New technology lets users watch short movies and TV shows
Jan. 28, 2005, 3:25PM
By LOUIS B. PARKS
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/front/3012556
Your date is late. Sitting in Sam's Boat twiddling your thumbs, you experience that most unforgivable sin of the 21st century: a moment of boredom. Taking corrective action, you whip out your cell phone, attach the earpiece. Then you:
A: Call a friend.
B: Play a game.
C: Watch an episode of 24: Conspiracy, a new spinoff series of the popular Fox TV show 24.
Options A and B? They're so over. Starting Feb. 7, new weekly mini-episodes of 24 will be ready to eliminate all fear of downtime for users of Verizon's fast new EvDO broadband service.
If you can't wait for that, Sprint already has cell-phone movies available for viewing.
"While we are speaking now, there are people watching films on their mobile phones," says Beau Buck of cell-film supplier BigDigit, Inc., which programs Sprint's mFlix, part of a media package with such offerings as CNN, Fox Sports and Cartoon Network.
Got popcorn? Mobile phones are promising to become minimovie theaters in your pocket. Bored standing in line to see Million Dollar Baby? Watch a movie or two, or three or four, while you wait.
We're not talking Titanic. Mobile movies are short — 10 seconds to three minutes. Much longer would take forever to download and require huge memory to store.
But length doesn't hamper storytelling. It only takes 12 seconds to tell the grim joke of a BigDigit's Headrush. It's about the dire consequences a man suffers when his son jumps on a rubber raft he's inflating: The man's head explodes.
So far the majority of cell-phone cinema is borrowed from other media. But that's quickly changing as filmmakers begin producing films specifically to be viewed via cell phones.
BigDigit asks its filmmakers — about 1,300 worldwide — to "take into consideration the needs of the audience," Buck says. "When people are paying, they don't want to see a Coke commercial or trailer unless it's really entertaining. We offer stuff you really can't find anywhere else, shot, or at least edited, with the mobile user in mind."
24: Conspiracy falls into the made-for-phone category. A full 24-episode season of the 60-second adventures of counter-terrorism agents already has been shot. And News Corp., which owns Fox, has even coined a name for cell-phone series: mobisodes.
"We shot 24: Conspiracy for the (small) screen of a cell phone," News Corp. vice president Lucy Hood says. "The production company (not the same that does 24) did an extraordinary job of designing specifically for a cell phone."
24: Conspiracy is already being shown in Europe, where cell-phone technology is ahead of the United States. And Hood says more series are planned. "As transmission improves on handsets, that will just add to the richness of the content," she adds.
So how does it look?
Cell-phone image quality hardly rivals high-definition television, but it's coming along.
Sprint's mFlix downloads are fast — 10-20 seconds — and the image is decent but can be jerky. There's almost no jerking with the next generation EvDO that Verizon introduces to Houston and other big cities on Tuesday. That 3G (third generation) technology, already common in Europe, has a broadband look that rivals what you'd get watching little movies on your home computer.
Screen size? Tiny. But you'll be watching your 1 1/2 -inch cell screen from inches away. The Verizon LG VX8000 phone even allows you to turn the picture sideways to get a "widescreen" effect.
Most problematic is sound. Cell speakers are small. You'll often want an earpiece.
Technology aside, the real question is, are the movies worth watching?
Well, we haven't seen Citizen Kane or Raging Bull — or even Spider-Man — on cell-phone cinema yet. The little movies range from "my little brother could do that" to "Whoa, that was cool."
Rubber Chicken Loves Surfer Girl, currently on Sprint's mFlix, is one of the former. Its 139-second sequence of still shots examines the romance between a floppy bird and a plastic surf babe who has never seen the ocean.
There's clever editing and original thought, however weird, in BigDigit's bizarrely comedic Cheap Ludes, in which a vaguely obscene-looking "being" — sometimes it's good that the screen is small — runs out of an apartment on a desperate quest for something sold in a toothpick box.
"It's drive-by entertainment on the run," says Victoria Lynn Weston, director of video content provider ZoieFilms. "You get a good quick look, whether it's a comedy or drama or preview or commercial by a creative director."
BigDigit (www.bigdigit.com) and ZoieFilms (www.zoiefilms.com) each host cell-phone film festivals. The festivals may have more to do with commercial viability than art — as most festivals do — but they suggest a growing quantity and legitimacy, and they encourage new artists and work.
Since 2003 BigDigit has hosted seven editions of the World's Smallest Film Festival in cities such as New Orleans, Toronto, Atlanta and London. Most are held in conjunction with traditional film festivals or wireless events.
Atlanta-based ZoieFilms saw nearly 100 entries in its first Cellular Cinema Festival in December.
Hot cell-phone competition has all the players looking for an edge in the race for trend-setting customers. Movies and mobisodes are one front of that fight.
"We see an audience of early adopters, people who like to be the first," says News Corp.'s Hood. " 'Look what I just did on my mobile phone.' "
As technology improves, so will the speed, length and visual quality of made-for-cell shows.
"The possibilities are endless," says Verizon's Sheryl Sellaway. "It's really limitless."
louis.parks@chron.com
