PETER DE MAEGD

Hi, Welcome to Where is Gary? I was immediately excited when Jean Baptiste first pitched his idea to go out and look for Gary with the help of the online audience. Not out of revenge, but out of a Louis Theroux-like curiosity, JB is staring a search for a fascinating man who bends the truth to make a living.

For us, this is an experiment, a big leap into the unknown. Normally, when shooting a film or documentary, you produce isolated from your audience. Only when everything is completed and finished, you get it out there, you distribute. Now we produce and distribute at the same time. It feels a bit awkward we admit, but we are really exited to see what you, the audience, will do. So just do it!

Were you ever conned? Tell us. Do you have a friend who was conned? Invite him or her to tell their story. Comment on our webisodes and feel free to suggest us new subject and angles.

Where Is Gary? will run for 10 weeks with at least 20 webisodes. We’ve got some exiting storylines in the pipeline; all of them open to your involvement. Just spread the news about this project and contribute in any way you want. Maybe your story, opinion or clues will change the course of this story. Why not become a producer by helping us to get the documentary financed? Just click here and get your life long producers credit.

One of the first things that crossed my mind when we were putting together this project was the rights issue. If we open the dialogue with our online audience, we need to clear the rights for every story you publish, even if we don’t used it in our webisodes or documentary. Normally we should lose money on a lawyer who drafts us up the ‘terms and conditions’ to which you need to agree. You probably would never read them anyway or we could even just copy the terms & conditions from Facebook or whatever.

But let’s just make a gentlemen’s agreement. We can use whatever you publish on this site, in any way what so ever forever and so on. Whatever we publish in our webisodes or documentary, you can use, quote, abuse, remix or whatever. Just as we will respect your contribution, we expect you to respect our work. If we use your contribution, we’ll credit you for it.

This project is made in the same spirit as Rip: A Remix Manifesto. Just check out their documentary on www.ripremix.com. Simply put: freely consume, communicate and cocreate this documentary. You’re welcome.