Ploning The Movie

I’ve ragged on here in The McVie Show about how indie films have this handheld, haphazard look that’s often due to a lack of budget (ergo, less materials and equipment to work on). However, here’s an indie film that refuses to be lumped into the term “indie film”.


The producers of Ploning want it to be called an “independently produced” film. Film, mind you, not digital tape. As in, 35mm film was used to shoot this movie. And how did they do that? One of the film’s producers—and incidentally the star of the movie—is none other than Judy Ann Santos. And while this is the first film venture of the group Panoramanila, the folks behind this fledgling group aren’t newbies to showbiz. In fact, I personally know three of them, and they’ve worked for several years for a major network and commercial film company. In fact, what got me really interested is this portion of their company vision: “We hope to do this by marrying the creative spirit of independent filmmaking and the sound business structure of commercial cinema….”

That’s one thing I’ve always wanted to see, a film produced outside the studio system yet has the production qualities of a studio-produced film. Then it’s not a matter of “we don’t have the budget for that kind of equipment”. What will make these independently produced films different from their studio counterparts will be the quality of content. I dearly hope that these independent films succeed because the more people flock to them, the less reason for studios to hold on to their “it-must-be-a-blockbuster-or-not-at-all” mentality. And maybe we’ll see another resurgence of quality Philippine movies.

Meanwhile there’s Ploning. And while the official trailer is intriguing, it also reminds me of an earlier film—grand vistas, a powerful love, native music. Hello, Batanes. But that one had a Ken Zhu “wait-is-he-from-F4-fame?!” surprise factor. This one has Juday and Crispin Pineda and Mylene Dizon and really great actors and… a lot of looking out into the sea. Thank god the synopsis reveals a more active plotline. Well, most movie trailers are just supposed to intrigue and bait, right? (Unlike commercial movie trailers that often show all the best parts in one go.)

I’m really intrigued and interested to see what the marriage “of the creative spirit of independent filmmaking and the sound business structure of commercial cinema” will spawn. I hope it succeeds, and other independent filmmakers follow suit. Then we can say that Ploning is truly worth cloning. (Pa-thump-tump!)

Here’s the official trailer:



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