Armen Antranikian is a 25-year-old graduate of London's Met Film School, with a string of carefully crafted short films to his name. These can be sampled on his sleek new website, www.antranikian.com, and you can follow the progress of his new short film project, Alice Alive, a sci-fi rom-com about the relationship between a teenage boy and a female robot, on a seperate website or via his Twitter page.

Antranikian, who was born in Germany but has lived for five years in London, wants to make films with universal appeal that will be seen by people all over the world, not just in the UK. He sees the internet, with its global reach, as the perfect medium for his vision, and to achieve it he would rather "bypass the authorities, the people who make things more difficult, and target the audience directly. I need to become my own distributor." He adds: "A lot of people see the financing, distribution and marketing side as very uncreative, but thinking about it can help the film to develop in a more interesting direction."

The way forward, as he sees it, is to engage people in the process of film-making itself: "It's a really fascinating journey, making a film, and a lot of people are interested. If you're transparent about it from the start and invite people to participate at an early point, even if it's just by giving a response to a certain scene, then, once the project is finished, you've got an audience.

"If you're really smart, you can get the audience to participate not only by watching, but by donating money. In effect, they would be paying for the ticket before the film has been made."

Antranikian acknowledges that this model is still embryonic and its commercial viability has yet to be convincingly proved, but the amount of thought and effort he is putting into his online presence is a sign of his faith that it will become viable before long.