By: Weerada Sucharitkul, Co-Founder, FilmDoo
Do you enjoy watching great films? Films that make a difference, inspire you and which you can’t wait to share with others? At FilmDoo, we believe there are thousands of interesting and diverse films being created all around the world – films that few people ever get to see. We want to change this. We want to discover and share these films and their unique stories.
Why “FilmDoo”?
We are a film discovery platform. We want to make it easier to discover great films from around the world that you’d like to share with your friends. We believe in the power of personalised film recommendations and we want to grow a pool of trusted film reviews produced by the FilmDoo community.
The name “FilmDoo” comes from two words of different backgrounds: “Film” and “Doo”. We wanted to have a non-English word in the name to represent our strong focus on international cinema and an international community. As I have a Thai co-background, the founding team decided it would be appropriate to have a Thai word in the name. “Doo” means “to watch or see” in Thai, so by this extension, “FilmDoo” means to watch a film! The team also like the two double O’s in the name, which could be taken for a pair of eyes looking at a film. Let’s “Doo” some great films together!
Why now?
For the first time ever, advancements in internet connectivity, mobile technology and smart devices have converged, enabling people all over the world to stay in touch, make purchases, follow the news and enjoy the content they want, when they want, where they want and how they want. As many digital media analysts have recognised, we have now reached a tipping point.
But with nearly two thirds of the global population still without access to the internet, there is a heated race to bring the rest of the world online. In June 2014, Google announced that it plans to spend more than $1 billion on a fleet of 180 small but high capacity low-Earth orbiting satellites to beam internet access to the remote parts of the world. Google’s latest satellite venture builds on their latest acquisition of Titan Aerospace this April, a producer of solar-powered drones, and their Project Loon, which uses high altitude balloons to carry internet signal, to bring more people around the world online in the coming years.
Facebook is also doing its part to connect the rest of the world with the launch of its Connectivity Lab, which purchased UK-based solar-powered drone designer Ascenta in March 2014. It is only a matter of time until people from the most far-flung corners of the Saharan desert to the most remote Pacific islands will be able to access a wealth of knowledge and information at their fingertips.
At the same time, mobile technology now allows us to transfer sound and sight as data with increasing speed and performance, although we are yet to be able to truly re-create the experiences of our sense data. Recent developments in mobile devices, such as Apple’s Retina display which produces screens with a pixel density high enough that the human eye is unable to discern individual pixels at a typical viewing distance, have improved the quality of visual content remarkably. Facebook’s latest $2 billion acquisition of Virtual Reality headset producer Oculus Rift in March this year created much excitement over the most advanced display technology to date. It has the potential to bring 1 billion people onto a massive multiplayer (MMO) world, going beyond gaming to create a new communication network that may finally achieve humanity’s long quest capturing shared experiences and adventures.
Users want help in navigating oceans of digital content
As people are now able to access increasingly larger volumes of data and content via the internet, especially through mobile technology, the need for a filtering mechanism in this ocean of expanding digital content becomes more important and essential in enabling people to discover content faster, more easily and more effectively. People want to save time in discovering content that is of quality, relevance and interest to them, as well as to easily share this with others. People are increasingly time-pressed in a fast moving world so innovation and technology which delivers and improves on content discovery and curation will be key in the future.
FilmDoo is one of the start-ups addressing this challenge for independent and international films. Launching this northern Summer (2014), FilmDoo intends to revigorate the current film distribution model with its ability to empower users to discover and ultimately watch films that may otherwise never have made been made accessible in their regions. FilmDoo aims to be the platform where people can discover, experience and share films from around the world which few people may have heard of. In doing so, people will be able to use cross media platforms to assist in content discovery, with curation being the key to drive the content which people want to see, helping to open up new avenues and opportunities for tomorrow’s film makers.
It is an exciting time for content producers and distributors, but also one which demands a paradigm shift in our attitudes. We will have to redesign the current distribution model and embrace cross media platforms across mobile technology if we are to navigate safely to new unchartered territories of distant lands and even alternate realities.
NEWS FLASH ABOUT FILMDOO:
“In partnership with The Cambridge Film Festival, Film Doo will launch two new films in the UK in the last week of August. Moreover, Film Doo will launch a few hundred other titles and will have a number of high profile day-and-date releases scheduled for the coming months (same day theatrical and online release).
