When I was in junior high I wanted to be some kind of multi-discipline auteur. I wanted to write books and I wanted to make movies. Honestly, the only career choices I can remember ever clinging to since I was like 6 were Writer and Archaeologist. This was of course because even at 6 I knew that Indiana Jones had a real job and Captain Kirk did not.

I loved coming up with ideas. Schemes. Scenarios. Plots. I was a classic “idea man” as a kid and I figured good ideas were like some kind of magic and just by virtue of how good they were people would listen to you and your ideas would come together and start to happen.

I remember distinctly crashing against that wall where my ambitions met the reality of How Things Are Done. It was a somewhat depressing, if immature, brush with reality where I realized that there were huge hurdles to entry into the fields that fascinated me and that all the big ideas in the world didn’t account for the technology, the resources and the distribution networks you needed to get something done and get it to an audience.

It was frustrating to imagine how few people would ever manage to squeeze through the eye of the creative establishment needle and how much might be lost in the process. It struck a chord with my rebellious teenage sense of fair play and put a bit of a damper on some of my early ideas.

That didn’t last long though. Along came the personal computer and internet revolutions of the 1990’s. Suddenly publications like Mondo 2000 and Wired were promising us Hollywood studios in our basements, Abbey Road in the attic and a totally free, totally open distribution network that would be begging for content. With new subscriptions to service providers like AOL and Compuserve ringing in at thousands per week the world was buying in to the promise of the internet and it was time for the revolution to begin. Hollywood, the music industry and the New York publishing scene were all about to come down like the Berlin wall.

Except it didn’t really happen that way. The big ideas of the time, much like the big ideas I and others had, were a bit premature. The technology wasn’t quite there yet; streaming video was more like a slideshow and doing video and audio at once was beyond the capability of the dial up modems of the time. The tools were primitive and had sharp learning curves. The “idea people” got so bogged down in trying to wrap their heads around the tech that would make their ideas happen that the point started to get lost. Very dismally lost. I think to some extent this is where George Lucas got lost, but I digress.

There are people who are into technology because of what it permits them to do creatively and there are people into technology as a thing in itself. There is nothing inherently wrong with either camp, but I fell and continue to fall into the former and I always struggled with how fiddly and cryptic the technology often was back then.

The revolution had to go back to the drawing board and wait for the world to catch up.

This started happening in the early 2000’s. Services that supported user-created content started cropping up and then YouTube hit the scene in a big way and helped drive the widespread adoption of broadband internet. Media production software got less and less expensive and easier to use. On the hardware side, PC prices plunged, high-resolution cameras got planted in everything and sales soared.

The means of production were put in the hands of the people and the bright young internet Bolsheviks are coming back and not so much banging at the gates as they are just building another kingdom down the street with no gates and no walls as a design feature. Audiences are following suit and the new media democracy of the internet is growing.

Here we are at the beginning of this exciting experiment. It’s been suggested for decades that barriers to entry to the big media outlets have blocked out tons of talent and that there should be legions of garage Kubricks out there and web 2.0 is putting that conventional wisdom to the test.

One thing we know for sure is there are legions out there. Millions of blogs, YouTube channels, other video hosting sites, indie sites, torrent trading and it is all on, all the time. It’s like drinking from the fire hose. Like any collection of art it needs a curator. A way to help the audience find the best because people don’t have all day to just surf the net looking for cool indie horror shorts. Well, except that one guy we all know but really who wants to be that guy, right?

So that is what this space is going to be. Long Live the New Flesh is about navigating the Fangoria Faithful through the dark places on the internet where creative people in your neighbourhoods are sowing the seeds of this revolution and making brilliant, provocative and bone-chilling media. We want to be the curators of the Horror section of the new media exhibit, sharing their work and showing you the online hotspots for indie scares.

So carry on drinking from that fire hose if you want to or drop by here and try out the precision pressure washer. Both are going to blast your face off, but here you get it with Fangoria style!

For our inaugural segment we want to go back a bit and share the work of Joseph Christiana, founder of Christiana Productions. His short film The Nightmare is a taut, clever and potent short which both disturbed and entertained me and has won a lot of acclaim in the indie festival circuit including the Montreal Underground Film Festival as well as becoming a YouTube favourite.

Christiana shows us all that the time of the “big idea” people is arriving by producing a top shelf piece of film with great visuals, great sound design and most of all an engrossing and smart story while doing a complete end-run around the creative establishment. Did I mention he does all this without any real dialogue? Oh yeah, he does that too.

The Nightmare by Christiana Productions.

PS: Since this is a democracy we are going to need your help. Send us your links to your original work online or link to work online that really left an impression on you and you just might see it featured in Long Live the New Flesh. Email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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