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Local film industry sees golden era ahead in line with streaming boom
With the current funding climate for film production at its peak – and the same to be said for audience figures – Indonesia's film industry is flourishing, filmmakers and domestic streaming services say.
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he majority of Indonesians consume content regularly, hence it is logical if this consumption translates into the success of the local creative industry. Consistent with this, filmmakers, as well as the biggest domestic players, claim that the industry is flourishing, especially in terms of investment.
Filmmakers have said that the current funding climate for local film production is at its peak, and the same positive conditions are reflected in audience numbers.
“Audience numbers have increased drastically, and Indonesian films are rocketing. This has made a lot of parties take interest in film investing. The government has also been much more supportive in terms of funding. This is the best condition we’ve seen [the industry in] in decades and hopefully it will get even better,” said Indonesian filmmaker Paul Agusta to The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
Paul credited over-the-top (OTT) media services, whose upheaval of the media industry has included strategies such as original content creation.
“If anything, good quality streaming series can increase the move toward Indonesian films overall and can make people more appreciative of local content,” said Paul, who has worked on dozens of movies, including the sensual Jakarta vs Everybody.
Much like Paul, Toba Dreams director Benni Setiawan agreed that the funding mood in the film industry today was thriving, as could be seen in the duration of time allocated for shooting web series.
Read also: Indonesian film industry in stasis, but for the better
Benni said that nowadays, he was given five to six days of shooting for each episode, which was significantly more than before where, typically, he would only be given three days. According to Benni, this was thanks to how web series were prioritizing quality.
“We have more time to work on them and so automatically the quality of the production becomes significantly better,” Benni told the Post on Thursday.
Read also: Indonesian film industry meets challenges and glory during pandemic
Benni said the surge in streaming resulted in nothing but good outcomes as not only did it create jobs for many people, but it also pushed the quality of local films as production teams were pressured to meet the quality of foreign films and series to compete.
“At first, [the rise of streaming services] might have felt threatening, but it has turned out well at the end of the day,” said the director of hit series Layangan Putus.
Over-the-top market
Meanwhile, research conducted by Media Partners Asia found that Vidio, an Indonesian premium video service, overtook both Netflix and Disney+ in streaming time for the domestic market making the company the biggest local content producer, far surpassing its competitors.
“Indonesian people are interested in local content. We have years of experience in media and content production, so we are capable in identifying and producing local content according to the popular demand,” Vidio CEO Sutanto Hartono told the Post on Tuesday.
Consistently, he said, premium OTT platforms dominated the load factor of all the telecommunications companies, and that showed how high the consumption rate was. Sutanto explained that this high traffic translated into big business potential, be it from advertising or subscription.
Sutanto elaborated that local films and series would always have an audience given that the content consumption segment was too big of a pie to be dominated by only one product, and so was the case with platforms.
“[The OTT market] is not a game of winner takes all. People need more than one OTT platform to consume. Industry experts predict that the OTT segment will be dominated by three to four global players, along with at least one domestic player,” said Sutanto.
Although competing in the same market with Netflix and Disney+ to a certain extent, it can be argued that Vidio took the lead because it also offers sports on top of movies and series, a market segment that cannot be underestimated in Indonesia.
Sutanto revealed that for now, Vidio had secured the rights to broadcast three seasons of English Premier League from 2022 to 2025, the FIFA World Cup 2022, Formula One, the NBA, UEFA Champions League, the Women’s Tennis Association, Indonesian Basketball League and several others.
Vidio did not reveal how many subscribers the sport broadcasts reeled in, but, for deeper context, two out of every three Indonesians – roughly around 180 million people – are planning to watch and follow the FIFA World Cup this year, according to a survey conducted by The Trade Desk and YouGov.
“The three primary segments we focus on are the television audience, Indonesian movie-goers and sports audiences. We believe we are dominant in those three categories. And, naturally, we also fill [our stock] with popular content such as Hollywood films, Korean drama and animation features,” Sutanto said.
Although flourishing, Indonesia is still far behind developed countries like Korea and Japan, reminded Sutanto, but this problem would be resolved once the demand for films or series got even bigger, as it is projected to.
“Within the next few years, we predict that the economic scale of the film industry in Indonesia will get much bigger, and that will allow Indonesian creators to produce films and series with big production budgets and value, comparable with those of developed countries.”
