digital guerrilla

Auditions wrapped up yesterday. This first micro-film project rumbles on to rehearsal so now seems to be the right time to describe in more detail what I’m up to.

From here forward all movies I make will be internet exclusive. In deciding on that path, I’ve given some thought to how films can or should change to fully take advantage of this new media.

The Death of the Aspect Ratio
1.85:1 and 16×9 only matter if your film will be screened in a theater or on a television. Video on a computer does not need to retain those same screen shapes. Why not turn the camera on it’s side, then rotate the image in post to give yourself a frame that’s more vertical than it is wide? If you’re looking to tell a story about someone with claustrophobia, the significantly more narrow framing would seem to be a perfect fit.

Keep It Short, Stupid
Veering off course into the realm of comics (or sequential narrative if you prefer), it’s become quite clear that those which enjoy the most popularity online are, by and large, either strips or single pages. Similarly, the shorter a video the more popular it seems to be. The term short film though encompasses works running as long as forty minutes. So why not take back the term microfilm, classifying it as a work no longer than 5 minutes? In my own case, I’m using it to describe works that are only one or two minutes long yet still contain a beginning, middle, and end.

What The Hell Am I Looking At?
I strongly dislike YouTube. Not for what they have done, but for how they have done it. Compare the video compression on that site to many other similar sites, such as Veoh, and you’ll see what I mean. YouTube is the eight hundred pound gorilla though, so how can one work with the bad compression (not to mention the small image size)? Create simple uncluttered, one might even say iconic, images. Rely more than ever on close-ups, Gestalt, and montage.

Barely a beginning, leaving out, for example, all talk of content and monetization, but a beginning nonetheless.