Art Flicks Sparkle on Cell Phones

Art-house flicks for cell phones and iPods might teach Hollywood a thing or two about mobile entertainment if the movie bigwigs would just pay attention to the tiny screen, experts say.
This week at the San Francisco International Film Festival, 20 movies made for mobile devices with 2-inch-by-3-inch screens will be shown as part of the festival's Pocket Cinema program.
Some of the films tackle very big issues, like Katherin McInnis' spookspeak, a four-minute film parodying the National Security Agency's Echelon electronic eavesdropping program.
McInnis' movie blends text and audio of about 300 watchwords that, when used in e-mails or cell-phone conversations, allegedly trigger further scrutiny by the NSA's spy systems.
"The idea behind spookspeak is to warn people that their conversations might not be private," said McInnis, a San Francisco-based visual artist and documentary filmmaker. "I find it really disturbing that I have to worry about what I say when e-mailing friends in Iran."
Also on the program is Suprematist Kapital (.mov), by San Francisco filmmakers James T. Hong and Yin-Ju Chen, which tells a five-minute history of Western capitalism.
"It was inspired by years of paying off student loans," said Hong.
The Pocket Cinema program highlights the art world's contribution to mobile video, which the entertainment industry hopes will be the next big content boom. Fox, for example, is releasing mobisodes of the TV show Prison Break, while Touchstone Television Productions is producing a version of Lost just for mobiles.
"Think internet video circa 1999 with networks optimized for video and (with) a built-in payment engine," said Seamus McAteer, senior analyst with MMetrics, a San Francisco market research firm. "The business will mature much faster than internet video."
The entertainment industry could learn a lot about mobile film from the art world, said Joel Bachar, founder of Microcinema International, which has been distributing independent and experimental films for more than a decade.
Bachar said videos that use less movement and fewer edits are easier to download and watch on a mobile. Also, mobile art videos that combine the use of sound and images to convey a nontraditional type of narrative are a lot easier to consume on a cell phone than a TV series.
"Simply repurposing television shows for the cell phone," he said, "is not a good use of the medium."
Already, some 2 million Americans watch video once a month on their mobile devices, according to MMetrics.
This is likely to increase as network operators like Verizon Communications offer more programming. The company recently cut a content deal with internet video provider Atom Entertainment to offer its content to subscribers.