"Honestly, just how do you guys think you can survive this?"
That was the comment given by one of my friends as we stood by the overcrowded lobby of a cineplex in a popular mall in the Metro. A kilometric queue twists and turns leading to the windows that sell tickets to the movies showing. Out of eight movie houses, only one is relegated to a Filipino commercial film. One of the four cinemas assigned to the biggest blockbuster opening for that week offers the feature on 3D costing P300.00 per ticket.
"Do Filipino producers still believe that they can compete with Hollywood blockbusters considering the audience pays the same amount for a seat? Considering that the Hollywood films do not only look better and bigger but also have state-of-the-art visual effects and sound technology, do you guys still think you stand a chance?"
I said that once in a while we still hit the jackpot. Chances are high if the movie starred Sarah Geronimo and/or John Lloyd Cruz. Maybe every December three to four of the eight entries for the MetroManila Filmfest make a killing at the box office. But otherwise, it has become a far riskier gamble.
Movie production costs are rising. Ticket prices are increasing. The audience has become more discriminate. Whereas before people could afford to watch two to three movies in a week … now they only go out of their way to see a single feature. Or they stay home and watch television. Or surf the net and spend hours on Facebook.
That makes a lot of sense: what used to be an affordable diversion has become a relatively expensive luxury. As we continued our discussion, another friend estimated that for a couple to go out on a movie date and have a decent dinner, a total cost of one thousand pesos is a conservative estimate ( "That is still assuming that they scrimped and decided not to watch the 3D version.")
Besides, somebody suggested, you can always wait for a couple of days to buy the pirated DVD version from your friendly sidewalk hawker … or download the movie from a maverick site. There are a lot of options, you know: but where does watching a Filipino movie fit in?
Considering that this is that time of the year when there is literally a juggernaut of Hollywood summer blockbusters, local productions are ripped to shreds at the box office. For despite all marketing strategies, how do you go against "Pirates of the Carribean 4," "Thor," "Kung Fu Panda 2," "X-Men: First Class," "Super 8" or "Green Lantern." And just look around the corner: "Transformers 3," "Captain America," and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2" are still coming.
Not that all of these are such great movies -- but if you are going to spend P180 to P300 for a ticket, you want to squeeze every centavo's worth from your hard earned money. Now it is a matter of convincing the Filipino public that Pinoy movies are still and will always be worth the cost of the theater ticket.
Filipino films can never compete with Hollywood technology because of the limitations of our market … but the quality of the movie cannot be judged only by its stunning special effects or technological advancements. Filipino films should always be given chance to compete with foreign films.
"How? By limiting these blockbusters from coming in?" No, unfair --- said Friend #2. There is such a thing as free trade, you know. And movies are commodities like all others included in the World Trade Agreement, etcetera. I agreed. You cannot push Pinoy movies by locking out foreign films: they MUST prove its worth vis-à-vis competition. And they can. They should.
"Ah, really?" retorted my friend, "Go ahead. Convince me!"
But I said we should all just enjoy the movie we are about to watch as we fell in line to buy our tickets for "Green Lantern." Oh, and just for the record: as we exited from the cinema after the screening, we unanimously agreed that this Hollywood event movie really sucked … but still filled movie houses to the rafters.
6 comments