Long is short

My thoughts were triggered by Rohan; my 8-year young nephew. Every time we meet he tries to show me his favourite ‘monkey eating banana’ video clip, on his mother’s mobile phone. He likes this clip so much that my sister has started using it to entertain Rohan while he has his milk. Once the monkey is on the screen Rohan forgets the ‘misery’ of having to have milk – so no more crying.
There are many more clips saved on my sister’s phone – most of them are shot at home or at work or during their outings.

Come to think of it, just two years back we could not think of video recording our films as long as we did not have a camcorder – a big, bulky, and an expensive device.
Video recording then was synonymous with Marriages.
Just couple of years later and even an 8 year old can record and play film clips and then play with these clips.
There is a difference though. From video films we have moved on to Video Clips. The operating word here is ‘Clip’.
We record (or should I say click) video clips like we used to click a camera. We are moving from video recording into ‘Video Clicking’. Video clicking is anytime, anywhere, any thing & anyone.
On one hand we are busy and do not have the time to shoot elaborately – how many of us use our camcorders anytime other than annual festivals or an exotic trip. And even on these occasions our shooting is a function of the enthusiasm of the person who is carrying the camera. Who wants to be shooting in place of being in the frame?!
On the other hand we do not have time to view very long content and thus short content is preferred – look at he way kids and teenagers flip channels! Almost as if snacking on entertainment content at different TV frequencies.
The luxury of entertainment ‘meals’ from the ‘lets sit and watch this 30 min serial’ together would only disappear as we move into the future.
The west has already started bridging the audience patience and TV serial duration gap by developing mobisodes and webisodes, the net and mobile versions of the popular serials.
Even games are trying to become episodic – in order to engage a larger audience that is time poor. Like video films are becoming short clips even gaming industry is changing. It is waking up to the perils of long development cycles for video games and high cost of development. They are toying with episodic games that can be finished in one sitting of 15 – 30 mins. The aim is to get more non-gamers in by making games easier to buy (cheaper) and play (shorter thus less time intensive). Game developers are gauging their productivity by comparing no of development man-hours that go into the one-minute of gaming experience!

Technology has also succeeded in liberating good music from the clutches of an average music album. The album is finally unbundled. Today singers have begun releasing singles that are truly great rather than bundling them with 7 other songs that are just filling the MB space on the Compact Disc.

While this kind of content is becoming shorter strangely another kind of content is doing well in an entirely new format. The BMW ‘films’ (and not TVCs!) are a good example of this.
But when you look at them from the film angle they are really short films.

The future, it seems is really short, and we are shortly going to be there!