Nokia has recently announced that they are teaming up with
Spike Lee to
create
a series of shorts for the User Generated Content community.
This is certainly a positive step
for the handset maker who seem to be seeking to extend into
more diverse markets.
Certainly, UGC is huge and the goal of converting millions of
eyeballs into dollars has been the Holy Grail for YouTube and a slew of
smaller companies.
That Nokia is using their platforms; I gather the
N95 along with a name director is certainly a good marketing strategy.
Certainly, this is not the first company to seek to work from the top
down.
Spike Lee Speaks
According to Mr. Lee, who has admitted to being
technologically
challenged,:
“I’m
interested because it’s a great collaborative effort,” Mr. Lee said.
“Within five years, new movies will be made with devices like these.”
I agree, but made by whom? A couple of years ago, Nokia had
what I
thought a killer platform for production, namely the N93 that
unfortunately did not gain traction as was discontinued.
Nokia N93 Great For Shorts
While not
consumer friendly enough, an updated version of the Nokia N93 would make a
great little portable webcam platform for Indie producers for shorts, or even perhaps
as a second unit camera for some projects.
John Stratton,
the
chief marketing officer of Verizon Communications who works closely
with media companies to offer content to customers, said he did not
expect films shot on phones to become their own genre. “But the notion
of shared media is powerful.”
Fun Little Movies
Mr. Stratton should become acquainted with Fun
Little Movies
which has for the past several years done just that, creating and
distributing shorts for the worldwide mobile handset market featuring
accomplished actors such as Peter
Dinklage.
There is also an elephant in the room that nobody is
addressing,
namely that U.S. cellular carriers restrict the amount of video content
a user can upload to a site and in the case of AT&T, and it is
300kb per clip.
If the goal of such collaborations between Nokia and
Mr. Lee is to leverage the immediacy of mobile devices as more then
simply smaller versions of existing cameras then the bandwidth will
have to be opened to make it a more useful and rich user experience.
What About Indie Producers
While this is a good strategy for Nokia and Mr. Lee, what
about Indie Producers? Talented Producers like Tiffany
Shlain and accomplished shows like Alive
in Baghdad
would benefit greatly if they could strike deals with companies like
Nokia or better yet gain traction with selling their content online?
A concern that many of us have with ITV in its current form is
namely that it will become the platform for established media outlets
and name directors to pitch their wares at the expense of smaller producers
of varied backgrounds.
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[Content in whole or part adapted from IPTVe and is licensed under Creative Commons, no addition derivative works may be copied from this article without prior permission from IPTVe and Web TV Wire]
