Three-minute movies: The World's Smallest Film Festival could spark an explosion of made-for-mobile movies and animations.(backdrop)

Q How did The World's Smallest Film Festival come about?

A Juliette Deinum--BigDigit's vice president of creative development--and I were brainstorming about what was next in the evolution of mobile devices, what would drive sales of devices and services, and what we could do to participate in the technological advances. We felt the driving force would be compelling content. Juliette, who comes from a film background, came up with the idea of having a film festival as a way to merge creativity and new technology. From our view, as hosts to the most significant aggregation of content created and encoded specifically for mobile devices, we felt both worlds would benefit: The films and animations would draw attention to the phones, their capabilities, and new forms of use; and the phones would open up a whole new medium for filmmakers and animators.

Q Who are the major players and sponsors?

A The major players are filmmakers and animators, because they all want to have their works shown, potentially, to more than one billion handset users. The major sponsors are the parties in the supply chain who benefit from the association with The World's Smallest Film Festival. These would be component makers such as Intel, Motorola, and Qualcomm; device makers such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung; carriers such as Vodafone, ATT, and Orange; enabling software companies such as the France Telecom subsidiary Streamezzo, Apple, and Real Networks; turnkey players such as Palm and Microsoft; and content developers such as BMW Films, Urban Entertainment, and so on.

Q What kind of content do you solicit for the festivals?

A We ask for short animations and digital films that meet our criteria for encoding to mobile devices. Simply put, we look for entertaining or informative works that are three minutes in length or less. In our first festival (archives of which can be seen at www.bigdigit.com/splash), we had entries in all categories: animation, drama, ...