Marshall Brain's Blog

I don't know why, but I spent a lot of time thinking about the cell phone film festival. The winners were announced here at the end of January:

CellFlix Festival

The official goal of the contest is described in this way:

If you’re a filmmaker, a storyteller and a dreamer of big dreams – and you could use an extra $5,000 to help make those dreams come true – pick up your cellphone/smartphone and get busy. You must shoot the story on your cellphone/smartphone, but you can edit it any way you choose. Produce the best 30-seconds of small-screen cinema, and walk away with the $5,000 grand prize.

The problem is, when you look at the 10 finalists, what is missing are compelling stories.

Where do you find interesting 30-second stories? In commercials. See, for example:

• This Fedex commercial
  
  
• This VW commercial
  
  
• This Sprint commercial

Are these commercials fine literature? No. But they are interesting and watchable. Both the VW commercial or the Sprint commercial could have been filmed with a cell phone. But none of the CellFlix videos really capture a story like that. Telling a good story in 30 seconds perhaps is an not as easy as it looks...