Covello was impressed by Lachman’s willingness to let shots run long, as he did in a movie about a dog attack. “The story opens with a young man talking about a dog next door that was usually tied up and not a problem,” says Covello. “Then he pauses. And pauses. And pauses. Then he says, ‘Until that day.’ After that, the rest of the story unfolds. If we had not allowed his way of telling the story to play out, it would have felt like a commercial or promo — something other than a story. This was a perfect example of what I felt Ed was trying to accomplish: real people telling real stories.”

Though the films were conceived as Internet-only programming, they have attracted a lot of attention. In November 2004, they were screened at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and Lachman says he has been approached about releasing the shorts theatrically. He notes that the digital information comprising the project has proven surprisingly flexible, and could easily be recorded to any format: “It’s PAL, it’s NTSC, it’s whatever you want it to be.”

According to Covello, the footage for the Motorola movies spent no time at all on tape during production and postproduction; it went straight from the phone cameras to an Apple Power Mac G5, then to colorcorrection, and then to the Web. “The entire process was so streamlined that you can’t help but imagine that this will be the way [motion pictures] will eventually be done,” says Covello.

Though Lachman found the technological aspects of the job intriguing, he prefers to view the tools he used as a means to an end. “I care about images and exploring the different possibilities to tell stories,” he says. “Technology will never replace the stories we’re telling, and even though this was a fun exercise, I would never want to replace the aesthetic satisfaction of seeing light projected through a photographic image.”