I find I watch far less independent film than I'd like to (whereas I watch about exactly as little Hollywood as I'm happy with), but that's definitely not because I'm not capable of enjoying it.

Really, it's a matter of how packed my schedule tends to be, and while I certainly am capable of finding a few spare hours to watch a film in if I have reason to believe it'll be worth it, it can be very difficult to sort through everything that's out there and everything that's constantly being put out to even decide where to direct some initial attention.

Now, some people are happy to devote hours of chair-time to sorting the good from the bad by brute force, but I haven't really watched TV in years and I don't have much tolerance for sitting and watching a screen for that long unless I really feel like I'm getting something out of it.

Setting aside the perpetual movie machine of the major film world, there's a huge quantity of independent stuff out there, and the heap gets bigger every day. The result is that, more often than not, I find myself not sitting down in the first place. I am, without a doubt, missing out on ever even hearing about filmmakers who could turn out being amongst my favourites.

Which is one reason I'm really interested in novelist Jim Munroe's new film series, Infest Wisely - co-produced with Craig Macnaughton and billed as a "lo-fi sci-fi movie in seven episodes."

Aside from the fact that I find the content itself interesting - the storyline, told through its interaction with seven different sets of characters, is of a near-future urban centre dealing with the spread of a buggy and viral new form of human-integrated nanotechnology - the fact that Munroe has decided to divide up the full-length movie into seven episodic chunks has allowed him to work with seven different crews.

Aiming to produce the film for a sum total of $0, Munroe and Macnaughton worked with each crew to sculpt their episode around their particular talents and abilities, as well as directed one episode each.

The result has been licensed under Creative Commons and is being distributed for free through the Infest Wisely site, with one new episode to be released each week. The first episode is already up, so go check it out and expose yourself to something new.

Just, y'know, not in the creepy viral nanotech sense.