s generously sponsored by celtx.com, projectwonderful.com and theculturalgutter.com.

Curious as I was, and non geeky enough to get the robot reference, and waayy too geeky (in other ways) to let any mention of my favorite stodgy old communications theorist slide, I shot Jim back a quick bunch of queries, and here are his replies..

1. JIm, forgive my ignorance but I’m curious to know, what’s a Voltron story structure?

Sorry for the geeky in-joke. Voltron
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltron) is formed by smaller robots
joining forces and combining to become a giant robot. Since the episodes
in INFEST WISELY are stand-alone but also part of a continuing
narrative, I thought it was funnier than saying it was an “anthology
movie” or some such.

> 2. do you consider yourself a comic artist or a video artist or? Is there some natural relationship between of the two media, they seem related sometimes.

I’m primarily a novelist — the graphic novel
(nomediakings.org/therefore_repent) coming out in August is gonna be my
first graphic novel but my fifth book. So I’m best known for writing,
but at heart I just like to make things — generally things I enjoy
myself which has included audio drama, videogames, and movies.

Definitely with comic writing and movie writing there is that visual
element that you have to keep an eye on, but my novels and writing style
has often been accused of being cinematic so I guess that’s not much of
a stretch.

> 3. do you have training to do what you do?

I have a creative writing/english double major BA from York, but in
terms of movie making, absolutely none. Unbeknown to myself, at the same
time I was going to York for writing, Craig Macnaughton (co-producer,
co-director of INFEST WISELY) was also going there for film. So his
knowledge stood us in good stead, even if I ignored it sometimes — half
the fun in messing around in a new medium is breaking the rules.

> 4. why do you believe we need to resist media conglomerates?
do you think collaborting is a form of resistance? (i do =)

On a practical level, consolidation is putting all our eggs in one
basket: just recently a gigantic multinational went down and took PGW,
one of the few indie book distros, with it. On a political level, it
gives media magnates like Rupert Murdoch a multifaceted loudspeaker to
spout his right-wing politics. And as an anarchist I believe
concentrated power is toxic: like nuclear fuel, it might get things
done, but at a serious and long term cost.

Sure — by building a community of diverse talents you are bypassing one
of the main functions that companies provide — putting complementary
skillsets together. If you know someone who’s good at promo, someone
else who’s a designer, someone else who can build websites, you don’t
need a company to handle that for you.

You might be interested in the mp3 of the “Are you TOO DIY?” talk here:
http://nomediakings.org/events/aw_get_a_room.html

> 5. did you choose to have your screening at the Innis hall because of
his writings on centralized media and empire.. by any chance?

Ha ha! That’s funny, I had no idea who Harold Innis was until I just
looked him up. Interesting!

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So there you go! Check out Innis! And then check out Jim’s screening today at the Infestor’s Meeting today in the Innis hall, and while you’re there think about self-assembly, robots, consolidation, empire, cooperation between geeks of different stripes and the nano-tech in your bloodstream. Yeah! Enjoy!