cellphone Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If, like me, you're a Comcast subscriber who is also a pathetically ravenous and insatiable horror geek, then you've probably already caught wind of FearNet. It's not a typical cable station, but an on-demand service that promises to deliver tons of terrific terror in three distinct ways: on your television, on your cell phone and on your internet browser. (No kidding! You can click over to the website and watch free movies like 976-EVIL, Mindwarp and the original 13 Ghosts! Hey, they're free!)

Over on the cable box side of the equation, FearNet's inaugural batch of blood blisters includes titles like Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Pumpkinhead, Warlock and the original Japanese versions of The Grudge and its sequel. As far as the cell phone deliveries go, you'll have to click through the homesite to find out the process, because my cell phone is barely capable of sending and receiving phone calls, let alone feeding me all 103 minutes of Steve Miner's Warlock.

As for the FearNet website, it's actually quite a lot of fun. You can join the forums, of course, but there's also a very nifty horror movie database called The Web of Fear, which you can help "tag" to your dismembered heart's delight. There's also a decent dosage of news, reviews and features (some of which, yes, I'll be writing) for the insatiable terror trolls to traipse through (in addition to some colorful little toys and treats), so if The Dark Genre is your thing, give FearNet a click and poke around. (Fair warning: It's a high-bandwidth site, so you dial-uppers might be in for some trouble.) Plus, if you're already a Comcast digital subscriber then you already have access to the current FearNet offerings. So go watch Carrie again. It's worth it.

In case you need one more reason to go to film school, Boston University is now offering a class that teaches movie making with cell phones. The class, which the school believes to be the first of its kind, is sponsored by Amp'd Mobile through a special partnership with BU. Having such a corporate tie-in might seem shady, but the students don't seem to mind since Amp'd plans to distribute the movies to its customers, and few student films are given that kind of exposure. And of course Amp'd hopes its part in forwarding this new medium will continue its association with youth-oriented cellular content (remember they were the company that "debuted" the Scanner Darkly trailer on their phones).

Personally, I'm not a fan of the idea for this class, but then maybe I'm just jealous. When I was taking production classes, we didn't even have digital cameras, and we also didn't have cell phones, let alone phones with video cameras. Oh, and we had to walk ten miles in the snow uphill both ways to and from class. Yeah, I know, I'm old fashioned. But considering all the problems with cellular video -- mostly the sound and image quality -- I don't really see the appeal of it except to offer a cheaper, lazier method to young wannabe film makers.

More on cell phone movies:

A Feature Shot on Camera Phones

And the Winner for Best Cell Phone Film Goes To

Pocket Film Festival Celebrates Mobile Phone Technology

Watch Movies on Your Sprint Phone

Seriously, what would you call that? A phone film? A cell movie? How about., phone-a-film? Or one might refer to it as, "that really cool cell phone movie film thingy." While I'm still trying to figure out how to text my friend one sentence in under an hour without throwing the phone as far as I can, students across America are now competing in, what seems to be, the second ever short movie on a cell phone contest. The first ever movie-on-your-phone contest was held by Zoie Films last year.

An Ithaca College dean is offering a sweet $5,000 prize to the student who comes up with the best 30-second movie shot entirely with a cell phone. The idea came to the dean last year while she was attending a conference in New York in which one of the topics was the future of  mobile delivery of content. She explains, "Historically, we've always had students thinking bigger and bigger. All of a sudden, things have reversed and everything is getting smaller."

The hardest part of it all seems to be working with such a small screen. I'd imagine you may want to leave out that 50 person fight sequence. With such visual limitations, what exactly can you shoot on a cell phone? Could it be interesting? Have any of you out there attempted this before and, if so, how did you go about pulling it off effectively?

 

An Italian cell phone company has won the right to distribute feature films on cellphones just 10 days after they premiere in theaters. Distributor Eagle Pictures previously tried to back out of their deal to provide content for Hutchinson H3G (who provide Italian cell phone services from a base in Hong Kong) once they learned of the cellular company's plan to distribute The Interpreter to Italian cell phones uncomfortably close to the picture's theatrical release. In retaliation, H3G went to court to win the right to break the window – and won. Their next move will be to offer their customers the ability to download Memoirs of a Geisha directly to their phones as early as December 27.

Italian film distributors are predictably pissed. Says Paolo Protti, chief of Anec, Italy's exhibitors organization: "We absolutely cannot accept that a firstrun movie becomes available on mobile devices 10 days after its release." He warns that the exhibitors will fight the ruling with all their might. But H3G is unlikely to back down. Their end goal? To become the first company in the world to offer firstrun films for cell phone download, with unlimited viewing for one week, for about $10.50.

To my mind, there are two questions here. A) would you pay the price of a movie ticket to be able to watch a new release on your phone, and B) if this kind of service was available in the US, what kind of effect would it have on box office and – because you can't really talk about one without the other anymore – piracy? I think $10.50 is stupid high price to be able to watch anything on a cell phone – unless there was someway to easily get the content off the phone and onto some other sort of viewing device, which, from what I've read, isn't clear. What do you think?