Indie site tries studio savvy

ARTHUR COHEN was the head of marketing at Paramount Pictures from 1989 until 2003 and was either lucky enough or talented enough to see the studio through such phenomenal box office successes as "Ghost," "Forrest Gump" and, most famously, as a co-production with Fox, "Titanic." ("The key was selling it as a love story and letting the press come to see it," he said.)

He looks the part of a Hollywood player too, with his laid-back yet regal stature, silver hair and blue eyes.

But in the last year, the man who once ushered stars such as Angelina Jolie through press junkets and commanded marketing budgets of up to $50 million a movie has turned his attention to helping low-budget films find an audience on a much smaller screen. He's the co-founder of iklipz.com, a website that showcases, markets and one day hopes to facilitate the sale of independent movies.

Cohen has stepped into a crowded field. Websites that have hoped to tap into and unite the independent film community have existed since 1998 when ifilm.com launched as a place for filmmakers to screen their short films online. (After hemorrhaging money for a few years, ifilm gave up on that business model and now functions as a sort of abridged and curated YouTube.)

These days, as video technology has improved, aspiring filmmakers have their pick of scores of video sites on which to upload their films and trailers.

Cohen made it a priority to get a high-quality video player on his site, and indeed the image is better at iklipz than YouTube, where the picture is usually pixilated and jumpy.

So far iklipz's intention to promote movies made outside the studio system is bearing fruit. The second most popular clip on a recent day, for example, was footage from the independent film "Bored in Palo Alto," which will screen at the Tribeca Film Festival. But that one stood alongside many videos born and raised inside the studio gates. The "Grindhouse" trailer was No. 1, and clips from Judd Apatow's studio-funded and -distributed "Knocked Up" were at Nos. 3 and 4.

The independent film part of this independent film site is under a tab called "Industry." That's where you will find films uploaded by users that have been hand-selected as worth viewing by iklipz employees.

So what makes Cohen think iklipz can become the MySpace of the indie film world?

"I'm very connected in Hollywood," he said.