The Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival (VMIFF) is looking to go global (virtually) by expanding its brick-and-mortar festival model into a premium streaming service.

The “Virtual VMIFF” platform, currently launched in beta, is set to be an SVOD service for fans of outdoor adventure films. It’s being offered for free for its first three months as a channel on Reelhouse, and then, once the funds for a platform have been raised, will ask subscribers to pay $8 per month to access films from the annual festival. The platform will also have pay-per-view options for new and premium content.

The VMIFF platform launch comes as the Whistler Film Festival also looks to expand its brand outside of the mountains, with an announcement last week that it will offer one of its 2014 festival films for download at $9.95 from NFB.ca shortly after its festival screening.

Films available on the virtual VMIFF platform will initially be projects that screened at the festival, although there are plans to open up the content to non-festival films in the future. As it is still early days of development, there are currently no exclusivity restrictions on the content.

Virtual VMIFF is the passion project of entrepreneur and VMIFF business manager Ean Jackson, who has so far self-funded the project launch via his consultancy company Analytics Marketing. With the project, he hopes to tackle the challenge that all film festivals face: there is only a set amount of content that screens in a set amount of time. With streamers like the Virtual VMIFF, festivals can be better positioned to generate revenue outside their run dates, Jackson said.

“It’s a cultural play, and it’s also a technology play. We’re trying something different,” Jackson told Playback Daily.

He’s hoping to raise a further $70,000 through an Indiegogo campaign currently underway. Revenue from the service will be invested back into the company and likely shared with filmmakers based on the popularity (a.k.a. views) of their films.

With a high volume of free video in the genre available online (companies such as Red Bull offer premium video clips for free as part of sophisticated marketing campaigns), it begs the question why fans will pony up $8 per month for access to the VMIFF films.

While Jackson notes part of the campaign is to explore the interest in such a service, he is confident that a curated experience is something people will pay for – and he’s hoping that mountain-adventure film lovers will agree.