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September 2006 - Strategy Magazine
Upfront

Brilliant - Motorola dials up its partnership with the Toronto International Film Festival to unspool the message that mobile video is a serious contender

by Paula Costello
page 11

Motorola, TIFF link small screen to big screen

The sponsorship began last year when the Toronto-based mobile brand tapped TIFF's Talent Lab to showcase the possibilities of the tiny screen by providing young filmmakers with its video capture mobile handset. The Lab gives emerging Canadian filmmakers input from folks like Terry Gilliam while they make a short. The maker of the short that was voted best by the mentors did a courtesy message sponsored by Motorola that screened before each TIFF feature. Students also produced "MotoFilms Self Portraits", and six of the films created last year are being screened at the festival this year in Motorola's Mobile Shorts. Colleen McClure, director of marketing at Motorola, says TIFF is a great sponsorship platform as film buffs are often interested in making their own movies.

New this year is Speaking for Reel, a contest judged by Motorola, which focuses on 60-second films on topics of importance to the student filmmakers and which supports Motorola's philanthropic Raise Your Voice program. The winner, Ryerson School of Image Arts student Andrew Cividino, is now Motorola's official filmmaker to the festival and gets to capture events behind the scenes (he also strolls away with $5,000 towards his next project). Visitors to www.shopmotorola.ca during the festival (Sept. 7-16) will be able to view Cividino's "Festival Mobile Moments." Leading up to TIFF, Motorola also has a blog exploring the art and science of mobile filmmaking, and is helming a contest at www.motorola.ca/motoreel/festival for a chance to win a Motorola Moto Q multimedia video capture phone. The company will also be teaming up with Bell using street teams to give movie fans a hands-on experience with Moto Q, targeting TIFF-goers as the city conveniently breaks out in endless theatre lineups.

"It's a good time to showcase video and mobile," says McClure, "and our devices are suited to [TIFF]. The technology is improving, the category is growing - and TIFF has been very flexible in letting us create our own plan."

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