Study mobile filmmaking at USC and UCLA!
Want to learn how to conceptualize, writer, produce and post produce mobisodes? If you live in Los Angeles, you’ll have two
Frank Chindamo
“At CTIA, the keynote speakers were Bill Gates and Ted Turner,” recalls Chindamo. “They got on stage, and the president of CTIA, Tom Wheeler, stands up with a mobile phone and says, ‘This is the future–video on cell phones.’ And he plays my video, a little spec spot called Love Bytes.”
Since then, Chindamo’s Fun Little Movies boasts a library of close to 2,000 films for mobile phones. His content is on the Google Android platform, iPhones (thanks to media agency Cross Mediaworks), on a top deck channel on Sprint (thanks to MobiTV) and an app on Blackberry (thanks to Metranome). In addition to Fun Little Movies’ availability in North America, the company has mobile deals in India and throughout Asia and Europe.
Chindamo started teaching short film screenwriting in Jan. 2004 at USC. “The course I had designed was shaped around the short films that were playing on the Internet at the time,” says Chindamo. “Up until then, the classes on short films were about writing the first act of a feature film, when in fact, people were only writing features. Mine was about writing a short film to play as a short film. The target for it was that short films would play on the Internet. By the end of that year, I had my channel on Sprint, and so in Jan. 2005, I started teaching short film screenwriting in a way that would apply to mobile and web. Hence I was the first person in the world teaching mobile and web screenwriting. Director Kevin Smith director would go on to teach a class in web screenwriting and web film production, in 2007, at UCLA.”
Here’s more information about the two classes offered this Spring.
UCLA Extension: Starting April 13, this class is about the conceptualization of a great series, and then the writing, shooting, editing and uploading of that series. “This is aimed at both people with production backgrounds and others who bring skills such as writing or performing,” says Chindamo. “By the end of the class, you’ll have posted your first three episodes of a webisode or mobisode.” For distribution, webisodes can be posted to YouTube. For mobisodes, if they’re comedies, Chindamo posts them onto the Fun Little Movies channel. Chindamo has taught this class once or twice a year since 2008.
Success stories include Bernie Su’s Compulsions, up for four Streamy awards. Another successful series is a Sam Spade spoof starring store room dummies, Film Noir for Dummies, which is distributed by Babelgum, as well as Dynamic Change, also on Babelgum.
To sign up for the UCLA Extension course, click here.
USC: The USC class–which takes place July 28 through August 5–is shorter, faster, much more in-depth, says Chindamo, who notes that the course also comes with all the equipment, including cameras, lighting, sound, and editing stations, as well as tutorials on how to use them. This class is also more international; last year’s class had students from Spain, China, Brazil, and Israel. This class meets Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 7 pm to 9;30.
The big successes of this class are the “merry madmen” of 5 Second Films. (Other films that have come out of the class are linked on the USC page below.) As with the UCLA class, students will end up with three completed episodes of a web or mobile series.
To sign up for the USC class, click here.
Tags: 5 Second Films, Compulsions, Cross Mediaworks, CTIA, Dynamic Change, Film Noir for Dummies, films for mobile phones, Frank Chindamo, Fun Little Movies, Love Bytes, Metranome, mobile deals, mobile video, mobisodes, MobiTV, Streamy Awards, study mobile filmmaking, UCLA Extension, USC, video on cell phones, webisodes
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Content, Devices, Events, Home Feature, Uncategorized.
