Just as digital music files ushered in a host of amateur DJs, the advent of digital filmmaking promises to usher in a new breed of movie mashers.

Maverick director Bruce McDonald launched an unusual project in Toronto Monday that puts material from his latest film online for anyone to download and re-edit.

McDonald's experimental film, The Tracey Fragments, hits theatres Friday but there's already a taste of it on the internet — hundreds of hours of raw footage have been uploaded to the film's web page, along with the script, and are available for free.

It's a bold marketing ploy that flies in the face of the typical movie industry approach to films and their fans, where fears over piracy usually trump any inclinations to ally with the online world. 

The music industry is already well down this road with similar experiments in which tech-savvy artists like Nine Inch Nails and the Barenaked Ladies released digital music tracks and invited fans to remix and rehash the material as they saw fit.

TV mashups have proven to be an irresistible draw, too, with YouTube awash with goofy send-ups that cut episodes of Heroes with The Office, or craft a montage of David Caruso one-liners from CSI Miami.

The Comedy Network's cartoon series Odd Job Jack even offers up cartoon characters and background scenes that fans can download and refashion into new scenarios.

Steve Gravestock of the Toronto International Film Festival said such a scheme works especially well with the avant-garde nature of The Tracey Fragments, but doubted audiences would want a shot at hacking up more typical Hollywood fare.

Still, he credited the Kingston, Ont.-born McDonald with promoting his film with a gesture of goodwill that is sure to be appreciated by movie fans.

'Far more intelligent way'

"The way they're doing it with Tracey seems to be a far more intelligent way than just offering up content or using it as a conventional promotional tool," said Gravestock, TIFF associate director of Canadian programming.

"[It's sort of] an alternative media that is far more interactive."

The Tracey Fragments tells the story of 15-year-old Tracey Berkowitz, played by rising star Ellen Page, who wanders seedy city streets in search of her missing little brother. A mosaic of images echoes the troubled teen's fragmented mind, with each segment of the screen offering a different perspective or camera angle of the same scene.

McDonald, whose indie films include cult classics Hard Core Logo and Highway 61, wants people to try their hands at combining the material into a project of their own — a new feature film, rock video, trailer or personal manifesto. 

The free download also includes the Broken Social Scene soundtrack.

Tracey Fragments producer Sarah Timmins said she has no fears of piracy since the theatrical version, which took nine months to edit, would be extremely difficult to replicate and the free material is not up to DVD quality.

Endless appetite

She adds that it's hard to ignore a seemingly endless appetite for online entertainment.

"Whether you do it legitimately, as we've done in this case, or you don't allow people to do it, they're going to do it anyway," said Timmins.

"Kids are going to tape television shows, they're going to digitize it, they're going to play around with it on their Mac video program and they're going to post it on YouTube anyway…. You might as well embrace it and use it for yourself."

Timmins said the footage has been split into four files, roughly 4.5 GB each.

Users are invited to post their creations on YouTube. McDonald and his editors will pick a winner, who will get an Apple Final Cut Pro software prize pack and can appear in the bonus features of the film's DVD release.

Timmins said the Tracey Fragments material is being made available under a "creative commons licence" that permits people to use the footage as long as it's not for commercial purposes.