Portrait: Franklyn Rodgers

Marc Boothe is an independent producer an cultural entrepreneur specialising in film and moving image projects involving UK-based multi-ethnic artists and filmmakers. He is the founder and managing director of B3 Media and co-producer of the acclaimed film Bullet Boy. Although he started his working life as a computer programmer and systems analyst, he has always followed a creative path, and was a founder member of the influential photographers' collective, D-Max.

Following his MBA, Marc committed himself to the full-time exploration of his creative ideas, successfully conceiving and realising a number of ground-breaking projects encompassing the world of the moving image. He has always been fascinated by the creative opportunities afforded by technology and technological innovation, and its use as a means of fostering collaboration between artists as well as uniting artist and audience. In recent years, he has moved explicitly into realising film, multi-media and digital projects involving a large and growing slate of multi-ethnic artists and filmmakers working across digital platforms.

Marc has always pushed the boundaries of what is perceived to be possible. A constant innovator, he has an uncanny instinct for identifying the audiences for his ideas. With his team at B3, he is at the forefront of a rising wave of innovators unlocking the creative possibilities offered by the new digital era.

I came into filmmaking and producing largely by accident. I grew up in South London, the product of a pretty typical African-Caribbean upbringing. My parents encouraged us to believe in ourselves - self-belief and self-reliance was their guidance. As a kid, I wasn't into 'the norm'. I liked ideas and thinking differently about the world, and my parents gave me free rein. I never really connected with school in a traditional sense. In fact, I hated it. I was crap at sports, but good at maths and computing.

I trained in computer science and fell into programming for a software house working on a wide range of commercial projects, eventually working as a senior programmer in the City. It was while working at the Bank of England and pursuing further studies in the evening that I made the decision to develop a creative outlet for myself. I chose photography (having always been fascinated by images, visual art and films) and taught myself. The idea of pursuing the arts as a career didn't kick in until much later.
 
My mum loved music and films (especially musicals) and some of my earliest memories are of her taking me to the movies. She took me to see films like The Sound of Music, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Carmen and a whole load of other stuff. My youth was an amazing time of exploration and self-discovery on my terms. I went through a period of watching films, reading as well as taking pictures. The running joke was that you'd always find me with a rucksack with a camera, a note book and a magazine (still true, some would say).

I watched films ranging from the classics to contemporary Japanese, French and Italian movies. I read loads (especially poetry) before discovering African-American literature, Langston Hughes and others. I became increasingly influenced by the new wave of African-American cinema. It had a visceral power and energy I hadn't experienced before and seemed to 'join the dots' between music, cinema and politics in a really fresh way.

I soaked up as much material as I could, borrowing books from the library and getting a feel for how these art forms connected. My own photography provided the means to step outside myself, to record and express what I saw in my own way and on my own terms. I discovered Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Man Ray, Robert Capa and Gordon Parks.

The light bulb really switched on when I discovered Parks. Along with Melvin Van Peebles, he was one of the few black artists who worked across a range of media and demonstrated that, above all, it was what you said that was important. They were both self-taught innovators who had a vision and were smart and tenacious enough to make it happen against the odds.

Whilste working as a computer programmer, I began to get photographic commissions. I decided to show my work in a number of galleries and, through this, met David A Bailey. He gave me my first real introduction to the black art scene and I connected with it big time. We formed a loose collective of photographers and developed a plan for a major show. We persuaded The Photographers' Gallery to support the show in its main space. I came up with the name D-Max - the maximum amount of blackness you can have in a photographic print. The project had an amazing impact - there were queues around the block. I realised I had to make a decision and followed my instincts, and left the Bank of England.

I developed the idea of a festival and, working with a small group of partners, presented the work of the African-American filmmakers who were leading the second wave of black independent cinema. We took a gamble and created what became the Black Triangle Festival at the Electric Cinema, mainly with our own funds. It proved to be a huge success. Documentary and music video commissions followed, but I decided to focus on the cinema side of our activities. The Prince Charles Cinema was pioneering the concept of a £1 entry ticket and, through this, I launched the Nubian Tales Film Club in the mid-1990s.

Nubian Tales was the first film club of its kind. Showcasing black movies in the West End, it was the film equivalent of a DJ club residency. We programmed features mixed with shorts and visits from key filmmakers - Spike Lee, Julie Dash and many more. Over seven years we attracted a considerable and influential following and established Nubian Tales as the place to meet. We demonstrated we could preview films and, indeed, revitalise them through our own targeted form of marketing, identifying and tapping into audiences that film companies didn't know how to reach.

Through Nubian Tales I learnt how the industry worked and over time we established a unique presence within it. The black British aesthetic in film was, to me, lacking. There had been various attempts to build one. The Black Audio Film Collective, Sankofa and others had left an amazing legacy and were a source of inspiration, but had pretty much disappeared over time, largely because of a lack of funding. We were coming from a different angle - building the audience from the ground up through our own events and membership activities. I realised that connecting with the audience was the key. From this, we came to understand how films were marketed, distributed and exhibited. Producing came later. I realised I wanted to develop projects (particularly films) in which I really believed. The question was, how?

At the same time, I was thinking about how to use the new technology to link American and British black cultural perspectives. Digital Diaspora was created to explore new ways of bridging the 'digital divide' and to create connections amongst and between black and minority ethnic artists and new media practitioners. We connected artists at the ICA in London and The Kitchen in New York through two-way 'digital slams' and, from our new space in Brixton, we launched Digital Clash, a friendly webcast exchange between London and Los Angeles. This was the first event of its kind in Europe. We were ahead of our time, leading an early wave of DIY culture, using the digital medium to create content and to distribute and explore questions of identity, representation and production.

My involvement in new media was completely multi-cultural, even though Nubian Tales was a strictly black film proposition. At that time I wanted to connect my interests in film, technology and music, and explore new developments in DIY culture (networked communities and the web, in particular). My solution was Beats, Bytes and the Big Screen - a festival and multi-cultural meeting place for the sharing of ideas. It brought together unique combinations of musicians, DJs, visual artists and geeks at live jam events, webcasts, and screenings around London and was incredibly popular.

Beats, Bytes and the Big Screen generated an increasing number of submissions from independent filmmakers (in DVD form, not tape). I saw how an entrée into producing could emerge and developed our digital short film challenge, 23:59. For 23:59, filmmakers had to script, shoot and edit a short film in 48 hours and the winning submissions were screened on the festival's last night. Over three years the number of submissions mushroomed, with filmmakers primarily using their own cameras and editing at home. We had discovered a whole new scene.

The coverage for 23:59 opened up a different dialogue with potential partners. I recognised that the time had come to put into play my longstanding idea of a media arts agency - B3 Media - which would produce across the full spectrum of film, moving image and screen-based projects. In 2003 we launched Blank Slate, a digital shorts producing platform for multi-ethnic filmmakers and B3's first major project. Initially, Blank Slate was a London-wide, open application initiative which resulted in four films. Now in its fourth year and receiving nearly 200 applications, Blank Slate has become a national scheme showcased at international festivals and a number of our filmmakers have won awards. Over the years we have worked with an amazing cross-section of talent both in front of and behind the camera as well as with artists and directors who have made the transition to film on their own terms and are progressing from shorts to feature films. It's the most rewarding part of what I do.

My work at B3 put me on the radar and I was approached to join the creative team as producer (with Ruth Caleb) of the feature film Bullet Boy, to be directed by Saul Dibb. This was a huge leap, but I was ready and had something to offer. Ruth, Saul and I shared a common vision for the film - we wanted to transcend the stereotypical view of the subject matter and create a storyline and treatment that would have absolute credibility with the audience. With the writer Catherine Johnson, Saul worked through a process of improvisation which enabled us to find the 'story' and establish a degree of realism and strong dialogue. We wanted the film to resonate with moviegoers in an honest way, especially at a time when gun violence was happening in all our major cities.

Working on Bullet Boy enabled me to gain a much deeper understanding of the producer's role in the creative process together with the day-to-day business of getting a feature film made. As producer, you are acutely aware of your responsibility as keeper of the flame, supporting the director's vision, and that you are also part of a team: juggling creative and financial issues and solving problems as they arise; keeping the financiers on side and informed; making sure the director gets the support they need as well as ensuring that the rest of the creative team are on track.

There are so few opportunities for multi-cultural stories to be made and seen by the widest possible audience that it was vital for this project to succeed, in both market and cultural terms. I also wanted to ensure the involvement of filmmakers from diverse backgrounds at all levels within the project, and we managed that too.

All the time I was thinking, 'Who is this for?' 'How will they view this film?' We worked on these aspects from the earliest stages. We identified the right distributor (in this case, Verve Pictures) and developed the communications strategy to create a dialogue with the media about the project and its context.

I think there needs to be a levelling of the playing field in terms of the representation of black and minority creative talent both in front and behind the camera at all levels. The potential and opportunity for tapping the wealth of stories and home-grown talent in the UK is huge, yet it still remains largely untapped. I really believe that this needs to change.

The film did achieve the kind of resonance we were hoping for. It gathered a momentum of its own and the ideas we were talking about were taken up by a vast network of people - in the media, cultural critics, community groups, individuals. Everyone had their say, whether positive or negative, and it was extraordinary to travel that journey from our earliest ideas about the project through to the public response to the film.

Following on from Bullet Boy, I joined the UK Film Council as a senior executive. As a production executive, you are responsible for unearthing new talent, finding good scripts and identifying new project ideas all of which are fed into the green light process. I was also involved in establishing a range of special projects, such as the low budget feature film initiative and the moving image scheme which resulted in Single Short, among others. Working at the UK Film Council provided me with an extraordinary opportunity to gain an invaluable insight into the industry, and how policy and strategy really works at all levels. After a time, though, I realised that my passion for developing diverse projects as an independent producer across film and new media was what I really wanted to do. I don't think you ever lose your entrepreneurial core, even when you've been working in an institutional framework.

After nearly two years at the Film Council, I decided to take up a NESTA (National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts) Fellowship and returned to B3. This has freed me in a truly creative way to explore new methods of nurturing and developing emerging talent from non-traditional pathways, how to create content that can be shared through new distribution channels, and how to create models that will offer sustainable careers for multi-ethnic artists and filmmakers. These ideas are absolutely intrinsic to B3's future plans.

I could focus solely on my own career as a producer, but I want to put something back, to work with new talent and pass on the knowledge I've accumulated. At B3 I work with an amazing team and together we are finding and nurturing fresh, distinctive, multi-ethnic British voices and talent. We enable them to produce work that offers a particular cultural point of view across a number of platforms as well as present it to the widest possible audience.

Blank Slate goes from strength to strength, as does Electric Greenhouse (residencies and mentoring for visual artists who want to work in the moving image) and Compass Point (an initiative with the National Film and Television School).

One of the really exciting projects we have been developing at B3 has been identities. tv which is a cross-artform initiative we are producing in collaboration with Contact Theatre in Manchester. The project involves a series of collaborations between new media artists, sound designers, spoken word artists and filmmakers. The work produced will be delivered online, on DVD, through digital screen networks, mobile phones and a series of live performances. B3 has become a kind of cross-artform 'incubator' spanning film, new media and the moving image. We're looking to realise the huge opportunities that exist to produce work for gallery-based and cross-platform projects, ranging from broadband, video, mobile phones, gaming consoles to traditional screens, as well as the digital screen network.

I have a sense that we will find a completely new business model for B3 in the next 12 months, based on the new forms of production and distribution that digital technologies are unlocking. We are always looking for new ways to showcase and communicate our artists' ideas and find their markets. I've learnt that, if you put your mind to it and you're clear what you want to make happen, you can achieve things even though the prevailing wisdom might say that it isn't possible.

Sure, it's tough. I'm pulling together my own projects as well as providing a space for nurturing and producing black and minority emerging moving image and filmmaking talent on a fraction of the resources that larger arts organisations and film agencies are given. Nevertheless, our results speak for themselves. We work with a wide network of partners, which takes us out of our comfort zone but also keeps us grounded. It's been hard work, and incredibly exciting. Everything I've done before has helped prepare me for what I'm doing now.

'Producer' feels like a limited definition. If anything, I feel like an alchemist - you start with nothing, just a kernel of an idea, and make something of it. Most of my ideas don't make sense to other people at the beginning. But to me it makes sense. And if it makes sense to me, that's fine - everyone else will catch up eventually.