These days, you’re far more likely to touch base with friends and colleagues virtually than physically. With social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and others, the online world has become the ubiquitous backbone of our social fabric. It’s changed the way we communicate, and redefined the concept of ‘friend.’

Filmmaker Paul Perrier’s upcoming doc, Facebookumentary, plans on examining this phenomenon, setting out to answer the ambitious question: Just what is friendship in 2010?

The execution is as genius as it is simple. Perrier joined Facebook and waited to see how long it would take him to reach 100 friends. There was a caveat: he couldn’t invite anyone to be his friend, and he wouldn’t refuse anyone friendship.

It took about a year to reach his goal, and now that he’s collected his eclectic group he plans to gather them all together for three days in Toronto this January in order to shoot an observational documentary. The film hopes to get to the bottom of the social networking phenomenon, and explore the ways in which friendship changes when it comes to the ‘real’ world compared to that of the ‘virtual.’ (Why is it that people tend to project an idealized version of themselves online, for example?)

Interestingly, the project parallels Perrier’s first filmmaking effort, Marymount Again… Made a decade ago, Marymount also tackles the theme of friendship, centering on the filmmaker’s 22nd high school reunion. (Perrier followed this with the gritty Cracked Not Broken for HBO – a film which landed him a spot on Oprah.) The Toronto-based Perrier asserts that Marymount would be impossible to do now, given how much the virtual world has changed the way people interact.

The filmmaker plans to avoid the typical funding roundabout for this project, as he has for his others.

‘When I wanted to make Marymount Again…,’ he recalls, ‘I had no experience in filmmaking, which does not lend itself well to the funding agencies in this country. So, I did the old fundraiser event and raised enough money from friends to shoot the reunion. I then invested my own money to get a five-minute teaser edited, and ended up preselling the film to three networks. That was the last time I got money to make a film.

‘I don’t think my style of filmmaking fits into the financing system [as it’s] set up. Not to mention that the system is in crisis… Broadcasters reacted to digital technology in the TV/film industry exactly like major record labels did when digital music files first affected their archaic business models: denial, defense and – ultimately – defeat.

‘Unless you are one of the select groups of people who are in bed with the funders – and it is not a very big bed – then ‘non traditional’ funding is your only option. The web has changed everything, and it is the future of what I hope is ‘broadercasting,’

‘What excites me as a filmmaker is that the potential audience for this film is 300 million strong, and counting. No broadcaster could ever dream of achieving such an audience, not even Oprah reaches numbers like that.’

Given that the film is about social media, much of the marketing will be done online – and that’s a potentially huge audience. Perrier points out that the community created by his Facebook friends and their friends alone numbers over 28,000 people. That potential grows exponentially as one moves out to larger friendship circles. The filmmaker has already started a fan site for the movie, as well as a contest that will see 10 fans of the movie get to participate in the event in January.

Perrier will shoot over three days, and plans to only use the filmmaking resources available in his friend group. The goal is to edit in four to six weeks for a tight turnaround, and output to several different formats: an hour-long downloadable version (possibly made available though his Facebook fan site), a feature version for festivals, and a DVD version with extras.

Summarizes Perrier: ‘This film is a social experiment. As social media is changing the landscape of just about everything in media, I am experimenting with the possibilities of how independent ‘filmmakers’ in today’s market can survive, and possibly prosper, while Hollywood and broadcasters are losing the power-hold they have held since the beginning of filmmaking. I was influenced by the great films and new music of the ’70s and this is my version of punk rock, DIY filmmaking.

‘I observe and then I create.’