Turn ON Your Cell Phones, The Movie is Starting!

Authored by Jay Baage on July 10, 2006 - 9:07am.

Imagine Sundance, but instead of being reminded to turn off your cell phone before the movie starts, you are prompted to turn it on. Sounds strange? Well, it is happening as Columbia College Chicago Film School, with money from sponsors MobiTV and MTV, is putting on the first annual cell phone movie festival.

“The Third Screen Film Festival” features a competition for filmmakers producing original clips that run less than eight minutes and are optimized for watching on cell phones and other hand held devices.
The judges will include former "America's Funniest Home Videos" host Bob Saget, according to the LA Times. They will watch the entries mainly on cellphones after the field is narrowed down by Columbia students to 300 from an expected 3,000 entries. Starting July 19, MobiTV subscribers can vote for their favorite with their phones.

Wireless carriers and hand-set manufactures are desperately looking to make mobile video and TV more popular, as it is expected to boost revenues for the industry as people upgrade to more expensive phones and subscription plans. The cell phone is already the favorite medium with a lot of young people, but so far the only new services that have taken off big time is text-messaging and ring tones, neither which require a high-end phone or subscription plan.

The first Cell Phone Film Festival abroad will soon also be kicked off in Xi'an, capital city of northwest China's Shanxi Province. Statistics show that China so far has more than 400 million cell phone users. With the development of cell phone technology and the upgrading of China's telecommunications industry to 3G, the Chinese cell phone industry is counting on that the cell phone film would become a new content for entertainment.

The Chinese Cell Phone Festival is not only the first one of its type in China, but also the first in Asia, a region known for having the highest 3G-phone penetration so far (especially in Japan and Korea).

The Chinese festival will invite Chen Guo, a well-known director in Hong Kong to chair the jury committee. Anyone interested in making film can join the competition by submitting their 10-minute film products via the official website Sina.com, from July 8 to Aug. 25.