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Pocketcine

Mobile TV is Dead. Long Live Social Media.

Submitted by Pocketcine on December 19, 2006 - 7:43pm.
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It is been just about almost year since I inked the last ideas for the Pocketcine project and framed it around the idea of mobile viral videos, then pitched it to the committee considering Mobile Muse projects. At the time there was huge hype around video for the mobile phone. My project treated the mobile phone and its video capability as a new medium that Canadian artists should explore and exploit.

I am sorry about the hype because it made people think I was making movies for the phone. Thankfully the hype has died down considerably. The pundits who never believed in the arrival of the new medium point to the tiny screen and say "who would want to watch a movie on that?"

Those ViFF and PocketCine guys are way ahead of the curve...

Submitted by Richard Smith on October 31, 2006 - 7:58pm.
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A recent post over at RCR Wireless News provides details of a recent industry meeting, the Third Screen Festival in Los Angeles, CA. The tenor of the meeting seems to have been very welcoming to so-called "made-for-mobile" video clips. Here is a quote:

"The overwhelming majority of wireless users continue to view the phone simply as a platform for voice conversations. For a handful of aspiring filmmakers, though, it's a potential ticket to Hollywood."

"Entertainment industry executives and wireless types gathered last week at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills at the Third Screen Film Festival, described as the first such event for films made specifically for mobile phones. Todd Spence's "The Lost" beat out the nearly 1,000 submitted short films garnering the festival's top prize of a $10,000 filmmaker grant. Spence's clip will also air on Sprint Nextel Corp.'s GoTV Super Channel."


Picking Mobile Stories Out of the Air

Submitted by Pocketcine on October 4, 2006 - 4:10pm.
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I have been having an ongoing dialog with David Vogt on the nature of narrative and (to use a term much beloved by the Mobile Muse technical guru Jim Udall) its instantiation as mobile shorts. David has been on the sidelines commenting on the development of a storyline called "Queen of Spades," a kind of film noir short in classical 2D animation. It is intended as a test of 2D animated shorts on mobile phones. 

David is hard to please and he has pretty well shot down everything I have come up with so far.

I was thinking about this problem about an hour ago, using a method that has always been effective. I went for a walk to do some grocery shopping, passing through Moody Park, a big city park about two blocks from my house. On my way back, lost in thought, I looked up. I came across a scene. It was a young Asian mother and her baby in a baby carriage. She was flailing in the air. As I got nearer I realized that she was using a stick to poke at a long yellow strap dangling from the branch of tree. The strap formed a loop with two keys on the end. (The keys to her house?) She was trying to get it down using a long branch. It was not long enough. I have no idea how the keys got up there, about ten feet in the air.


The Holy Grail of Viral Video

Submitted by Pocketcine on July 11, 2006 - 10:52am.
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I was recently told by an associate that finding the formula for a viral video hit is a kind of holy grail among mobile video producers. But he doubted it could be done.

I agreed with him. It would be like finding the formula for the world's funniest joke. If everybody had the formula, then one's joke would be just as funny as another's. There would be no funniest joke.

However people do go to movies expecting them to tell well-known stories, some of them entirely predictable, like a Jane Austen novel brought to the screen. Hollywood churns them out. Obviously being a successful entertainment conglomerate involves other strategies besides storytelling, such as creative distribution deals and marketing.


Cecil B. DeMille Severely Edited

Submitted by Pocketcine on June 19, 2006 - 6:42pm.
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When I first saw “The Annoying Thing” playing on a cell phone screen I realized I was witnessing the birth of a new medium. It is comparable to early Hollywood films, like “The Virginian.

The Virginian was DeMille’s first solo effort, a film based on a novel. I found it showing  on the Turner movie classics channel last weekend and watched it for about 45 seconds. It was like watching an elephant dance…amazing for its time (1914) but pretty crude and heavy-handed seen from a  contemporary perspective. Apparently film critics consider it a magnificent failure as well.


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