Sundance struts the small screen
The Sundance Institute, a champion of independent filmmakers for 25 years, has jumped on the bandwagon with a project to promote the distribution of short films to cellphone users. The institute — founded by craggy actor Robert Redford — has teamed up with the GSM Association to commission independent artists to create five short films exclusively for cellphones. The project challenges the filmmakers to work with a limited budget, time and resources to make films of three to five minutes’ duration for the small screen.
The experiment was designed to explore new platforms to promote the wider reach of independent voices in filmmaking, says Redford. “Cellphones are fast becoming the ‘fourth screen’ medium, after television, cinema and computers. We are excited about bringing this opportunity to independent filmmakers and most excited to see what they will do with it.”
The initiative shows that cellphones are muscling into the movie business — although these movies designed for viewing on cellphones will be filmed conventionally. Kaganof was more ambitious, shooting a full-length movie, SMS Sugar Man, entirely on eight Sony Ericsson handsets.
Filming by phone proved far cheaper than traditional techniques, with the movie wrapped up for R1m.
Sugarman’s executive producer, Jeremy Nathan, says it is now being packaged into 30 short episodes for viewing on the small screen, where the attention span peters out after four to seven minutes. A deal with Vodacom will see the clips made available to Vodacom users in March, with the full-length version to be screened at Ster-Kinekor’s Cinema Nouveau chain by June.
Movies for the cellphone are “exploding”, says Nathan. France has launched a “pocket cinema festival” and digital distribution was on the agenda at the Montreal World Film Festival this year.
The popularity of sharing home-produced videos on websites such as YouTube makes it inevitable that professional filmmakers will catch on, he says. “The Sundance initiative is really interesting because it will bring more sophisticated filmmakers to cellphones and the internet.
“It’s very much exploratory and it’s not for every type of film, but as handsets increase their screen size and the audio gets better, it’s definitely going to be adopted. A lot of kids and people who travel long distances to work are already using it.”
Filmmakers who have been commissioned for the Sundance project include Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the creators of Little Miss Sunshine.
The short films will debut at the world’s largest cellphone event, the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona in February. They will be available as cellphone downloads at the congress, and will then be made available to cellphone operators for global distribution afterwards.
Bill Gajda of the GSM Association says this will explore the potential of cellphones to deliver compelling entertainment globally on an unprecedented scale.
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