Why Movies on Mobiles Does Not Compute

Yes, a South African filmmaker has made the first-ever feature shot entirely on a mobile phone. Yes, the French have embraced mobilized filmmaking with an emphatic “oui”. And now Canada has its first mobile film festival…

So why am I not entering?

Because I understand that, just like computers, mobile phones are not made for the passive consumption of content—that’s what television and movie screens are for. Walk down your typical city street and I reckon you’ll see way more people doing thumb gymnastics on their handset keypads than watching the latest “mobisode” of 24 on their tiny, two-inch screens. That’s because they are interacting with their devices, and by extension, other people. And this is something that traditional video content, even on mobiles, cannot deliver.

Read between the lines of the the Mobifest website and you’ll see little more than a marketing ploy by Palm to peddle their Treos and a veritable dumping ground of repurposed content.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to have a video-enabled handset; but I’ll use it for sharing my own content, thank-you very much… Not what someone else tells me to!