Max With a Keitai. The city film was shot entirely on two mobile phones by Max Schleser in Japan in 2006 and is now being distributed for cinematic and mobile media release.
The experimental documentary Max with a Keitai is exploring Japanese metropolitan centres through the lens of a mobile phone and captures a new emerging mobile phone video aesthetic, which surfaced and characterises the years 2005-2008. The city film captures the everyday life of the mobile phone filmmaker Max during the mobile-mentary (mobile documentary) production and the Japanese megapolis in the Taiheiyō Belt. The cityscapes are depicted as a hybrid of tradition and progressive technoculture. In addition Max With a Keitai provides an alternative reading of the technologically most advanced centre. Max recorded the failures of the technoculture, such as the derelict shopping mal in Den-Den town (= Electric city) with his kaitei (mobile phone). Max With a Keitai is a digital record of a vblog (www.mobile-mentary.co.uk). The video-blog was produced at the end of 2006 during the production on location in Japan. A short of the experimental city film Max With a Keitai was edited on location and screened for the first time in Japan at the Design Fiesta in Tokyo in December 2006. The screening of the film to a Japanese audience became part of the feature project and is a direct reference to Kinoki filmmaking. Including original soundtrack based upon mobile field recordings by Dithernoise (aka Simon Longo), Demetris Roditis, Kota Kawasaki, Glitchworks (aka Jo Thomas), Will K-nine (aka Will Oliver) and Charlie McConville.
While flying from Tokyo to Colombo I was reading the Guardian:
Sri Lanka: Thousands flee fighting between army and Tigers
“Thousands of refugees are fleeing Tamil Tiger territory through jungle and by sea in eastern Sri Lanka, witnesses said yesterday, trying to escape artillary battles between the army and rebels. Nearly 1,300 Tamils arrived in camps near the government-held town of Valachenai yesterday, the military said. About 2,000 arrived on Thursday, bringing the total who have fled Trincomalee and Batticaloa to about 10,000 since early November. About 30,000 Tamils are living in camps in rebelheld Vakarai, eastern Batticaloa, where the Tigers say dozen of civilians have been killed by army shelling. Reuters Colombo.”
I was delighted to hear that my plane was delayed and I got to spend the night in a hotel. A great number of military at the airport and on the roads as well as security guards at the hotel gates welcomed me to Sri Lanka. While driving from the airport to the hotel I wanted to take some footage, but the cab driver recommended me not to hold my phone close to the car window at the check-points. With all my equipment in my backpack I though it would be best to follow his advise…
After a 37 hour journey I arrived back in London. Montage work waiting.
Despite the light and sound condition in the exhibition centre Tokyo Big Sight, the first sneak preview of the mobile-mentary project (as a Vblog log) was an important step in the feature film production. I realised that the screened work was more or less at rough cut status. Furthermore it only could draw in segments on the editing technique, which I will apply to the mobile production in the next three months. The screened work can be compared in parts with the editing approach we consume as pre-packed TV documentary on a daily base. The post-production is not treated as a process of its own, but rather a linking of the filmed sequences. The images’ characteristics can be considered to the full extend to produce meaning beyond the photorealistic representation as one is working with time based media.
My sensei told me learning a new language is like learning a new art form. I am perusing both ‘assignments’ at the moment. While exploring the potential of mobile filmmaking on location in Japan I noticed that this statement is a quite fruitful allegory of the project’s production process.
The Japanese and western languages are based on a heterogeneous grammatical structure, and in a similar way one can distinguish between mobile filmmaking and standard conventions of digital video production. In comparison to western languages, nouns have no articles and no plural forms in Japanese. Negation, tenses and level of politeness are expressed by adding a suffix to the base form of the verb. Moreover the verb is differentiated in three categories, which are used according to the specific situation. These categories can be compared to the distinction of the different formats of mobile phone video production in the contemporary media-scape. (The plain/informal can be linked to mobile media as a communication form or amateur mobile phone recordings. The polite/formal is closer to the industries/commercial mobile media productions. The honorific might thus resemble a more artistic use of the mobile media.)
This grouping is lesser concerned with the social status as in the Japanese language, but rather with the application. The honorific language is applied in special situations and uses a particular polite way, which is apparently even difficult to understand for some Japanese. In a similar way some film and video productions reflect this approach. The editing process can change the mobile phone video productions like verbs can fluctuate between the categories and change the form of expression depending on the situation.
