Frank Chindamo

“At CTIA, the keynote speakers were Bill Gates and Ted Turner,” recalls Chindamo. “They got on stage, and the president of CTIA, Tom Wheeler, stands up with a mobile phone and says, ‘This is the future–video on cell phones.’ And he plays my video, a little spec spot called Love Bytes.”

Since then, Chindamo’s Fun Little Movies boasts a library of close to 2,000 films for mobile phones. His content is on the Google Android platform, iPhones (thanks to media agency Cross Mediaworks), on a top deck channel on Sprint (thanks to MobiTV) and an app on Blackberry (thanks to Metranome). In addition to Fun Little Movies’ availability in North America, the company has mobile deals in India and throughout Asia and Europe.

Chindamo started teaching short film screenwriting in Jan. 2004 at USC. “The course I had designed was shaped around the short films that were playing on the Internet at the time,” says Chindamo. “Up until then, the classes on short films were about writing the first act of a feature film, when in fact, people were only writing features. Mine was about writing a short film to play as a short film. The target for it was that short films would play on the Internet. By the end of that year, I had my channel on Sprint, and so in Jan. 2005, I started teaching short film screenwriting in a way that would apply to mobile and web. Hence I was the first person in the world teaching mobile and web screenwriting. Director Kevin Smith director would go on to teach a class in web screenwriting and web film production, in 2007, at UCLA.”

Here’s more information about the two classes offered this Spring.

UCLA Extension: Starting April 13, this class is about the conceptualization of a great series, and then the writing, shooting, editing and uploading of that series. “This is aimed at both people with production backgrounds and others who bring skills such as writing or performing,” says Chindamo. “By the end of the class, you’ll have posted your first three episodes of a webisode or mobisode.” For distribution, webisodes can be posted to YouTube. For mobisodes, if they’re comedies, Chindamo posts them onto the Fun Little Movies channel. Chindamo has taught this class once or twice a year since 2008.

Success stories include Bernie Su’s Compulsions, up for four Streamy awards. Another successful series is a Sam Spade spoof starring store room dummies, Film Noir for Dummies, which is distributed by Babelgum, as well as  Dynamic Change, also on Babelgum.

To sign up for the UCLA Extension course, click here.

USC: The USC class–which takes place July 28 through August 5–is shorter, faster, much more in-depth, says Chindamo, who notes that the course also comes with all the equipment, including cameras, lighting, sound, and editing stations, as well as tutorials on how to use them. This class is also more international; last year’s class had students from Spain, China, Brazil, and Israel. This class meets Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 7 pm to 9;30.

The big successes of this class are the “merry madmen” of 5 Second Films. (Other films that have come out of the class are linked on the USC page below.) As with the UCLA class, students will end up with three completed episodes of a web or mobile series.

To sign up for the USC class, click here.

But skepticism turned to admiration, says McLane, at 3 pm on Sunday when the Oscars Red Carpet began. “It was an impressive feat,” he says. “The thing that impressed me the most was that you didn’t have to download an app.” McLane also kept in touch with friends who were attempting to watch the Red Carpets on their phones: one friend in Manhattan with a Blackberry successfully watched the Red Carpet, while another in upstate New York, also with a Blackberry, was not. Full disclosure: I tried with my Blackberry, also unsuccessfully: I got onto the Livestream site without problem, but couldn’t find the the Red Carpet event. MobilizedTV readers: If you watched–or tried to watch–the Red Carpets live, let us know your experiences.

McLane also noted that he looked for coverage of the after-event parties but didn’t find it. When told that this would be an update through the site’s social networking, he responded he was “only looking for the live feed.”

Which brings us to some of the things that AP Live and Livestream could improve for the next go-round. “The thing that was problematic for me was no one really knew this capability was available other than people who are geeky like me and read MobilizedTV,” says McLane. The link that was provided–www.mobile.livestream.com–was ultimately not the one that McLane

iProgram streams Toy Fair demo video to mobile

used to connect to the event. “The url that I ultimately found was www.mobile.livestream.com/aplive/ and every one of those characters was important. If you left off the last backslash, you couldn’t get on the site.”

McLane also notes that it would have been a smoother process if users would have found a landing page when they typed in the URL. “On a landing page, they could have registered potential viewers, asking them what their email address and zipcode are,” he says. “You  need to track viewers and serve them media in the future. Top Chef and other TV shows do that with text messaging: Sign up, and in exchange for your attention and data, we’ll give you content.  I didn’t see anything like that [on the Livestream site].” Without a registration process, AP Live/Livestream can collect some information–number of streams served, average duration that people watched–but only in a limited way.

Bottom line, however, McLane found the event inspiring. His company has a set-up with a wireless camera for web/mobile streaming. His company has done just that for a variety of events including a press junket with Hilary Swank for Amelia and a remote feed from the Toy Fair, of “the Toy Guy” Chris Byrne demonstrating toys. “The live mixed feed from the satellite truck was routed to compatible phones in 3g2 format as well as Windows Mobile devices,” explains McLane, who says that “this test” was watched on the Palm Treo 755 and Motorola Q.

“Now that we’ve seen what Livestream can do, we’re going to try to replicate it, to Windows Media devices.” And perhaps partner with Livestream for delivering content to iPhones and Blackberries.

“In a nutshell,” concludes McLane, “I think there will be a really impactful niche set up by AP Live/Livestream’s proof of concept last night. Is anyone going to watch three hours of red carpet on their iPhone? No. But if they can’t get on their computer and hear that their favorite designer is exhibiting at Fashion Week and want to see that 10 minutes, yes. As long as the events are short, there will be a real place for this functionality they displayed last night. That bodes well for in-stores and product launches where you can broadcast out to cellular devices.”

To be fair, it’s important to note that AP Live did run this event aimed at streaming to computers, not mobile phones, and therefore downplayed the mobile aspect.  According to Michael Dutton, AP’s global director of entertainment products, Sunday night’s launch of AP Live was a win for the news cooperative and its members. “The Oscars were a fantastic jumping point for AP Live,” he said. “Our aim was to build our viewership, and the actual audience size doubled our expectations. We are eager to start planning for the next big cultural event, with further developments for a truly immersive user experience on both the content and technical fronts, including mobile, on the way.”

We at MobilizedTV look forward to it.

Mobile users can access the feed via their mobile browsers at this site. [NOTE: Because this will be a live feed, the browser will only be active during that feed!] What you’ll see is AP Global Entertainment Editor Alicia Quarles on camera  and on the red carpet, from 6 to 8 p.m. ET. AP reporters will also post updates during the awards show and throughout the after-parties, via the interactive chats on Twitter and Facebook. The live feed will also serve computers and be carried on Facebook and AT&T Entertainment.

Post-Oscars, AP Live Entertainment will stay live with celebrity interviews as well as non-live packaged content such as movie trailers and photos.

MobilizedTV spoke with AP Global Director of Entertainment Products Michael Dutton about AP Live Entertainment and future plans.

MobilizedTV: Is this the first time AP has partnered with Livestream?

Dutton: Yes, it’s the first time that we’ve partnered with them on an event like this. We’ve been developing the project with them over the last few months and done a few early projects, such as live interviews and so on. But this is the official launch. The product is a multi-format widget that builds around live coverage, live content.

MobilizedTV: What are the other features of AP Live Entertainment?

Dutton: Anything we can do live–from the Red Carpet to our studios, we will do so. The full, immersive version will include on-demand clips, photo galleries and a text news feed.  And in addition to the planner that gives people an idea of what we’ll be covering next, we’ll have social connectivity through Twitter and Facebook. That is the all bells & whistles of the product, AP Live Entertainment allows us to provide a persistently available channel that not only features smaller day-to-day celebrity interviews in our studios but allows us to ramp up to bigger events such as the Oscars.

MobilizedTV: Why did you choose to launch at the Oscars? You could have picked the Olympics!

Dutton: The Oscars are the Super Bowl of entertainment. Our relationship with Livestream allowed us to focus squarely on the entertainment arena. But this is an agnostic product and can be leveraged for any type of content set or genre. Ultimately I hope to see this go into those areas.

MobilizedTV: What will we see on AP Live after the Oscars?

Dutton: After the Oscars, AP Live will continue to feature daily and weekly celebrity interviews and packaged content, for example, movie previews and a look at upcoming summer blockbusters.

MobilizedTV: Where does this fit in what AP is already doing in the mobile space?

Dutton: Actually the AP Mobile product will also carry AP Entertainment content, under its regular entertainment coverage, but not the live feed. Jeff Litvack [who created AP Mobile] is a colleague of mine. I not only help develop new products like this but manage the legacy products as well. This effort dovetails nicely with what Jeff has going on.

AP Live Entertainment is a multi-platform offering available on web and mobile. It’s not a downloadable application at this point. This is obviously something that we’re going to do.  This is focused on live events and entertainment but, as I said, it will eventually be expanded to include all kinds of events, including politics, sports.

[For more info on AP Mobile, as covered in  MobilizedTV, click here.]

MobilizedTV: Since the content from AP Live Entertainment is intended for small screens–not just mobile devices but also netbooks, laptops and so on–how much will that figure into how you produced the Oscars Red Carpet live event.?

Dutton: I can tell you that having produced content for the mobile platform, I’m sensitive to the optimization and thinking around making content viable for that  platform. At this point, we were looking to the web as the main go-to out of the gate for the product. I wouldn’t say we’re producing anything expressly for the mobile platform in terms of camera moves and graphics but the experience will be good on these phones because of screen size and overall capability of the smartphone devices.

BABELGUM ONLINE FILM FESTIVAL - Submissions to the 3rd festival opened on March 11 and runs through March 28.T his year’s BOFF features simultaneous mobile and online viewing and voting by the global public in four categories. As part of the festival, Stolichnaya Vodka will present the inaugural Stoli Emerging Filmmaker Award. Entries for BOFF3 will fall under four categories, with no restrictions on production year or whether the film has been previously distributed or entered into any offline or online film festival. Films with running times up to 15 minutes are eligible. The categories are:  Animation – includes stop-motion, anime, hand-drawn, CGI, paper-cut, or any other animation form (5 min max.); Narrative – includes story-based, fictional live-action films in any genre (15 min max.); Nonnarrative – includes live-action artists’ film and video (5 min max.); and Documentary  – includes observational, presenter-led, narrated, real-life storytelling (15 min max.). Babelgum has partnered with Shooting People, the world’s largest network of independent filmmakers. The Stoli Emerging Filmmaker and BOFF3 Award Winners will be announced at a screening and cocktail reception in New York City in late April. Jurors include Richard Linklater, Sally Potter, Annie Sundberg, Eric Watson and Jason Wishnow.

BRIGHTHAND MOBILE FILM FESTIVAL - This festival will take place at CTIA in April 2010 in Las Vegas. Categories are Comedy, Drama, Music, Animation, Commercial, and Series. Each video should run about three minutes and can be in any format. Finalists in each category will win 60 days of national distribution on the mFlix mobile film channel available on Sprint PCS. Entries can be uploaded here.

CINEQUEST FILM FESTIVAL - This year, Cinequest and SanDisk partnered to present the Cinequest Phone Flick Contst & Voter Sweepstake. Twenty filmmakers from CQFF20 competed for a Grand Prize of $5,000 based on films made with a video-capable mobile phone. The voter sweepstake offered prizes of a Motorola Smartphone and SanDisk 8GB microSDHC Mobile Memory Card. The 2010 Festival ended March 6.

DOGMA MOBILE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL - Dogma Mobile International Film Festival is a new film festival that wants to explore the limits of filmmaking on the mobile phone. By applying some simple but strict rules – inspired by the Danish Dogma Movement of the 90’s – the festival wishes to create a creative framework for films shot on mobile phones. “We wish to give the best possible help and inspiration to our users and we do this by providing articles with tips and tricks, by interviewing film professionals and experts, by creating a forum for discussion, by making seminars and many other activities to create attention around mobile films and to inspire the people who want to take part,” says the website. The festival is an ongoing online event, with some “real life” happenings along the way.

FESTIVAL  DO MINUTO - A Brazilian mobile film festival. This one is a open all year round.

FESTIVAL POCKET FILMS - Paris, France - The sixth year of this pioneering film festival will take place on June 18 - 20, 2010 in Paris. All genres are accepted including documentaries, fiction, experimental; all lengths are accepted from short-form to long-form. There are two contests, one “call” for entries was March 1, and the second is March 31. Prizes : Jury’s 1st prize : 1500 € and a mobile video telephone; Jury’s 2nd prize : 1000 € and a mobile video telephone; Jury’s 3rd prize : a mobile video telephone; Public Prize : a mobile video telephone

GREEN MOBILE FILM FESTIVAL - This festival–which focuses on “green” themed mobile films–was launched in 2009 in Spain. Themes are the environment and climate change and topics can include the sea, earth and forests, space & air, renewable resources and new technologies. The five categories are Humor, Drama, Comedy, Romance, Action. All films should be under 3 minutes long, titles included, and specially made for mobile screening. English, English subtitled or Spanish. There are no admission fees for the competition. Winners will be announced by May 20th, 2010.

HOLLYWOOD MOBILE FILM FESTIVAL -  This 14th annual festival now debuts a mobile film competition, to highlight domestic and international shorts, ad spots and music videos up to 4 minutes maximum, and mobile content websites. An intrinsic part of the Hollywood Film Festival, the MOBILE Film Festival Awards will be given to Best Mobile Short, Best Mobile Video Game, Best Mobile Music Video, Best Mobile Commercial, Best Mobile Advertising and Best Mobile Content Website. The Festival takes place Oct. 22 to 25, 2010 in Hollywood.

HONG KONG MOBILE FILM FESTIVAL - The 3rd Mobile Film Production Contest Award winners will be presented at FILMART on March 25, 2010. In the Mobile Film Production Contest, “Hong Kong – A City with Unlimited Potential” was one of the thematic award category, to draw more local talents to participate in the contest. The award winning film will be put on “Hong Kong at World Expo 2010” website for public viewing.

IBERMINUTO FILM FESTIVAL - The 1 Minute Film Festival of Spain and the Americas is in its fifth season. The final deadline for submissions this year is April 10, 2010. Each film must be exactly one minute in length (including titles) and must have as a central theme, the theme announced for this celebration. There are no admission fees.

MOBIFEST - This site describes the 2009 winners in Toronto and has a “sign up” form for submitting mobile films. There is no information on a 2010 contest.

MOFILM -  Started as an artistic project in early 2007 with the Sundance Institute and GSM Association, MOFILM pioneered ‘made-for-mobile’ content working with filmmakers such as Kevin Spacey, Robert Redford, Isabella Rossellini and Spike Lee and  runs “the world’s largest mobile film festival” in Barcelona, Spain once a year in conjunction with the GSM Association, as well as working with leading film festivals, including Shanghai, Cannes, Sundance, Locarno and London. Go to the site to learn more about the various competitions.

MOBILE EXCELLENCE AWARDS - Produced by Axis Marketing & PR and Mobile Monday Los Angeles, this awards ceremony has just concluded its second year. Awards are given for Best Mobile Original Program for Film; Best Adapted or Companion Program; Best Community/Fan Content; Best Mobile Content Development; Best Original Content for Mobile Entertainment; and Best Mobile Video Programming among other awards.

MOBILE FILM FESTIVAL - This site encourages entries from France, Morocco and Polynesia/Tahiti. “International entries” are encouraged to email contact@mobilefilmfestival.com

MUMBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL - This festival–which focuses on documentaries, shorts, animation–accepted mobile entries in 2009. The site says nothing about its criteria for 2010 entries.

NEW MEDIA FILM FESTIVAL - In its inaugural year, NMFF is looking for both short and long-form works that “exhibit a strong personal vision combined with the highest standards of creative excellence and technical achievement.” Grand prize is $10,000 of goods and services from Big Vision Studios. All finalists also will be viewed by distributors for possible online, theatrical, or broadcast distribution.  Anyone who submits their work will receive FREE producer software ($89 value) from www.ShowBizSoftware.com. Submission categories are: Feature Length; Documentary; Shorts;  3D; Webseries; Webisode; Mobisode; Mobile;  Shot on RED. Entry fees for mobile are:  Mobisode (media made for your cell phone): $15 and Mobile (media made by your cell phone): $1

PORTABLE FILM FESTIVAL - The Portable Film Festival, now in its third year, is an international festival of film and user created content delivered completely online and distributed through portable video devices. Its annual competition program is released online on August 1 each year.The 2009 Festival showed 180 films, from over 800 submissions from 46 countries, across the festival categories of Short Film, Music Video, Look at Me, Get Animated, First Hand Capture, and Feature Film.

SHORTSNONSTOP is a program of the Canadian Film Centre and a year-round online mobile film festival. The running time of films submitted to SHORTSNONSTOP cannot exceed more than three minutes. Backed by TELUS, one of Canada’s leading mobile carriers, this festival accepts entries on an ongoing basis, directly at its website. After each prize deadline, 10 finalists will be selected by our programmers for promotion and distribution by TELUS on its mobile networks in Canada. One filmmaker in each prize period will win a cash prize of $1500. The upcoming deadline for the SHORTSNONSTOP submissions is April 15, 2010.

THE DISPOSABLE FILM FESTIVAL - The Disposable Film Festival was created in 2007 to celebrate the artistic potential of disposable video: short films made on non-professional devices such as one-time use video cameras, cell phones, point and shoot cameras, webcams, computer screen capture software, and other readily available video capture devices. The festival takes place every other year in San Francisco and then travels to other cities around the world. Deadline for submission to the 2010 festival is July 31.

VIVA LA FOCUS - Dutch Mobile Film Festival -  The Festival is a day/evening devoted to films created with a mobile phone, and also comprises an online competition. The first festival took place in 2008.  The prizes for the 2009 festival were the main prize of € 1,000; 2nd prize: mobile (multimedia) telephone or Full-HD camera; 3rd prize: photo camera or game console. There is no information on the site regarding the 2010 Festival.

WORLDS SMALLEST FILM FESTIVAL - The founder says this festival is “on hiatus until Ffall 2010.” WSFF was the first mobile film festival in the U.S., sponsored in the past by Intel, Motorola, Nokia, PacketVideo, and others.  It is also associated with the mFlix mobile media channel.

But now you can actually study mobile movie-making at U.S. universities. MobilizedTV sat down with Bart Weiss, a professor in the film & video area of the art department of the University of Texas at Arlington. Prof. Weiss has not only been teaching mobile movie-making to a group of students, but, as founder of VideoFest–a 22-year old video festival--has encouraged a mobile angle. (Video Fest takes place this year from Sept. 23 to 26 at the Angelika Theaters in Dallas.)

Weiss says he’s still planning ways to incorporate mobile into VideoFest that will make the most of what mobile has to offer. “First, there’s the augmentation of the program,making the festival richer,” he says. “That’s one component. The other component which I’m just as interested in is what is an interesting aesthetic experience through the phone.” Weiss says he’s toying with ideas involving augmented reality or other mobile content that can only be seen within the parameters of the festival’s theater. Weiss is a fan not only of the iPhone but of augmented reality, pointing to the practical applications of Yelp and Urban Spoon for locating restaurants in the vicinity. His interest is in exploiting the technology for aesthetic ends, and this, he admits, is a work in progress.

In the meantime, a local high school student Ryan Kline already added a mobile component to VideoFest, creating a free iPhone app that will enable festival goers to navigate the festival and their screening choices.

“This is the only class I know of that teaches video for the iPhone,” says Weiss, who taught a class on video for small format screens (web, iPod and mobile phones) before the iPhone appeared. “Two years ago, before the iPhone, my students came up with webisodes, mini-documentaries, and videos meant for the Dallas Morning News website.”

Not all the students in the class own an iPhone, says Weiss, and he’s still working with creating a partnership with the computer science department to help develop iPhone apps. He has shown his class some of the new tools out there for shooting with the iPhone, including Bubo’s Owle, a “camera” stabilizer so iPhone shooters can capture moving shots. Weiss also notes it has a wide angle lens. He also notes that Stanford University has all its classes available on iTunes, including a class on creating iPhone apps.

“The problem–and this is the core of my existential angst at the moment–is that making an Iphone app isn’t like making a film,” says Weiss. “You have to have a higher geek consciousness than I have. I have read every book about iPhone app development and they all assume a knowledge of programming. When the iPhone came out, Steve Jobs showed how easy it was to create an app. Two years from now, it will be. But, for now, the SDK (software development kit) is a little more complex than that.”

Weiss has seen numerous movies shot with mobile phone cameras, and he points out why the aesthetic is still nascent. “People say the best camera is the one in your hand,” he says. “But if you’re using a new tool, you have to ask yourself what you can do that is unique and takes advantage of that tool. Why shoot something where you could use a DV camera; you’re not gaining anything, although it has a high level of coolness. Thinking what I could do with the iPhone, I’d rather do something more interesting.”

Weiss has had his class pitch apps they can develop and he’s finding they’re gravitating towards tools for making films. “There is no location scouting tool, for example,” he says. “They’re trying to do an all-in-one pre-production tool.” Weiss notes that his students are aware of the numerous iPhone app production tools already out there. “There are 50 slates out there, but they’re all from professional productions, and this is one to do if you’re shooting with a phone,” he says.

Other students are working on mobile movie-making methodologies. “One of them is doing something where you take two pieces of archival film and blend it with something you shoot,” he says. “Some of them are exploring interesting ways of working with video. One idea I had was to take a piece of archival film and have a way to dub a funny track to it; as an iPhone app, it would be a lot of fun. Our task is how do we do the coding to make this happen now that we’ve conceptually come up with the ideas.”

Another goal for the mobile movie-making program, says Weiss, is to curate a video of the week. “Just like I curate the festival, I will pick a film that I think is interesting in some kind of way and have it screened, through the app,” he says. “I want to make one video for you to watch a week and then it comes down after a week. Scarcity drives traffic; if you get a note, this is the last day to see the video, it’ll drive you there.”

MobilizedTV will write about other university programs advancing the art and science of mobile content, and encourages professors of and students in such programs to contact MobilizedTV directly.