MovieClub: A celebration of Filipino filmmaking

Move over, ‘Flixes! There’s a new kid on the block: a library of Filipino films that come with a very competitive price tag—free.

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It’s called MovieClub, an online video streaming platform that looks and feels just like every other streaming app in the planet. The no-nonsense black-and-red icon that you might have seen preinstalled in some Cherry Mobile devices, however, begs to differ.

“MovieClub actually started with identifying a problem in the movie industry,” Geoffrey Chen, one of the creators of the video streaming app, begins his address. He went on to say that there are two big avenues for movies once finished: inside the theater or aired on public media such as television. While the former is the more viable option, especially for independent directors who wish to snag an award or two, the road isn’t always easy.

Chen explains that theaters follow a traditional three-day rule where cinemas give films this short leeway to produce money. “If you don’t make it, you’re out,” he says unceremoniously.

“So is that logical, is that fair? We were thinking to ourselves, ‘These are already kind of big-name movies. What more if you’re a local indie?’ A local indie [director] will spend his life savings to produce a movie, to come up with something spectacular, but when it comes to the theaters, what happens? It is done.”

Free club for Filipinos by Filipinos
By curating its library to feature Filipino-only movies, MovieClub is setting itself to be a pro-artist (and particularly pro-indie) platform that aims to provide viable revenue streams for local filmmakers. For one, MovieClub already featured the iconic Heneral Luna for two consecutive weekends and is currently set to showcase Avid Liongoren’s Saving Sally sometime towards the third quarter of this year.

This reflects the current landscape of video watching in the country. Chen explains that firstly, everyone is transitioning to the internet for their movies fix. This is challenged by two things: on one end of the extreme is piracy, where there is traffic but producers fail to monetize, while on the other end is a subscription-based model where there is money but very little traffic.

To bridge the gap, Chen and his colleagues decided to make MovieClub a free-for-all movie house. This way, Filipino masses can get access to and develop appreciation for local content while Filipino filmmakers can get rewarded for their hard work. This is enabled through advertising. Currently, MovieClub features a non-skippable 15- to 30-second pre-roll or an advertisement shown before the film.

The app itself is also intuitive and mobile-friendly, owing to the fact that the Philippines is a mobile-first country, which means that “we consume media for the first time using our mobile phones,” Chen said. MovieClub prides itself on one-key sign-up via Facebook, features movies grouped by genre, and supports adaptive streaming or the automatic switching of bitrate to accommodate available bandwidth.

Expanding the Filipino movie house
MovieClub, however, hints that current offerings won’t be the culmination of the brand; instead, there are actually plans for the future in the pipeline.

Although the app is available on the Google Play Store for the meantime, the team is already working to out MovieClub on the Apple App Store soon. Support for mid-roll ads and HD quality may also be available soon, although Chen says that the latter depends on the the quality of internet connection in the country. Furthermore, MovieClub is thinking of offering foreign films with Filipino dubbing, something that is becoming popular these days, and “gamifying” its rating feature to spark engagement.

Ultimately, MovieClub aims to be at par with global streaming apps already used in the country by producing edgier original content—also in Filipino to complete its holistic objective of enriching the local Filipino movie scene. “We have plans to get more content in the future, and we want to get all the indies and get it out there,” Chen reveals.

At this point, MovieClub is stocked with more than 500 Filipino films and music, with new content added every two weeks. The library covers classics from the 1980s to blockbuster hits of the current generation—which means that there’s some good Tagalog movie that you’re sure to understand and better relate to regardless of your age.