Small Screen Narratives

As some of you may/may not know, in addition to working on my movies, I also have the pleasure of teaching writing and filmmaking at a couple of colleges. This semester at LMU, I am teaching a course on shooting movies using cell phones and other portable devices. The class has been fun because students don't have to fill out all the forms, etc like they have to do in ordinary production classes, and can instead just go make movies. We limit the length to around two minutes for the films, and the class really focuses on storytelling paradigms. By that, I mean, we do a discussion on using media to convince/persuade, then we have students shoot something and show it it class. Another professor and I spent last semester developing the class, and it's been pretty cool to see it through. I think a lot of students at LMU are still not that keen on the idea of movies on mobiles devices, because they are still interested in traditional production. So the group we have is self selected and are very progressive and tech savvy people, which is pretty cool. I believe these students are opening themselves up to a lot of very interesting work opportunities. That was kind of how it was for me when I graduated from college. I was an English/public policy major, but bc of an internship, I got really into web design and found that I liked it. Web design was a great foot in the door as a congressional aide as well as a way to get a fellowship for my Master's degree at UC-Berkeley. I think movies on mobile devices will be more common, and the "small screen" itself will become a medium. There is definitely a need for content in this arena. Now, the crazy thing is, someone sent me a very interesting article from the NY Times on the popularity of "cell phone novels" in Japan. The article is called, "Thumbs Race as Japan’s Best Sellers Go Cellular." The crazy thing is, according to the article, ten of the top best sellers this year started out as cell phone novels. This is truly amazing, isn't it? I think people crave stories in every format no matter.