Television did not replicate film - it evolved as a medium with its own peculiarities that required and spawned new ways of telling and structuring screen stories. Yet despite their vast differences, over the past fifty years, television and film have become intimately interwoven. We watch films, and information about films, on television. Films morph in to television series, and vice versa. Television and film are complimentary – as are most media.

Although this evidence and understanding of media as being generally symbiotic is widely accepted, there still persists a common tendency to see new media as cannibals of existing platforms, or as channels through which to squeeze the content of “old media”. This problematic and reactionary perspective is precisely what is informing much of the current talk about mobile screens.

The predominant debate on mobile video revolves around whether or not people will want to watch film and television content, as we know it, on a two-inch screen. And the simple answer is, “of course they won’t!”, and only the narrow-minded in the industry expect people to. What people will watch on mobile screens will be mobile content, not television, and not film.

It is handy to think about it in terms of the beginnings of television. When television emerged as a new screen, did people deride it by arguing that nobody would want to leave their lounge room to sit in a darkened theatre, and watch a ninety-minute film while sitting ten metres from a thirty-inch television screen? Of course not! Television is not cinema, and cinema is not television. The same holds for the mobile screen – it is a completely new medium that requires completely new conceptions of content, of audience, of distribution, and of the ways in which people will access, engage, purchase, view, and interact with content.

Many research findings that dismiss mobile video as hype, simply serve to reinforce the point that mobile video needs to be understood in terms of the peculiarities of its own grammar. For instance, a recent study conducted in over twenty-one countries found that ‘just 15 percent of cell phone users would be willing to pay to watch programs on their phones. Of those, 49 percent said that they would watch news clips, while 17 percent said that they would check out sports clips. But aside from time-sensitive content, consumers expressed little desire to watch conventional entertainment programming’(1).

The key term here is “conventional entertainment programming”. The conventions of writing and shooting for mobile, as well as the conventions for viewing mobile programming are different to those of film and television – simple. To report that people have little desire to watch “conventional entertainment” on mobiles is like saying people won’t want to read novels in broadsheet newspaper format, or that art lovers won’t take to viewing etchings carved in to computer screens, or that diners won’t want to eat soup with a fork. A more productive response would be to begin to imagine how these new screens might be able to alter and enhance the storytelling conventions that we’ve developed over centuries.

The time to imagine is now. The mobile video industry is poised to boom. There are more mobile phones in the world than cinemas, televisions, and computers combined, and the proportion of those phones that are video and net enabled is growing rapidly. A recent report puts the projected number of global 3G subscribers at 1.2 billion by 2010 (2). Even if subscriptions reached half that figure, the sheer number of screens demands attention.

And it’s not just numbers on the rise. The image quality of mobile screens is improving by the day. Titans of screen-technology development are applying all they’ve learnt from making massive plasma screens to the new small screen. Among a host of developments, Samsung have added white pixels to the standard RGB (red, green, blue) alignment, claiming the RGBW alignment increases the brightness on the screen by as much as 70 percent. Next year they plan to roll out a broadened color palette of 16.7 million colors, a 63 percent increase over the current 262,000 available in handsets today.

But amid all the haze of technological development, the jostling for market position, and the associated speculation, a cursory glance around the mobile sector reveals one certainty – for film-makers, mobile screens are all potential. And it is at the precipice of potentiality where art resides. So perhaps Australia’s flailing film and television industry would do well to consider the potential mobiles hold for extending, altering, and personalising the narrative and format of films, as well as for developing new revenue streams for all players in the film cycle.

Jacqui Barry (3) of Film Victoria’s Digital Media Fund suggests that ‘as the global industries continue to move into a range of distribution options such as broadband, mobile or interactive options, the challenge for producers to consider a multi-platform approach is certainly becoming the norm, rather than the exception.’ If we accept this as the case, then the next task becomes one of exploring what the peculiarities of mobile screens are, how to create content for them, and how they will best compliment, and be complimented by, film and television.

One interesting possibility is the idea of extending film stories out of the cinema screen and in to alternative platforms like mobile screens, and in so doing, fracturing narrative and distribution. But before we delve in to what that might actually mean, a little back-story is required.

To-ing and fro-ing
DVD is one the most successful consumer products in history due to corporate consonance around a single format, cheap technology, and fierce competition. But another element of DVD itself that has proven popular is the bonus material contained on most disks. Director’s commentaries and insights in to the film’s production are now a standard part of the home cinema experience. But if we pause to think about the nature of such content, then we can see hints of an audience desire to participate in, and extend the film experience.

Bonus material is backward. What it does is to take us back out of the movie and in to its production, and even to its very conception. Audiences go outside the logic of the film, outside its forward-moving narrative, and backward in to its creation.

Film merchandising, also, has boomed to orgiastic levels. And if we take a step back from the tackiness of much merchandising, then we will also see an audience desire to take a movie out of the cinema - to extend a film beyond its internal logic – to move forward and extend its narrative. A kid playing with a stuffed Nemo makes up their own story.
These are the things we’ve always done with the stories told through cinema, but we’ve always done them in our heads, and between each other. Strong film characters take-up residence in our imaginations. They reflect our lives. They shape our lives. They are windows in to our lives, and, indeed, they allow us to crawl out of the frame of our own lives for a ninety-odd minutes at a time.

In this sense, there is nothing new about extending narratives beyond the movie. But as the case of DVD and merchandising demonstrates, our ability to extend, research, and personalize movies in different ways is only enhanced and further enabled through new means with which to do so.

Enter the mobile screen.

Within the mobile industry, there is much anticipation and speculation about the future of mobile video. Television networks are wringing their hands at the prospect of re-purposing their massive stocks of content for delivery to the hundreds of millions of mobile screens worldwide. Marketers and advertisers, too, are rushing to carve out territory in the mobile space. Independent producers are also churning out content for the newest of new screens. But what many of these initiatives have in common is a tendency to work down to the medium, rather than up to its potential. They are broadcast models for a conversational medium.

We talk in to mobile phones. We do business over mobile phones. We carry out relationships over mobile phones. Mobile phones are inherently interactive. They are conversational in every sense of the word. So it makes sense to produce intimate and conversational content for mobile screens - from the very beginning.

Kylie Robertson (4) project director behind Girl Friday, a live action interactive sitcom series aimed at both broadband and mobile platforms, believes that ‘entertainment and communication from […] mobile is a solitary and intimate experience.’ Mobiles have ‘changed the way we behave socially, flirt, date and correspond. This gives us an opportunity as storytellers, to encourage an intimate connection between the user and live action characters. It also helps to blur the boundaries between reality and fiction by allowing [content makers] to utilise tools on the mobile such as SMS and MMS for the purpose of the narrative.’ Robertson stresses that interactive content is also ‘about portable entertainment, disconnecting you from the desk and giving you freedom’ as a viewer/participant - it’s ‘a more active viewing experience from the handset [given that] the audience are already in the process of clicking buttons, listening, texting, calling etc.’

But although users may have little difficulty learning to interact with content via phone screens, the same cannot be said for the ability of content makers to conceive new kinds of interactive content. There is no model, what is required is a different approach to making films.

Multi-platform content must be purpose-built content. At the recent launch of the ABC and AFC “Cross-media Production Initiative”, former grant recipients spoke of the importance of considering the specificities of alternative distribution platforms, and the specialist content carried on them, right from the outset. David Vidiveloo, producer of interactive docu-drama UsMob, stressed that film makers must consider, and work with, new media designers before a shot is shot. Platforms like the Internet and mobile must be integrated in to the project from the very beginning.

This is an important point. The potential non-linearity of online content, and the unknown quantities of mobile platforms require film makers to think beyond their traditional understanding of a film, and re-consider their assumptions of apparent givens like beginning, middle, and end. Now, this isn’t to say this is the case for all movies, but it is the case for those thinking about broadening the scope of their story out beyond the cinema and lounge room.

Television has already embraced mobile interaction, and producers are continuing to experiment with extending programming via digital media. Walter Adamson (5), Principal of Digital Investor and co-producer of imodestrategy.com, outlines an example of what differentiated digital TV to mobile might look like.

‘Imagine that you subscribe to Big Brother (BB) to your mobile, and what you really want is alerts when your favourite guy or gal is in the shower or in intimate conversation with another housemate that you specify. You set those requests/alerts on your PC, which is linked to your mobile TV subscription. Then when BB is streaming to your phone the meta-data entered at the production studio is being read by your phone and compared to your alerts. Your phone knows whether you want to be signaled in real time or if you are asleep, so it takes note and stores sequences that you requested and then tells you or sets a symbol to show you that you have something to check when you are ready.

When you see this is available you check and find that there are 3 sequences of 5 digital images, each that interest you from your first request, plus an opportunity to view the video-stream at that time (in this case the stream is not being recorded and saved on your phone but simply monitored for your requested sequences). You decide to buy one of the images for $3 and download the video sequence for $3 (which may have been the intimate conversation for example). Then you send the image to a friend, which through Digital Rights Management gives them the opportunity to purchase it, or you the opportunity to purchase it for them.’

Adamson’s example is helpful in imagining new distribution models, revenue streams, and content formats for television, but it is primarily a commercial model designed to wring out maximum revenue from current content. Television is a money-making machine, its content exists to keep bums on seats, and the mobile content that will compliment it will no doubt be of a hyper commercial nature. But, clearly, film and television are different. There exists an opportunity to develop the artform of film through the integration of mobile platforms in to the very art of film making. It need not be crass – mobile platforms can enable more intimate relationships between audience and character, they can do for narrative whatever film-makers can imagine.

Fee Plumley (6), production director of UK new media arts agency, and specialists in mobile content, the-phone-book Limited, believes the field is wide open for independent film makers. Her reasoning here is that independents are not tied in to the broadcaster’s standard contracts, and are therefore free to push the boundaries much more. One example is the recent Award-winning Welsh production, “Textual @traction”, a short film written and directed by Leuan Morris and produced by Fizzy Oppe. It tells the story of how a series of passionate messages to a lost mobile phone inadvertently brings two gay men to declare their love for each other. In the cinema, members of the audience can receive the most important text messages on their own mobile phones if they register their number when they enter the theatre. The film can also be seen on the internet and users can receive text messages on their own phones.

Textual @traction is an example of interactive cinema, an old idea revamped for the digital age. Geoff Lowe (7), Chairman of Filmserve, a UK based production company specializing in interactive cinema production realizes that interactive cinema has been around a long time, but he believes ‘the technology, primarily digital projection, is only just happening on a commercially meaningful scale. The point about the digital incarnation is that for the first time, we have the flexibility to dynamically and instantly change the content on the screen according to audience responses. This just isn’t possible with 35mm projection. However, just because we have the technology, doesn’t mean the audiences want it.’ Lowe isn’t pushing for an upheaval in film, he is well aware that media aren’t cannibalistic, and that interactive cinema isn’t about to replace the existing cinema experience. But he does believe that ‘there are compelling reasons why interactive cinema will work.’

In Lowe’s view, interactive cinema ‘will just add to and augment what is already there. The real evidence is not what is happening in cinemas right now but what is happening outside, especially with younger audiences who have grown up with interactive entertainment as a given. I refer of course, to the gaming and internet generation. Cinema has to evolve and stay within the digital entertainment loop especially as increasingly sophisticated mobile and IPTV content takes hold. For cinemas, this requires offering more than just the passive experience of a feature film, wonderful though this can be.’

Lowe believes that interactive storytelling is ‘the original form of story telling. In the beginning, stories were delivered by the spoken word and the best storytellers would adapt the narrative according to the audience response. It was only with the advent of print that narratives became frozen. Film is a visual interpretation of the locked down narrative embodied in a book or script. All we are doing is completing the circle and returning storytelling to its origins.’

This kind of multiplatform, expanded storytelling is what Ellie Rennie (8), a researcher at Queensland University of Technology, has been exploring in her own creative work. She believes that ‘high quality new media content distributed via mobile telephony and broadband is becoming a real player in the entertainment market. Television companies are beginning to explore the possibilities of multi-platform content, recognising the potential for new revenue sources such as SMS. However, the Australian film industry remains firmly situated in an established business model that continues to work in favour of centralised (Hollywood) control and global, “outsourced” location/infrastructure. Alternative methods need to be explored. Where television content has the advantage of lower production costs and serial viewing habits, the film industry must find new ways of exploiting new media that do not damage its ‘auteur’ status and a tradition of storytelling based upon whole, carefully crafted works.’

Rennie’s project will be accompanied by multi-platform content ‘that progresses the film’s themes and issues and develops subplots into stand-alone stories of different genres’. The project seeks to move beyond one-off film production by creating layered stories can lead audiences to other media platforms, and potentially draw them in to the next major film production. Rennie suggests that such an approach ‘aims to find alternative pathways for a film industry currently suffering from dwindling box office revenue and limited production budgets.’

New revenue streams are vital to Australia’s ailing film industry, but what is also important are the opportunities mobile screens offer for finding new pathways through which narrative can course, and in essence, that simply means developing the art of film making. Perhaps it is apt to quote a bonus material interview with Nicole Kidman on the Eyes Wide Shut DVD, in which she speaks about working with Stanley Kubrik and the craft of film making.

‘A lot of the time now, I think people view films in a very business-like way - we have our product, we’ve got to get it out by the summer, we’ve gotta make the film, its gotta be this, its gotta be that… and film making isn’t that, its about getting lost in that world, and its exquisite when it happens’ (9).

At the moment, mobile screens are lost in a world of hype and obfuscation. But any medium is defined by what people do with it. Through synergizing mobile screens and film, it becomes possible to explore new narrative worlds, and to create wholly new, and intimate moving picture experiences. And when this happens, just maybe, it too could be exquisite.

References

1. Mobinet 20005, Raising the Stakes (accessed 10/11/05) http://www.atkearney.com/main.taf?p=5,3,1,121,1
2. WiMax To Grow Quickly, But 3G To Dominate: Report. Information Week Online, Nov. 02, 2005 www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=173402037&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_news
3. Email interview with author 31 October 2005
4. Email interview with author 03 November 2005
5. Email interview with author 28 September 2005
6. Email interview with author 15 December 2005
7. Email interview with author 16 December 2005
8. Email interview with author 08 November 2005
9. Interview with Nicole Kidman on the Eyes Wide Shut DVD