"Cinema on the Move"

I attended a panel discussion today named "Cinema on the Move." It was concerned with the way portable media is developing and how short films might be able to take advantage of the market. The moderator was a journalist for the Wall Street Journal and the panel members came from various sectors of themarket (cellular and video iPod).

They discussed the benefits of streaming media (most cellular phones)
versus media saved to a hard disk (iPod or a phone with some removable storage card). Several complicating factors were addressed: certain formatting is necessary to transmit the data for streaming, encoding may make some videos viewable in one platform but useless in another, and to increase revenues, cellular providers may turn to advertising which is not controllable by the subscriber. Additionally, cellular phone screens are prohibitively small and will likely not catch on for use with full length television shows or films.

Many advances are on the horizon, including forms of distribution of short films to cellular and iPod video users which would result in a profit of up to 80 cents per viewing to the filmmaker. A folding or rolling screen has been considered and seems to be the best solution to the size problems of highly portable products.