A new wave of directors are shooting and editing short 'pocket' films on their mobile phones, writes David McNeillin Tokyo
Watching Free Run, a blurry, vertiginous MTV-style short by London-based photographer Henry Reichhold, is the digital equivalent of a sugar rush.
Over 76 seconds, the stylised film shows a young runner vaulting over commuters, shoppers and tall buildings in London, set to a Vangelis-like score. In An Autumn Curve, Ukraine artist Andriy Toloshnyy gives us a three-minute city ride from the handlebar of his speeding motorbike, ending in a grinding crash.
Both movies, recently screened at Japan's first Pocket Films Festival in Yokohama, were shot on camera-equipped mobile phones. Reichhold's was not the shortest of the 150-odd screenings - that one clocked in at a giddy 12 seconds - but patient visitors could watch full-length features shot on hand-held gadgets the size of a cigarette box.
France, possibly the world leader in pocket movies, supplied several entries that stretched to a dizzying 90 minutes.
The idea of shooting, editing and even screening movies on mobile phones might sound odd, but its proponents take it seriously, citing its potential for free, intimate creativity. Reichhold praises the "rawness and vitality" of the medium and calls the software available "revolutionary". "This has enabled people to control every aspect of the creative process, from editing to adding a sound track and text - and in many cases, all this can all be done using the phone," he says.
That rawness and a fair share of head-scratching indulgence was on display at the festival, which highlighted 48 original movies selected from 400 entries.
Some were produced literally on the run by people clutching phones as they whizzed through traffic or - as in the nine-minute Walkers- sped around the country on a bullet train; others by amateur directors who should probably get out of their bedrooms more. But the best, such as Passerby, a witty, experimental collage by Michiko Tsuda (27), overcome their grainy technical limits with quirky inventiveness.
Tsuda's split-screen entry showed a couple filming themselves entering a washroom then meeting in the corridor and exchanging mobile phones.
"The quality isn't great but the phones are portable and you can shoot something immediately, so it feels very fresh," explained the digital-design student. "And because shooting is so fast and immediate, lots of other ideas come out in the creative process."
Given the expanding technological capabilities of the once humble handset, and its ubiquity in Japan - the number of subscribers here recently passed 100 million - it was only a matter of time say the festival organisers before their owners began making movies. Mobiles are already widely used here to surf the internet, shop, read novels and shoot short video clips. Newer models include "1-Seg" technology, allowing the owner to watch crystal-clear digital TV broadcasts. Still, organiser and festival judge Masaki Fujihata admits that the medium is in its infancy in Japan.
"The idea of a pocket festival began in France three years ago, so we're behind," says Fujihata, who teaches film at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. "There are a lot more phones here, but I think many Japanese have a harder time thinking of them as creative tools."
He believes a stronger appreciation for film as an art form accounts for the faster development of mobile-phone movies in France but says the potential in Japan, a country that claims to post 38 per cent of the world's blog pages, is enormous. "Next year, we're confident there will be a lot more movies, so my job will be harder," he says.
So far at least, the audience for these movies seems divided into two categories: fellow digital travellers and artists who praise what they believe is a nascent creative revolution, and ordinary punters who can't get past the grainy quality and sometimes abstract themes. The quality problems are most obvious when the movies are blown up and shown on a full-sized screen.
"I have to admit I was a bit bored," says office worker Keigo Arakawa (24), who said he had watched most of the movies at the festival. "I can understand making the movies because that's fun, but not watching them."
But Hiroko Sakuta (28), a digital design student at Tama University, says she was "inspired" by the exhibition.
"The attraction is that because they've so short and small, the directors have to really focus on winning our attention. They wouldn't look good up on a big screen but because they're small, you don't mind the lack of quality."
Company employee Tokuichiro Yamada (36) says people only complain about the quality because they expect a Hollywood-style movie. "Mobile phones will never provide that, but people carry them around all the time so they can capture unique situations and be shared rapidly."
That portability has made the mobile one of the most important and democratic technologies, says its fans, one that has recorded some of the decade's momentous events, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the execution of Saddam Hussein.
However Reichhold and others say the spread of new software and editing techniques, faster shooting and transmission speeds will revolutionise what has until now been seen as an amateur's medium.
"One can only presume the next generation of video-enabled phones will compete with camcorders," he says. "The potentially huge audiences it can draw has taken filming out of the living room and into a host of new sharing platforms. The ability to distribute the material is there."
