HollyShorts

BARCELONA, Spain (AFP) — The short film, often used by aspiring directors to showcase their talent, could be more than a career leg-up in the future if the format is embraced by mobile phone users, industry insiders hope.

Hollywood star Robert Redford appeared in Barcelona on Wednesday to help sell the idea of the short format on the mini screen at the industry’s annual get-together here, the Mobile World Congress.

Promoters believe the three-minute film is perfect for the mobile: conventional wisdom has it that consumers want short, snappy content that they can squeeze in while on-the-go.

“I think there’s a global audience for compelling story-telling on mobile phones,” says Bill Gajda, marketing director for the mobile industry body the GSM Association.

The industry is desperate to encourage phone owners to use their handsets for more than just phoning and texting — for which profits are declining in developed countries — with video, sport, games and mapping the basis of new product offerings.

Actress and film-maker Isabella Rossellini, daughter of actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini, is also here to promote a series of mini films she has made about the sex lives of insects, called “Green Porno.”

The GSM, after partnering with Sundance last year, is showcasing a selection of films from leading festivals around the world at this year’s Mobile World Congress.

Gajda believes that the supply of short films is abundant, that previous hurdles to watching films on mobile phones are falling and that the challenge now is one of marketing.

“Sundance gets 8,000 short films per year from aspiring directors,” he says, underlining the glut of productions available.

“We’ve got to get the message to mobile users that if you’ve got five minutes a compelling mobile short film is a click away,” he said.

Dan Winterbottom, an analyst for IT and telecom consultancy Informa, stresses that only about 30 percent of people currently use their phone for more than basic phoning and texting on average in most developed markets.

While Gajda stresses the abundance of films available, Winterbottom underlines that the big production companies and film studios that could really drive demand are not interested in the mobile market for the moment.

One day, dreams the industry, someone will make a short-format television series that will be available only on mobile phones, with three-minute installments available for download periodically like a regular TV soap opera.

“At the moment, there are just not enough people watching video on their mobile to make it viable,” says Winterbottom.

“It’s a chicken and egg situation, until you’ve got enough content there won’t be users, but the content makers aren’t interested because there isn’t the audience.”

Under Gadja’s idea, short films would be curated and aggregated then sold to network operators such as Vodafone in bundles.

In the process, the director would get a license fee and the network operators could then offer the films as premium content to their subscribers.

Pete Nuthall, a telecom analyst at market research group Forrester, says short film directors should be encouraged by the emergence of mobile phones with bigger screens and faster download speeds, which make film-watching viable.

“Short films have always been a way into the film industry for film students and film wannabees and the phone presents a new distribution channel for them,” said Nuthall.

As well as the aspiring arty directors and the established directors, there are an increasing number of amateur directors whose content is available on user-generated content sites such as YouTube.

Nuthall cites Grocery Store Wars, a hit YouTube production, as the perfect viral film that could drive the use of mobile phones for watching short films.

The five-minute production, based on Star Wars but staged in an organic supermarket, sees stormtroopers played by free-range eggs and Obi Wan-Kenobi as a chocolate biscuit with a cream cheese beard.

“There are some incredibly talented people out there,” says Nuthall.

Posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 6:12 pm under News.
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