TV Times

TV Times

Birth of mobile phone based ‘Short Films’
Traditional views of short movies as film festival fare or calling cards for actors and directors are being discarded as filmmakers begin to find new audiences for short films on mobile phones and other gadgets. ‘It's an exciting new frontier as a market and as a medium to showcase these films’ said Ben Murray, the Festival programmer of the recently concluded Toronto International Film Fest .

Increasingly, mobile phone companies are offering them as downloads along with newscasts, sportscasts and game highlights, video games, music videos and movie trailers, he said. North America is quickly catching up to Europe and Asia, where video mobile phone use is already well established.

‘ Last year's Academy Award-winning digitally animated documentary "Ryan," about troubled genius Canadian animator Ryan Larkin, marked a turning point here’ Murray said.

"It had audiences thinking about shorts and seeking them out," he said. "There is an appetite for these films, but there weren't good outlets for them to be seen until now."

Raja Khanna of Toronto-based Quickplay Media, which gathers content for two Canadian mobile phone firms, said most are presently commissioned works, but as demand grows, he expects more filmmakers will retain the rights to their products, receiving royalties each time they play.

"Short filmmakers have always struggled with finding ways to make money," he said. They often made mini-movies simply to practice their craft, to get cheap exposure at film festivals or to pitch story ideas to producers, hoping they will be blown up into feature-length films. This newest trend allows them to generate more revenues with less film, he said.

Within two or three years, Khanna predicts everyone will have a video-enabled phone whether they want one or not because that is all manufacturers will make by then. And, as video quality improves, the market for short films will improve, he said.

Of course, filmmakers need to keep in mind the small size of mobile phone screens when shooting. There were 44 shorts screened last week at the film festival -- including David Hyde's "Leo," about a hapless flower delivery man; Greg Spottiswood's "Noise," about a father and son playing a game; and Matthew Swanson's "Hiro," about Japanese gangsters.

Don McKellar's "Phone Call from Imaginary Girlfriends" tells viewers how much they are missed. Two versions, including young women from Ankara and Istanbul, were commissioned by Canada's National Film Board as part of a small collection that has been available to view on mobile phones since June.
Both were shot using video-enabled mobile phones, as well.

Meanwhile, Sook-Yin Lee's "Unlocked," about a young couple facing the end of their relationship, is three minutes long, split into two 90-second spots for fast download to mobile phones, the first half ending in a cliffhanger.

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