Changing The Picture: How Screen Size Matters

I’m sitting in a Starbucks with no fewer than four different size screens at my disposal — a 14.4 inch Vaio and, because I’m working on something that involves varieties of mobile content, three cell phones including a Treo 650. The phones are all video capable at varying speeds via Mobi TV, Sprint TV and Verizon V Cast. The widescreen notebook is the best of my portable choices; even the almost full-screen version of the iTunes’ “Desperate Housewives” looks pretty darn slick. Each size screen brings its own experience; none of them are a literal translation of watching TV or viewing a movie. What you watch and how you see it literally and metaphorcially shifts from screen to screen.
WSJ movie critic Joe Morgenstern isn’t a guiding light for me when it come to which movies to watch but his piece this weekend about how the size and portability of the screen changes the experience is well worth a read. He sees in the small screens, among other aspects, a place for the movies that can’t thrive on the big screen or films that can be absorbed in pieces like a book.
Morgenstern: “This sort of intimacy with moving images may well be part of a future in which huge spectacles will still be projected on huge screens in a few big theaters and the majority of movie lovers, young and old (old meaning the over-30s or 40s who’ve lost the theatergoing habit) will watch hot new DVDs on cool home screens. At the same time, little computers, or devices like them, will become the exhibition medium of choice for small, esoteric films that may enjoy the same limited status as today’s literary novels. A bright future for some, a dim one for others, but definitely a wide one.”
At the Times, Jodi Kantor takes on the same subject to some extent, matching the size and quality of the image with its capacity for power. On her spectrum, spectacle sits at one end and intimacy at the other. The viewer shifts roles with screen sizes. Watching a handheld screen, she writes, “in effect, is watching a remote control.”

What may be most important in these two coincidentally timed pieces — aside from the one-two punch in two of the top papers — is the acceptance that the very small screen and its slightly larger cousins are increasingly a part of the culture. Instead of turned-up noses at the notion of watching a small screen, the focus is now also on what can be gained. I can see it now — an Emmy for best show on a two-inch LCD.

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