Digital invades cable.

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Byline: Bayani San Diego Jr.

QUICK on the heels of the Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival, ABS-CBN's Filipino movie channel held the Cinema One Originals Digital Film Festival July 29 to 31 at SM Megamall Cinema 12.

Ronald M. Arguelles, director of programming of Creative Programs, Inc., explained candidly that the festival was conceived to help the cable channel solve a daunting problem.

"We have a weekly show, Sunday Cine Premiere, and we need 52 new movies every year to fill that time slot," Arguelles told Inquirer Entertainment.

Unfortunately, the local movie industry, whose output had dropped from 200 to 30 annually, could fail to meet the requirements, he said. "There are two solutions: One is to acquire titles from elsewhere in Asia and dub them in Tagalog."

That's bereft of creativity, he admitted. "We'd rather produce our own content. We decided to reallocate our budget for buying new titles to the production of new digital movies instead. Actually, I got the idea from [indie filmmaker] Jon Red who told me that for less than a million you could produce a good digital movie."