Short-film buffs have a reason to cheer. Fridaymoviez.com, an entertainment portal, has launched a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) platform that empowers mobile users to access a dedicated short-film website.
The site will host films with durations of one to 16 minutes in English, Hindi and other regional languages like Tamil, Telugu and Marathi.
Promoted by Twilight Entertainment, the WAP site already features 16 films and has recorded eight to nine million page views a month. The company plans to release 35 films this year.
“I am a movie buff. But the idea to start a dedicated short-film portal and a WAP site came from the fact that consumption for video content was increasing. Besides, the format is much more appealing for the mobile platform. Going ahead we plan to keep the duration of these films between seven and nine minutes,” says Sushant Baliga MD, Twilight Entertainment.
He says the breakneck growth in the mobile user-base was a huge inspiration for the company.
Baliga says both the WAP site and the portal are unique as the company is producing original content rather than compressing the long-form content into short-films, which several other media groups have started. YouTube, DailyMotion and Metacafe have forayed into the short-film segment, but they do not have WAP portals. However, fast download speeds also allow users access videos from these sites on their mobile handsets.
Each movie on the website and the WAP site is produced by Twilight Entertainment. The company has set aside a budget of Rs 1 lakh for every movie, depending on the cast and location. “We do not want fridaymoviez to be a place where people can just come and upload their videos. At our sites short-films are of premium content and quality,” says Baliga.
“YouTube is a platform. We are certainly not competing with them. But our difference is that we have a domain-specific focus and that is short-films,” he says.
The WAP site is already part of Nokia Ovi store and BlackBerry’s application store. On Nokia a user can pay Rs 70 as a one-time download charge and access short-films, celebrity real-life content and Hollywood content.
On BlackBerry, so far it has been free but offshore users need to pay a one-time charge of $2.99 to access data. Meanwhile, the company has roped in Idea Cellular as the sponsor for its films released so far. Baliga, without divulging details, says the tie-up with Idea is long term.
Baliga says people interested in using this platform need to send either their scripts or video file to the company, which is then vetted by a team of experts at Twilight. “Our mandate is to release 100 films per year. We will be producing at least 70-75 films, the rest we are planning to get through partnerships or syndication.”
