Entertainment;Europe Indie Films Come to Handsets The new frontier for up-and-coming moviemakers is how to adapt their storytelling to all those tiny screens Global Business Europe By Jack Ewing You might think a hip guy like Cory McAbee, a Brooklyn-based artist, musician, and independent filmmaker with a preference for all-black outfits, would scoff at the idea of his work appearing on a screen about the size of a belt buckle. In fact, McAbee is among a small but growing group of directors who are embracing mobile phone screens as a promising new venue. "I'm a huge fan of short films—I like making them," says McAbee, who was in Barcelona in February to attend the 3GSM mobile phone industry trade fair. "It's tough to get a feature distributed because of the limited number of big screens. But there are millions of little screens." A lot of them these days are in India, the world's fastest-growing mobile phone market. That's why Bollywood director Sanjay Gupta was also in Barcelona, pacing in front of a hilltop palace and admiring the view of the city below. "As a filmmaker, I need as many outlets as I can find for my stories," Gupta said. As he sees it, mobile is the "fourth screen," after movie theaters, TV, and computers. <leadin>Short 'n' Sweet</leadin> Both directors are involved in filmmaking projects that could help transform mobile phones into a significant new media outlet—maybe. McAbee was among a half-dozen directors commissioned by actor Robert Redford's Sundance Institute to make short films designed specifically for mobile viewing. "If there is going to be this platform, we wanted artists to think about it," says John Cooper, director of creative development for the Utah-based Sundance Institute. Gupta, based in the Bollywood capital of Mumbai, is behind a project to direct 10 short, interlocking films that will debut in theaters but then be distributed separately for mobile handsets. Gupta, who will direct five of the 10 films, plans to reedit them for the small screen, using more closeups and a different sound mix. "The way I shoot my films, I do a lot of coverage anyway," Gupta says, explaining that he usually shoots scenes with multiple cameras. The mobile phone industry dearly hopes such projects will encourage people brandishing mobile phones to use their handsets for more than just blabbing. So far, despite much hype, mobile video accounts for only a fraction of wireless traffic. About 1% of mobile subscribers use their handsets to watch video, according to London market researcher M:Metrics. Even among users with handsets capable of accessing broadband 3G networks, the figure is only 10%. <leadin>Forget It</leadin> Most alarmingly for carriers such as Vodafone (<ticker>VOD</ticker>) or Deutsche Telekom (<ticker>DT</ticker>), the majority of people who try mobile video are turned off by unreliable reception, poor selection of programming, and cost. More people have tried mobile video and rejected it than have become regular customers, according to M:Metrics. The lousy numbers mean mobile carriers must invest in better technology and create more transparent pricing if they want video to become a big business. "There is some serious groundwork that needs to be done," says M:Metrics senior analyst Paul Goode. They also need to work harder to come up with video content that subscribers not only want to watch, but want to watch on mobile phones. It's unlikely that directors McAbee or Gupta care much about Vodafone's bottom line or share price, but they are excited about the artistic possibilities of mobile cinema. McAbee, front man for rock band The Billy Nayer Show, directed <cite>Reno</cite>, in which a black-hatted cowboy (played by McAbee) sings to a convenience store camera about a trip on a Honda 50 motorcycle to the Nevada gambling town. (Sample lyrics: "I chewed Beechnut tobacco…I saw a jail filled with mannequins…I drank free drinks and played roulette….") To accommodate the small screen, McAbee digitally removed logos from products on the convenience store shelves to give them a generic, cartoonish look. But McAbee, whose feature-length <cite>American Astronaut</cite> was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001, doesn't regard the screen size as a huge limitation. After all, a mobile phone display held a foot from a viewer's face doesn't look that much different from a TV screen on the other side of a room. <leadin>Audio Mix</leadin> Mobile phones even have a few advantages over television sets. The sound quality, when heard through earphones, is markedly better. And sound is an underrated part of the film-going experience, McAbee says, noting that he has been to screenings ruined by poor audio systems. (Sound is especially crucial to Bollywood films, which typically include elaborate song-and-dance scenes.) Asked how short independent films will make money, the personable, articulate McAbee is momentarily at a loss. Finally, Sundance's Cooper says with a laugh, "We don't." (In fact, Sundance is selling some short films on Apple's (<ticker>AAPL</ticker>) iTunes.) The point is to try to take advantage of an opportunity to revive the short-film format, "which has been dying forever," Cooper says. (To download <cite>Reno</cite> and the other Sundance mobile shorts, send the word "film" to +44 7624 807 811, or visit www.sundance.org.) From the telco companies' point of view, reviving short films is a worthy quest. Ideal for an audience on the go, they could help whet consumer appetites for longer features and TV programming—much as ringtones paved the way for downloadable music. And the prodigious output of Bollywood, with more than 1,000 films a year and an audience of 3.6 billion viewers, offers a rich source of popular content. In this case, the aims of art and commerce could well intersect. http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/feb2007/gb20070223_398242.htm http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/05/0515_india_ma/index_01.htm,http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/may2008/gb20080512_478793.htm,http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/may2008/gb20080512_937505.htm False