Phone Film makers

Content agenda points to an article on how young people are using phones to create their own movies. These movies are filmed for replay on other phones and YouTube (which has lowered the quality expectation of the moving image). The article says:

Elmers, an Ithaca College freshman, is making a movie. And he’s not the only one: Anyone with a decent cell phone can be a filmmaker these days. Elmers is entering his 30-second film about being a kid at heart in a contest run by Ithaca College that is offering two $5,000 prizes. Winners will be announced May 1.

The contest, in its second year, is part of a trend in which everyone, from an elementary school kid to a villager in Africa, can make a movie and post it online.

“It’s a very democratic approach to the filmmaking process,” said Jason Roos, an Ithaca College senior, who also is entering the contest. “The everyday kid can go ahead and make a little video if he wants to and have thousands of people watch it and have them comment on it.”

For decades, filmmaking has been a craft industry, expensive and difficult to break into, where there was hardly any audience or venue for short films, said Marty Lucas, who teaches filmmaking at Hunter College in New York City.

“There is a huge wave of creativity taking place that is planet-wide,” Lucas said.

Lucas cited a film contest on AIDS awareness in West Africa that drew thousands of entries, many filmed on cell phones.

“You have areas of the world where feature film production was basically nonexistent,” he said. “Now we’re hearing voices from parts of the world that we may never have heard a perspective from before.”

Wannabe filmmakers are dialing into new trend – ContentAgenda.com

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