Here is an interesting article i would like to share with our readers and every body involved or interested in Nollywood to see today.
Article by Apata D rock
Have you ever wondered; why Nollywood is doing not too good?
Well, if you are among the people who think Nollywood is at its peak or Nollywood is doing fine I am sorry to tell you that you are really mistaken as a matter of fact Nollywood is performing so woeful.
Do you know the highest grossing Nollywood movie ever is AY’s 30days in Atlanta? The movie which only grossed 200million naira only in the box office is Nigeria’s highest grossing movie ever, it could not even reach just 2million dollars? That is so sad to hear. The profit movie producers are getting is totally poor which leads to discouragement in making quality movies.
Nigeria is among the top 3 movie industries in the whole world that makes the most movies annually the top three which puts India in the No.1 spot, Nigeria in the 2nd spot and America in the 3rd spot. But Does that mean Nigeria movie industry is bigger than America’s? That is a capital NO! As we all know the biggest movie industry in the world has been America for quite a long time and it is still the U.S. Why? Because the U.S movie industry sells a lot, and how do they sell? Cinema grossing not just in their country but all over the world. And how did they get to that level? They make good movies, quality ones; Actions, Adventures, Romance, Family and all sorts.. And how do they sell exactly?? They put their movies in cinemas across the world in a few months it starts grossing hundreds of million dollars after that they start selling the hard copy CDs which is going to bring another huge set of million dollars, so tell me why the movie producers wouldn’t want to spend much making another movie??
Now let’s get into the India movie industry Bollywood which is the second largest movie industry in the world at the moment. To be candid I have never seen any country that has better story lines than the Bollywood writers. You now these people really know how to write and make good movies even though they us their language, you won’t believe an Indian movie grossed over a hundred million dollars just of recent. And more.. These guys gross well internationally and locally, some of their movies even gross well in the U.S.
Let’s start talking about the movie budgets, I personally I like knowing stuffs like this whenever I watch a film I take my time and check everything about the movie online, you would see an American movie with just 150million dollars budget getting a cinema gross of as much as $800million and even some over a billion dollars Isn’t that huge? Why are they getting that much profit? Because many people pay to watch them at the cinemas. Taking a look at Bollywood movie budgets too, you would see many of them get as much as a 10million dollars movie budget some 30-50million dollars budget and at the end of the day they get at least double of the movie budget as the profit which I find thrilling. In a case like this I would love to compare India to Nigeria because we have a lot in common, when it comes to the Population, the culture, even their story lines and how they make their movies is still somehow related to the Nigerian way. These people are somehow like us, so if India is making it big why can't Nigeria be making it big too? See why I think Nollywood isn’t making it big below.
Firstly, I would like to mention, our movies story lines and styles really need to improve a lot, and as a matter of fact I quit watching Nollywood movies when I was 14, why? Because I was starting to understand what real movies are by then, I was already watching a lot American movies then which I totally loved I actually prefer watching Yoruba movies to watching Nollywood movies then. I started watching Nollywood movies again last year when I started seeing a lot buzz on the internet about Kunle Afolanyan’s October 1st’ movie and another one; “Half of a yellow sun”, I went to the cinema to see these movies late 2014 and I was a bit impressed with the storyline, style, the movie graphics and more.. later on I saw many other Nollywood movies too like; Knocking on heavens door, 30days in Atlanta, Half of a yellow sun, Make a move and more and then I noticed there have been little changes in Nollywood which I think is a great thing but these changes can be said not to be enough considering the kind of level Nollywood is at right now, seriously I have never watched any Indian movie that has a bad storyline, these people got it all, their writers are just too brilliant.
So I think Nigerian producers shouldn’t just make movies because they just want to make a movie but they should make movies for purposes, they should make movies with targets, they should make movies they think would wow Nigerian movie lovers, they should stop making the same movie over and over again. Nollywood movies can start grossing heavy in other countries if they can fix the things I mentioned above.
The problem with our movie producers is the same thing that affects most Nigerians, which is; “Trying to make quick money.” I heard some Nigerian movie makers make over 5 movies in a year and it’s not that they have the money in abundance to make those 5 movies but they would patch it all up and manage to make those movies if it’s of good quality or not, they don’t care, they just want to make money. Those are the kind of movies that make people hate Nollywood.
Nollywood movie makers should try hard and find good writers I believe we got them plenty here in Nigeria, obviously our producers really don’t care.
Nigerian producers should make action movies; and not the action movies of robbers robbing and some shits like that, but action movies that would be so cool even an old man would be interested. Earlier I mentioned I would like to compare Bollywood to Nollywood so let’s see this, have you guys seen “Krrish”, “Dhoom3”, “Koi Mil Gaya” and more... These are some Indian action movies I remember, their story lines are just too great these movies grossed well in the U.S and other countries.
But should we exactly blame producers alone? Nah! As far as I am concerned Nollywood does not have very good movie directors, as a director you should be able to manage things up and perfect a movie without enough contents, most directors do it the way the producers do also. And not to mention the sense to fix errors in a movie, even the almighty 30days in Atlanta has its own obvious error. The ending of the movie was a bit crappy. Let’s take a look at what happened with the Female lawyer and Akpos, in a right sense of thinking that woman has no reason to follow Akpos to Nigeria but they did it that way anyway. I think a good director would find something short that would be an explanation of why she followed Akpos to Nigeria.
Moreover I can say I have never seen any tangible adventure movie made by Nollywood, all we see is Family and Romance...
Coming to promotion; I would conclude most Nigerian movies are not well promoted after being made, well, I would say why would you promote a movie you made for making sake in the first place? We could see how AY’s 30days in Atlanta was well promoted, I can say the movie is a good movie, it got a lot of positive reviews and with what I saw in the movie I think the producer spent quite a lot on the movie. So if you do something of quality you would do all you can to promote and let the world see what you did, and as a matter of fact quality things promote themselves, but if you didn’t make something impressive you wouldn’t bother yourself too much about promoting it.
Lastly, I would say everybody involved in Nollywood I’m talking; Actors, Producers, Writers, Directors should try and woo Nigerian movie lovers to start watching their movies in the cinemas, many Nigerians don’t bother on going to the cinemas to watch movies all they do is wait for the Hard copy which piracy has spoilt its marketing. Filmmakers should let Nigerians know what is up; what they went through to make that movie and why they should manage to go watch them at the cinemas.
And the federal government is so not doing much on piracy. These people are arming a developing movie industry, so when is it going to get developed if its film makers are not making any profit.
Nollywood is an industry that can and that will improve Nigeria’s economy quite well if it becomes developed. Many talented Nigerians would get the chance to be actors, it wouldn’t be a movie industry where we see Mercy Johnson, Funke Akindele and others acting a role of a high school or college student anymore, many young ones would get shots to earn living from the industry.
Lastly the mother of all; Nigeria’s economy is also affecting Nollywood and the whole entertainment industry, tell me, is it an unemployed person that would have time to go see movies at the cinema? Oh No! Nigeria’s productivity should improve so that people would be employed. Let’s take a look at this, Nigeria have been working on fully migrating to Digital TV but that has taken like forever.. Why? Because it would affect many as only a few would be capable of acquiring digital TV, if this can be fixed and we could fully migrate to digital TV, It would be another development for Nollywood people would be able to subscribe to watch not only movies but TV shows and more on their screens.
I have much to say but can’t type it all. I am a great lover of movies and I would love to see Nollywood grow to what I picture.
Thanks.
&
Peace…
Article by: Apata D rock follow him on twitter HERE
SOURCE: http://www.takemetonaija.com/2015/11/nollywood-review-why-nollywood-is-not.html 
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Hi guys,
Just joined Nairaland and saw this interesting post. Well done coderock for this well articulated review of the Nollywood practice. I too have an interest in movies and how they are made and have looked up quite a bit of materials on this.
One of the fundamental differences between movies produced by Nigerians/Nollywood is the effective use of special effects (during production) and visual effects (Post production). We don't have these two very important and unavoidable techniques (that is if you want to output a quality production) existing prominently in our productions and so what you see being churned out is what you get.
The truth is that writing stories can only go as far as ability to produce the movie for the stories and if you do not have the power of creativity in your production all you can get out is a flat picture storyline which is what we have today. I still do commend some productions like Kunle Afolayan's October 1st etc, for taking the industry a notch higher, but much as I would like to hail such movies because I am proudly Nigerian, the fact still remains that fundamentally they are still far from the best we can offer.
If you talk to any producer/director they would always come up with issues relating how expensive the western methods are and how they do not have the budget and even if they dared, piracy would liquidate them. I agree but only to the extent that they pay for skills acquired from the developed industries. This skills are not rocket science and though I concede that some of the industry standard platforms/softwares required to create awesome shots maybe too expensive to acquire, I do also know that there are a lot of cheap softwares lying around out there that can effectively do this things.
Point is that until post production and special effect houses are developed as an industry (howbeit attached to movie production outfits), we would not be getting anywhere soon with regards to quality of our movies. The processes for these effects are so numerous (cant start to list them here in this post or I will never finish, but I can take questions later if further clarifications are needed) that I feel a bit hopeless for the industry considering how far back we are. But this gap can be also quickly bridged only if knowledgeable people start getting involved and start to make it work. This is what India did and even South Africa, who have produced quite a good number of movies with international successes.
This for me is the critical thing, beyond just pointing and shooting your camera, beyond even the best lighting techniques even beyond acting whether good or bad acting. You wont believe how much can be fixed in post. If ever you have seen a post production in action you would be shocked to see how bad some footage are and how well they get fixed and become usable.
I would love to continue this discussion if interested. Sharing is power.
Cheers. |
