Mark Lyn­der­say

The folks at the T&T Film Com­pa­ny didn't miss an op­por­tu­ni­ty to plead the case of lo­cal con­tent at the launch of the Smart­phone Film Fes­ti­val.

Right from the start there was the plain­tive, ac­cusato­ry wail of Muham­mad Muwak­il of Free­town Col­lec­tive to re­mind the au­di­ence of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. "I want to see me on my TV," Muwak­il sang.

Film Com­pa­ny ex­ec­u­tives have hint­ed, ca­joled, ac­cused and gen­er­al­ly court­ed lo­cal me­dia to pro­vide space for more lo­cal­ly pro­duced video con­tent and the re­sponse has been so neg­li­gi­ble that it might be char­i­ta­bly de­scribed as non-ex­is­tent.

With the Smart­phone Film Fes­ti­val, though, they may be, by de­sign or ac­ci­dent, em­bark­ing on an­oth­er track, one that's ac­tu­al­ly more in har­mo­ny with to­day's trends in con­tent con­sump­tion, which by­pass­es tra­di­tion­al me­dia en­tire­ly in favour of di­rect to con­sumer dri­ven chan­nels like YouTube and Vimeo.

And then there's the valu­able strat­e­gy of grab­bing the next gen­er­a­tion of con­tent con­sumers while they're young.

A fes­ti­val of films cap­tured on mod­ern smart­phones sounds like just the lure to up­grade chil­dren from en­cour­ag­ing fights at school so they can be cap­tured in shock clips to nar­ra­tives that ex­press their feel­ings in more ac­ces­si­ble ways.

"We have a man­date to reach out to com­mu­ni­ties," Car­la Foder­ing­ham, CEO of the T&T Film Com­pa­ny (TTFC) told the small au­di­ence as­sem­bled for the launch.

"And that in­cludes sec­ondary schools."

El­i­gi­ble films will have been cap­tured on ei­ther smart­phones or tablets and will be no longer than five min­utes in length. More de­tailed rules, reg­u­la­tions and re­stric­tions will be pub­lished by the TTFC on its Web site and on a ded­i­cat­ed site for the project that will al­so serve as the con­test's up­load point for sub­mis­sions.

"I grew up with a phone that you di­aled," mused TTFC Chair­man Christo­pher Laird.

"You spun a di­al for a num­ber, wait­ed, then did it again. Now we are look­ing at phones that not on­ly take pic­tures and video, but can al­so ed­it them."

Do­minic Koo who con­fessed to not ac­tu­al­ly own­ing a smart­phone, of­fered up Missed Call, a short chase film shot on UWI's cam­pus that showed not on­ly the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the medi­um, which can be quite ur­gent and rapid-fire, but al­so its lim­its, as the film moved in­to evening and fi­nal­ly night and the de­vice strug­gled to work with di­min­ish­ing lev­els of light.

Koo edit­ed his film us­ing Adobe Pre­miere, and con­tes­tants in the fes­ti­val are not con­strained from us­ing pro­fes­sion­al prod­ucts to fi­nalise their projects for sub­mis­sion.

That means brings so­phis­ti­cat­ed tools like ex­po­sure com­pen­sa­tion and colour grad­ing to the ta­ble for any po­ten­tial film­mak­er to use in craft­ing the best pos­si­ble prod­uct from their cap­tured footage.

Koo sug­gest­ed that par­tic­i­pants ex­plore tri­al ver­sions of pro­fes­sion­al soft­ware as well as free edit­ing tools to work on their projects.

That's an op­por­tu­ni­ty to not on­ly bring big guns to bear on their footage, but al­so to be­come fa­mil­iar with the tools of mod­ern dig­i­tal film­mak­ing.

"We want to do some­thing that has the po­ten­tial to be ful­fill­ing for a cre­ator and to al­low them to do so with­out hav­ing to spend a lot of mon­ey on equip­ment," said Foder­ing­ham.

When it comes to do­ing an am­bi­tious project with­out any fund­ing to back it up, the TTFC is talk­ing from a knowl­edge­able place. On Fri­day last week, the Smart­phone Fes­ti­val had no spon­sors and no dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels.

Car­la Foder­ing­ham would like to see the con­tent on Caribbean Air­lines, on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion, on the fast fer­ries to To­ba­go and San Fer­nan­do and on long haul bus­es, but giv­en the en­thu­si­asm those sug­ges­tions have stirred, it's more like­ly that the films that emerge from this new ef­fort will end up where most smart­phone films thrive, on the Web.

And with luck and some skill, get viewed the mo­bile de­vices of lo­cal au­di­ences keen to see them­selves in­ter­pret­ed by a new gen­er­a­tion of cin­e­mat­ic au­teurs.

Read an ex­pand­ed ver­sion of this col­umn on­line here: (http://ow.ly/adAll).

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