Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube

106 Video Vortex Reader II Moving Images Beyond YoutubeImages on the Move107bile phone display shares technological and pragmatic constraints with other non-cinematicscreens, they circulate just as easily among urban screens, image skins, monitors in publictransport, portable devices, and screens in public places and shopping malls. One reasonfor the gradual dissolution of the mobile phone movie film festival circuit may very well be thedissolution of the mobile phone movie into a more general digital media culture.One aspect of the mobile phone film festival circuit that has received very little comment isthe ‘sociological’ basis of its participants. Not only are the organizers and jury members ofmost of these festivals members of the professional media culture – be they film-makers orproducers themselves, film critics, or curators of film museums – but the formats, modes ofpresentation and qualities of most of the entries into the festivals betray a more than amateurinvolvement in film-making. Although the professional backgrounds of the entrants are hardlyever mentioned, the video’s titles, framing, editing, sound effects, and production values suggestthat the competitors have had professional training, and experience in handling scripts,actors, staging, film equipment and editing software. In this sense, it is revealing to comparethe entries into mobile phone festivals such as the Brussels Cinépocket or the Paris FestivalPocket Films, with the Groningen festival Viva La Focus, which recruits its submitters fromthe region of Groningen. Whereas the former festivals host movies of quite professional quality,the latter hosts movies of DIY makers, mostly high school students and other youths fromthe Groningen region. The relation of the former to the latter is that of Vimeo to YouTube:festivals moderated by professional gatekeepers versus an open platform, with no professionalstandards to filter its entries. It is probably not coincidental that mobile phone moviessubmitted to mobile phone film festivals can usually not be found on YouTube.Insofar as the primary function of mobile phone film festivals appears to be to incorporate anew mode of film-making into that of traditional cinema, the festivals seem to be fighting alost rear-guard battle. The mobile phone movie is part of a digital mediascape, rather thanan expansion of, or appendix to, cinema. Odin’s observation, recall, was that the ‘pocketfilm spectator’ is a reflective spectator who comes to contemporary mainstream cinema withquestions in mind about the means and technologies of production. This means that themobile phone movie and the mobile phone movie festival circuit is a playground, or trainingground, in which prospective film-makers and film spectators can prepare themselves forthe ‘free run’ into the future of digital meta-media. In that sense, the mobile phone festivalcircuit can be seen as an opening to the future, and its gradual demise a sign of its success.ReferencesBolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. 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Tournez Un Film Avec Votre Téléphone Portable, Editions Dixit, 2008.Manovich, Lev. ‘Understanding Hybrid Media’, 2007, http://www.manovich.net.Metekohy, Mark. ‘YouTube Statistics’, Viralblog, 17 May, 2010,http://www.viralblog.com/research/youtube-statistics.Munt, Alex. ‘S, M, X, XL: The Question of Scale in Screen Media’, Flowtv 6.8,http://flowtv.org/?p=809#.Metz, Christian. Essais Sur La Signification au Cinéma, Tome 1, Paris: Klincksieck, 1983.Odin, Roger. ‘Le “Pocket Film Spectateur”’, Festival Pocket Films, 2009,http://www.festivalpocketfilms.fr/communaute-42/reflexions/article/le-pocket-film-spectateur-par.Pierce, Juliana. ‘Feature: The Fourth Screen’, Off The Air: Screenrights’ Newsletter, August 2005,http://www.screen.org/pdfs/about/offtheair/2005/ota0805.pdf.Simons, Jan. Playing The Waves: Lars von Trier’s Game Cinema, Amsterdam: Amsterdam UniversityPress, 2007.Struppek, Mirjam. ‘Urban Screens – The Urbane Potential of Public Screens for Interaction’, IntelligentAgent 6. 2: ‘Interactive City’,http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/vol6_No2_interactive_city_struppek.htm.Terdiman, Daniel. ‘A Celebration of Cell-Phone Film’, Wired, 30 August, 2004,http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2004/08/64698.Venturi, Roberto, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas: The ForgottenSymbolism of Architectural Form, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2001.Wolf, Reinhard W. ‘Micromovies – Kurzfilme für die Westentasche, Teil 1’, Shortfilm.de Das Kurzfilmmagazin,January 2, 2006, http://www.shortfilm.de/index.php?id=414&L=0&0=.On the other hand, the mobile phone film festival circuit can – and probably must – be seenas an attempt to draw a boundary between the professionals of the moving image makingbusiness and the rising tide of DIY film-making culture epitomized by YouTube. The messagethese festivals intend to broadcast is that, although economically and theoretically the practiceof film-making has become within anybody’s reach, it takes more than a mobile cameraand cheap and user-friendly software to make interesting movies. In this sense, in spite oftheir open invitations to submit movies, these festivals are attempts to close off the ranks ofthe professionals to the DIY amateurs knocking at their door. In that sense, too, these festivalsare a response to YouTube. It remains to be seen whether the gradual dissolution of themobile phone film festival is a sign that this battle, too, has been lost.