As we’ve moved increasingly into mobile technologies, English teachers have been aghast at the trend of shorter, even micro communiques with questionable spelling and grammar that have all but made the elegant postal letter obsolete.

Cinema studies grads may be the next to gasp. If When the Internet and Film Collide is the guide to the new film ouvre, ‘mobile cinema’ looks a lot like what we formerly called a “promo clip”. On mobile, attention spans are short and pixels are few. Even on laptops with giant 14″ screens, on services such as MySpace or YouTube, viewers prefer a film to be 2-3 minutes long. While technically the panel focused on a number of episodic videos (which function more like TV than film), certain challenges were shared by all the filmmakers.

Much of what was discussed was stuff you’ve heard a few times before: it’s unclear how to monetize the films (even in the shorter length); it’s hard to see how making these films will translate into future funding for filmmakers. Some of the evening’s participants were promoting their films in every available venue, from affinity partnerships to chatrooms, while others seemed content to simply make and post their content on the cheap and smile gratefully if anyone bothers to notice.

Unsurprisingly, the most developed ideas of the evening came from The Last Broadcast director and Workbook Project founder Lance Weiler. Discussing a project he had helped develop for Hammer Films called Beyond the Rave, an episodic Vampire-related series that broadcast on MySpace. In order to create stickiness for the shows, Weiler created a game that compelled viewers to find clues within the episodes (including links to other MySpace content and other sites) with the result of game-players watching episodes multiple times to get all the key info.

This strategy is one that could easily be employed by any filmmaker or content deliverer- it would not need to be particularly high-tech (inserting an individual frame with links or clues does not impair the viewing experience) and would likely have at least some resonance with viewers if there were the right reward (case-specific, naturally).

Though statistics might suggest that Americans are just not terribly interested in watching movies on their telephones (Nielsen put the numbers for mobile video penetration at 3% in 2007), there may be some rather drastic changes on the horizon. Not only are more companies creating content specifically for mobile devices, more, like Sony, are targeting the full-length movie audience.

What’s more, on June 9, Steve Jobs is set to announce a new iPhone- and if rumours prove true, this one will be a significant step up from the first model as well as a lot cheaper. While many people may be reluctant to attempt a full-length movie viewing on a tiny cell screen, on a lovely widescreen iPhone it will be a no-brainer. And the host of inevitable copycat devices will mean even more thorough penetration.

Mobile delivery is more complicated for the independent filmmaker than broadband- the gatekeepers are currently a little more reluctant to open up to the floods. There will no doubt emerge easy workarounds so that users can upload whatever appropriately formatted files they wish (much as with ringtones or other mobile files), but the ease of obtaining films from a provider will be hard to compete with. Filmmakers may need to work cooperatively to make sure their mobile files are also easy to obtain and centralized. In this case, it’s pretty easy to imagine the economics heading towards free for the consumer- ad revenue might be the best model, though a subscription service might have some initial traction before competition becomes too fierce.