Clicked on that new film yet?

Enter A cineplex this summer and you’re basically wandering into a giant circus. Each tent pole -- the biz term for a colossally expensive movie -- is sure to include at least one outlandish, or even freakish, main character. Step right up. On your left, watch an old man -- incredibly! -- age in reverse. On your right, a demon in a raincoat wields a revolver as big as a car. And up ahead, a man in a bat suit faces off with a murderous, cackling clown.

No room for nuance in these parts. Nuance has too much to do with reality and is therefore not awesome! Hippie-bohemians seeking boring reality-based “films” will have to look in the phone book for sour-smelling old movie houses with bad sound. Or you could try the Internet.

Yes. The independent movie, banished from theaters for its fiscal transgressions, is confusedly trying to find some purchase online. (Purchase as in not falling off a cliff, and decidedly not in the sense of money changing hands.) And yet there it is -- traces of an inchoate digital film industry, a tiny but growing counterpart to brick-and-mortar Hollywood, where small filmmakers can likewise find help developing, producing and ultimately distributing their work.

YouTube, that bastion of the uncinematic, took a surprising jump into the indie world two weeks ago when it launched its “Screening Room,” a fancy section of the site with a nice big screen, framed by an image of red velvet curtains and surrounded by a kind of virtual cordon, which prohibits the work of YouTube’s moviemaking masses from gaining entry. In the Room, you’ll find only jury-selected, independent short films (four new ones every two weeks). Each film on the first slate has attracted more than a quarter of a million views, a robust audience for small films that would otherwise be lucky to fill a few theaters with festival-goers before being perma-shelved.

But movie-watching sites like YouTube, Jaman.com and Indiflix.com are just the top layer. There’s now a growing number of movie-making websites that enable creators to gather and exchange ideas and expertise with each other and hired mentors -- not unlike the traditional apprenticeship you’d get in film school.

One of these is Massify.com, which provides a space where actors, directors and writers can gather to assemble projects or compete in one of the site’s short-film contests.

Massify’s innovative first project was to build a horror movie from the ground up. Writers were invited to upload story pitches, and actors submitted audition videos. The site’s community members then voted on their favorite story and on which actors they thought deserved to be cast in the four main roles. The winning idea, “Perkins 14,” is about a psychopath who kidnaps 14 people from Brightsville and brainwashes them, creating a unified team of psycho killers. Sort of like X-Men but with cleavers. The film, budgeted at a million dollars, is now shooting in Romania. Story winner Jeremy Donaldson, now a producer, is working closely with the film’s professional director and crew. “Perkins 14” will be a part of After Dark Films’ popular “8 Films to Die For” horror movie festival.

You might’ve skimmed over the names at the end there, and you can hardly be faulted for that. It’s worth noting, however, that sponsors like After Dark are the bedrocks in this emerging online space. They foot the bills, for one thing, but they’re paying for more than a credit on a poster. As it turns out, online film production outlets like Massify derive their value from doubling as a kind of new wave marketing opportunity for any brand willing to pay. The ingenious part of the model is that, by recruiting talented creators to produce content related to an event or product (in this case, After Dark’s horror fest), Massify converts its users into what it calls “brand ambassadors.” It’s better than word-of-mouth advertising because the filmmakers and actors form a community around the brand, implicitly marketing to themselves and their peers by creating movies around it.

For anyone lamenting the nauseating commercialism of sponsored everything, I feel for you. The days of movies sans Coke cans, Pizza Hut boxes and Apple laptops may well be over. Except haven’t they been over for a while? I barely flinch when I see a blatant product placement. Gave up long ago. So I figure, hey, if it’s helping some kids get a shot at making a real film, and maybe even starting careers, then make a movie that’s just one long soda, pizza and laptop party, for all I care. I was thinking I’d order out tonight anyway.

Filmaka.com (that’s pronounced film make-uh) has found a webby new way to tap into the old tension between art and commerce. The site runs year-round contests in which aspiring filmmakers compete for real development deals, funding and personal attention from a heavy-duty list of jurors that includes the likes of Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Paul Schrader and Neil LaBute.

But also, explained Filmaka President Sandy Grushow, formerly chairman of Fox Television Entertainment Group, “there are lots of big brands in this country, as well as the major media companies that see tremendous value in getting off of the Hollywood lazy Susan.”

Grushow emphasized the Filmaka community’s power to offer an alternative to expensive advertising campaigns by producing lots of low-priced, high-quality branded content, what you might call “viral” advertising. It did so recently in a contest sponsored by the brewing titan SAB Miller. The idea was for entrants to make shorts around the theme “Because Life Is What You Pour Into It.” Winners net $5,000 and a chance to have their spot used in Miller ad campaigns.

“It’s great to be able to wake up every morning and know you’ve got over 7,000 people in 123 countries ready to pick up a camera to do work on your behalf,” Grushow said, “as well as their own, because, of course, there’s a great deal in it for them.”

For filmmakers, the cottage industry of online movie production may offer a great deal but not much cash. Ghuarov Dillon, chief executive of Jaman.com, one of the indie film platforms, told of one Jaman filmmaker he ran into whose feature film had about 7,000 views on the site, which shares revenue with its creators.

“I saw him the other day and he said, ‘Hey, I had a great dinner with a check you guys sent me!’ ”

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david.sarno@latimes.com