Coming Soon to the Internet Near You

Butter up some popcorn and plop yourself down in front of your computer. Feature-length Internet movies are on the way, if a collaboration in England between a movie production company and a software firm bears fruit.

The scheme hatched by Maveric Media Productions and Cathedral Software requires filmmakers to use digital cameras and make do with 12 frames per second rather than the conventional 24. This change will encourage frequent scene changes to mask the slight jumpiness that the lower rate produces. To smooth out the flow of bits, the system will send information about action scenes during the lull of the still ones. Maveric and Cathedral hope to distribute the first film prepared for Net distribution-“The Judas Kiss”-by the end of next year.