Shooting is due to commence at the end of this month on Carlo Ledesma’s feature debut, The Tunnel, a Sydney based underground thriller which will be distributed for free via internet networks.

The film, which stars Bel Delia and Andy Rodoreda follows a news film crews’ journey into Sydney’s underground hunting for a story, until the story starts hunting them.

Producers Enzo Tedeschi and Julian Harvey of Distracted Media, are raising the film’s $135,000 budget by selling each frame of the movie for $1 to internet users.

They then plan to release the film for free on the internet later this year — even on networks usually used for pirate material — in a bid to reach out to the increasingly dominant online audience.

“We are thrilled to commence shooting on this project. We have had such an overwhelming response from Australia, Canada, UK and the US with our web traffic to date showing interest from over 99 countries.  We have scouted some of the best locations throughout Sydney that will really set the scene and complement the film’s genre” said Julian Harvey.

“We believe that if we stop fighting the peer to peer networks and find a way to work with them, they could become the biggest revolution in the way we connect with an audience,” said Enzo Tedeschi, whose 2009 feature documentary Food Matters was released on DVD and online, selling over 120,000 DVDs and streams worldwide.