Micromovies – Pocket Shorts, Part 1

Have technology, need applications - Now that the mobile phone industry has succeeded in creating phones capable of video recording and playback, it’s looking for the answers to a few questions: Is this a gadget consumers really want to use, and how? What kind of content would they like to see? Still up in the air is where this content is going to come from and who will produce it. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking away and the race is on to find ways to get the stagnant mobile phone market moving again.

 

And there are high investments to pay off on third-generation phones and networks: for example, the expensive UMTS licenses purchased in Germany.

 

Just how desperately executives at the various mobile carriers and phone manufacturers need suitable applications is demonstrated by the countless conferences, market analyses and studies being conducted these days on the theme of ‘mobile content’. A vivid picture of the present plight can be had by just entering the terms <mobile> <content> <case study> or <white paper> in any search engine.

So much financial pressure to exploit this new technical platform has rapidly called into life a new form of film: mobile movies or micromovies.

Thus, next to games and other interactive applications, short films are now in the spotlight of today’s content development for wireless telecommunication.

 

 

What are micromovies?

 

Simply put, micromovies are short films that fit onto a mobile phone – with its minimal computing capacity, and dimensions that are getting smaller all the time. The burgeoning micromovie vogue represents something of a paradox in view of the fact that the electronics industry is simultaneously pushing digital home cinema systems that will soon offer studio-quality picture and sound sure to give the multiplex around the corner a run for its money. If the industry gets its way, at the latest by next Christmas every home will boast not only a 36-inch high-definition TV screen (although in Germany at least, no programming is yet available for HDTV), but also an imaging phone that can play films only in low resolution on a tiny 3 x 4-centimetre display: state-of-the-art and a return to the Stone Age of the moving image – side by side!

 

 

Flicker book

 

Micromovies have to be small: resolution should be no higher than 176 x 144 pixels and file size no larger than a few megabytes. Due to the small display size, the movies should ideally consist primarily of close-ups. No long shots or panoramas! Colour is nice, but not too much of it and without any nuances or gradations because the displays have a very limited colour range. Scenes featuring large surfaces of the same colour work best.

 

 

The rediscovery of slowness

 

The frame rate on video phones is very low. Frames change even more slowly than in an early 19^th century zootrope. The miniature devices without video cards cannot handle much more than 10 frames/sec. Therefore, zoom and tracking should be avoided if possible. Likewise, quick movements tend to break up or "pixelate". The use of a tripod is recommended!

It’s not only the frame speed that recalls the pioneer days of film: micromovie sound quality is also quite modest. Language is especially difficult to understand – after all, we’re talking here about a telephone. So please, if you must talk, speak up loud and clear!

 

 

Make it short!

 

Not so very long ago, there were signs on German telephone booths requesting that customers please keep their calls short out of courtesy to other customers. Nowadays, telephone network operators would call that kind of request downright bad for business. But with today’s most advanced telephone technology, the old principle is back again: micromovies have to be extremely short. A running time of maximum one minute has become the rule of thumb. Accordingly, micromovie series, complete with cliffhanger, which are now in strong demand in the industry ("Mobisodes"), can be a maximum of 4 x 15 seconds long.

 

 

Simple ideas for smart phones

 

These restrictive conditions simply do not leave enough time to realize dramaturgically complex plots or elaborate thematic concepts. The supreme dictum is: the simpler the concept, the better. In the words of a competition invitation: »Keep your ideas simple!«

This kind of complex simplicity is a true challenge for any filmmaker: perhaps comparable to asking an opera composer to create ring tones. Just forget everything you ever learned in film seminars or screenplay workshops ...

 

 

Films for short attention spans

 

Studies assume that micromovies will be watched in situations in which the viewer’s attention span is typically very short: at the bus stop, waiting in line at the supermarket check-out, at the hairdresser or sitting in a traffic jam. Soon, viewers can perhaps enjoy watching movies even in the bathtub or swimming pool, since underwater cases for mobile phones are already available!

 

 

A new film form for a new platform

 

These strict technical and dramaturgical specifications mean that short films must be made especially for this format. There are not many films that can be squeezed after the fact into the tight corset of the miniaturized mobile phone.

 

Best suited at this point are Flash animations like those found on the Internet. Since Flash is a vector-based graphics program, which does not put images together out of individual pixels, the files are very small. The possibility of working with different layers allows in addition for a memory-saving separation between moving image parts and static elements, such as backgrounds. Another advantage of this procedure is that it shortens workflows and is already familiar from the classic animation technique.

 

In the representational film sector, however, there are as yet few examples that could serve as prototypes. It’s easiest to find models on the one-minute film scene. Surely the ‘most senior’ event is the Brazilian Festival do Minuto, which has been in existence already for 14 years and has spawned many imitators. Up until now, however, the Festival do Minuto has accepted all video and film formats up to 35mm, and has shown the one-minute films in the theatre, i.e. on the big screen. For this reason, these mini-films are often not suitable as micromovies. Nevertheless, the Festival do Minuto website, on which hundreds of films from previous participants can be streamed, is a real treasure trove (website). And, just since this year, there is also a competition category there called "Videos em Celular" for films up to 15 seconds in length, showing that the festival is paying heed to the latest developments.

Incidentally: if the organizers here had been as clever (or unscrupulous) as many of the holders of micromovie competitions and had asked the filmmakers to transfer the usage rights at the time they submitted their works, today they would be making money like the moguls with their huge pool of short films, comparable to the Leo Kirch or Rupert Murdoch of micromovies. For, as we have seen, the industry is busy searching high and low for masses of micromovies to give life to the new mobile platform ...

 

 

Content mining

 

The few existing short-film distributors do not yet have any films suitable for mobile phone in their catalogues. And even films available from content providers on the Internet are usually too long or complex. Distributors with online film catalogues have tended to push their presentation techniques in past years further and further in the direction of higher resolution: for example, Atom Films with its hi-definition full screen film in 720p format. (see our News Article). It can be assumed that Internet-based suppliers will in future tend to pursue convergence tendencies between Internet and television (IPTV) rather than taking a step backward to the GIF thumbnail animations of the early days of the Web.

Thus, the mobile phone industry is forced to look for content elsewhere, or to generate its own material. This is why all of the major phonemakers, along with many network operators, are pursuing one of two strategies: either partnering with a festival or holding their own competitions.

 

 

Co-operations with festivals

 

Almost all of the larger short film festivals have by now added a micromovie competition. In Germany, Hamburg’s Short Film Festival entered into a partnership with Bitfilm distribution at an early date – back when imaging phones had not yet been invented but there was already a need for digital content to stock online applications. This partnership did not last, however, and Bitfilm has been hosting its own festival now since 2003 (see Part 2 of this article).

 

The past two years have seen many other festivals follow suit. In 2004, Interfilm Berlin launched a co-operation with Siemens Mobile. Siemens is among the companies hosting their own competitions – here under the name Micromovie Award – which dock onto the festivals in accordance with the shop-in-shop model. The focus of the Siemens award is not so much to promote the making of micromovies for later distribution and marketing, but rather to push the latest phone models. Consequently, films submitted to the Micromovie competition must be recorded using a mobile phone that the company furnishes to selected filmmakers.

The Siemens Micromovie Award (website) has also been held in Brazil at the short film festivals in Rio de Janeiro (2004) and Sao Paulo (2005) and at the St. Kilda Festival in Melbourne (2005).

 

Market leader Nokia also holds its own competitions for micromovies: for example, for the last three years in co-operation with the Raindance Festival in London. The first two years, films shot using any kind of camera were eligible. But with the new mobile phone generation, Nokia changed the concept and in 2005, like Siemens, demanded that films be made with the company’s own imaging phones (website). For the contest that took place as part of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2005, filmmakers were given the Nokia N90 – an imaging phone that even includes a limited editing application. Five international filmmakers whose works were already on the festival programme took part in the Nokia competition. (website)

 

Nokia Ireland has announced a competition organized along the same lines at the upcoming Darklight Film Festival in Dublin (entry deadline: 30 Sept. 2005 / website). By contrast with the competitions in other countries, at the Nokia/ Darklight Pocket Movie Challenge there is also a category for professionals, the films can be up to 5 minutes long, and participation is tied to a distribution contract with the Wildlight Channel (see Part 2 of this article).

 

Nokia’s short film festival partnering scheme began, however, in Tampere – which comes as no surprise, since just a few kilometres away there happens to be a small village called Nokia! In 2003, the competition held at the Tampere Short Film Festival was accompanied by an influential conference on the topic of micromovies (website). At that time, films in any format were eligible to compete. A seminar dealing with both practical questions and issues of content and aesthetics featured the first screenplay competition for micromovies. Nokia asked film scholars to analyse the competitions in order to gain a better understanding of the possibilities and limits of the micromovie format.

 

 

Micromovie competitions at feature film festivals

 

Even the major (feature film) festivals have now jumped on the bandwagon. First was the Sundance Festival in Park City. Starting this year, a special mobile film festival is taking place there called Thumbdance, sponsored by Mobliss, a media and marketing company specializing in content for mobile media. Mobliss will soon be launching the Thumbdance Channel, where featured content will include short films from Ifilm and political parodies by Jibjab (Website).

 

During the Berlinale the network operator O2 organized a Mobile Movie Award contest. Entries did not have to be created using an imaging phone, but were supposed to be suitable in terms of running time, data rate and design for playback on a phone. As to the intention behind the competition, the press release explains: »As mobile network operator, we will be providing a new entertainment medium based on UMTS data transmission using a mobile phone. Now, elements from film, television and online design can be combined to make a new kind of movie clip«. Making the most of this new medium was worth the imposing sum of 10,000 EUR in prize money to O2 – almost as much as nominees for the German Short Film Award receive! A student at the University Of Applied Sciences in Potsdam was the lucky winner.

 

A similar contest was held at the Cannes Film Festival – only with a different sponsor: the "Orange Film Court" competition. Unlike in the other contests, a jury selects the five winners here (and not the audience). The contest was organized by the Paris distribution company Premium Films, which itself boasts an inventory of some 50 short films (website).

 

The Toronto International Film Festival also has a mobile movie category in September 2005, sponsored by Motorola. Competitions include the "MotoReel Contest" for film students, along with a chance for filmmakers to try out Motorola phones in the "MotoFilm Project", part of the festival’s Talent Lab.

 

Finally, in October 2005, the new Zurich Film Festival is joining in. The very first festival includes a Mobile Movie Award held in conjunction with Nokia (website). Apart from a special programme on Onedotzero, micromovies will be the only short films shown at the new festival. Nominees for the Mobile Movie Award can be viewed on the Internet starting 25 September (website). Prizes include ten Nokia N90 phones and a trip to the Berlinale 2006 (in order to take part in another Mobile Movie Award :-).

 

Nokia’s micromovie-commercial for the Swiss Mobile Movie Award, which can be seen on the website, comes complete with fake scratches and dust. Strange that, of all things, relics from the olden days of celluloid projection are now being used to advertise a new platform that is further removed from classic cinema than any other film format. Obviously, celluloid is still held in higher esteem than the company’s own slick new product!

 

In fact, micromovies truly represent an autonomous format, with a new platform for which ‘content’ must first be created. The energy with which the industry is pursuing this goal and thereby pushing the evolution of a new short film format is just as enormous as the speed with which developments are leapfrogging. In addition to the contests described above, which are embedded in existing festivals, there are now already event platforms expressly for mobile movies, along with a host of other strategies to boost the ongoing production of content. These alternative models will be explored in Part 2 of this article.

 

 

Micro cliffhanger

 

In our next instalment on micromovies, we will look at special micromovie events and activities outside the conventional festivals. In addition, we will meet some of the big players and explore the world of micromovie distribution and trade. Finally, we will examine in detail the conditions of entry for the filmmakers, including the contracts and their clauses. As we shall see, the contests and events often serve in reality as a cheap way of acquiring films without having to share the profits with their makers. If you have any experiences in this field you would like to share with us, we would love to hear from you!

 

 

Reinhard W. Wolf

 

 

p.s. The term "micromovie" was coined in the 1980s in Nicholas Negroponte’s Architecture Machine Group at MIT and expanded in 1993 by Glorianna Davenport (Interactive Cinema Group at MIT Media Lab) in the context of interactive video databases – which were introduced in 1997 at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.