Join The Next Generation Of Film Makers. (new Wave Pioneers)

I have been trying to get a group with people behind the scene in the film industry and I think I have found the right place here in Graphics. I went to TV section and its all about gossips about nollywood stars. We need a new wave of film in nigeria. I left Nigeria to study film in sSouth Africa because Nollywood sucks to me and I don't want to join them in making the type of film they make but I know there is talent in nigeria. We that support a new wave of film should come together and sweep those trash that nollywood is maki9ng away and make films that will be recognised in film festivals around the world and not in nigeria alone. Nollywood release the 3rd highest films in the world but how many of theose make it to Oscars or Cannes. they don't even make it to sithengi in south africa. they only make it to south african stree corners anf sold for R15. South Africa make few films but those few still get nominations around the world and even won oscars(Tsotsi).

IF YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO SEE QUALITY IN NIGERIAN FILMS AND NOT QUANTITY LETS JOIN HAND, EXCHANGE CONTACTS AND MAKE FILM THAT WOULD CATCH THE EYES OF THE WORLD.

i feel u so much. i am aspiring to be the steven spielberg of nigeria. someone that will make films that will educate, inform and also entertain. nollywood is bad, but i have stopped doing the blame game. many of the so-called producers and directors are not literates and skilled, so they just sleep and dream of something withiut giving i much tot and research.

i am determined to influence and make a big impact in the film and also tv industry in nigeria and africa.

i am ready to work with anyone who is serious and determined.

This is it!!              iam really happy someone is singing the same song iam singing. now if we are willing guys lets really put our hands togather,but i warn you it wont be easy.but if we are really singing the same song we will surly overcome. did i sound pesimistic there? well i have been with people who say this and that about nollywood only to be shocked at the kind of footages they shoot and ask me to help make the picture better,being  a good Editor does not make me a magician,hope you grab my drift. but all the same iam with you guys  you can holla me @07034736971or okikestudios@gmail.com  iknow the nitty-gritty of movie making for sure!!!

Yeah, I'm kind of in the business too, entertainment and all, would like to hear what you got in mind. Got productions to my credit already, but it's the same old same old

I really want to explore animated production. Could you like give me a rundown of expenses on how to shoot a 130 mns animated video. I'd really love to hear from you

Uuhhhh, come on. I just want have an idea of cost, not really specifics. Would the entire cost of production exceed 500K  or 1M, or would it be in the 5M range . That's what I wanted to know bro. . .

all right ajadrage, i think the cost of producing the animated features depend on the story, method(2d or 3d), skills, quality and other factors like labour and time.

from the way u re talking, its like u're really interested in producing an animated film. i've some ideas for both animation and other films. i am already working on some scripts.

by the way in case some of you guys are not aware am a 3d modeller/animator. so what you guys got in mind.

my mail address is jemit2002@yahoo.com. i guess we can start from that.

you can all add me to your friends list on yahoo. my address is tobaoduwaiye@yahoo.com. my gmail address is tobainexcess@gmail.com

We do have a film-making section, but very few people are using it, for some reason:
http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/board-58.0.html

@ajadrage: Obviously you're talking about 2d animation. It'll be difficult to give you an estimate of how much it'll cost to make a 2d feature of such length (did you say 130mins??), because even american and asian animated features don't stretch that long. I understand that in asia [south korea to be precise], where a lot of u.s and japanese animation are outsourced to, it costs roughly $3,000 usd to produce a minute of animation. I know it costs way more than that in the US and Japan, hence why a lot of their animation gets outsourced to a place like south korea to save costs -- animated commercials usually cost more than the per-minute estimate even though they run for less screen time. You can do a quick online search of how much it cost the major studios in japan and the u.s. to make their popular 2d animated flicks. The declared estimated cost of the Lion King (1994) by Disney was over $73million, Aladdin (1992) cost the studio $28million, Road to Eldorado (2000) cost Dreamworks SKG studios $95million -- and involved an estimated 500 artists about 4yrs from all around the world to bring the feature to life. One of the most expensive japanese animated features cost over $20million dollars, can't readily remember the name of the flick, but I think it was directed by ace animator Hayao Miyazaki [of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke fame]. The popular american Adult Swim animated series, The Boondocks, is animated in South Korea and produced by Sony Pictures for big bucks. So bro, whatever you have in mind, best believe it won't come cheap. Senegal's Pictoons studio charges about $2,500 per minute of animation and you can contact them for more enquiries.

You can also check out my animation-related threads for a more comprehensive idea of what animation entails:  http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-71864.0.html and http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-97684.0.html

@ajadrage: My man, I'll try and break down the process of 2d animation in layman's terms, perhaps that'll help you better understand why it costs so much to produce, as well as why there's a dearth of such production going on in naija and much of africa today -- with the exception of south africa and Senegal, of course.

I've found that a lot of regular folks are unaware of, and underestimate, the sort of hard-work and level of [specialized] skill that's required to make 2d animation -- a famous animator once remarked, instructively, that being able to draw very well doesn't automatically mean that one will be able to animate, because animation demands a specialized skill and technique that's painstaking to learn. 2d animation, otherwise known as Traditional or Classical animation, in this case is for the most part HAND-DRAWN. Back in the day, before the advent of the computer as we know it, it was extremely cumbersome and expensive to make 2d animation due to the intricacy and consequent inaccessibility of the technology that's required for its production. But today with super-fast computers it's much easier and less expensive to produce.

Peep this. You'd require 24 drawings [or frames] to produce just one second of animation. Multiply that by 60, and you'd have 1,440 drawings to achieve 60seconds [or 1 minute]] of animation. Did you get that? That's 1,440 frames of individual drawings for just one minute of animation. The drawings still gotta be timed, cleaned-up from their initial rough state, painted digitally or otherwise, composited, edited, e.t.c. All that'll require a lot of time.

I'm an animator myself, and the highest number of drawings I can make in a day is 300, and bro, IT AIN'T FUN! Click on the following link to view the youtube pencil-test clip of a 28 second animation exercise I did late last year to hone my skillz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rtgMlIsD1A. I did that in two days, and it gulped a total of 600 individual drawings, which had to be scanned one-by-one into computer, before I set the timing. Mind you, those are just rough drawings that haven't been cleaned-up yet. Clean-up is a meticulous and time-consuming process by itself -- most big studios have a special clean-up department manned with a couple of artists who do just that; meticulously clean-up rough drawings. Then, after that you gotta paint/color each frame/drawing individually. Imagine that you have a 5minute short subject animation, that'll translate to 7,200 individual drawings/frames that'll have to be digitally painted! It's standard practice for most hollywood and japanese studios to sub-contract/outsource some of these tasks to other studios in order to save time and money. Which is why the average japanese and american animated feature takes YEARS to complete -- and on average involve hundreds of artists and specialists.

With that background, I hope you can now understand why I might want to charge $2,500 per minute of animation -- which will basically cover the storyboarding, background, animation, clean-up, compositing, synchronization of animation to sound, editing, e.t.c. With the sorta budget you say you're willing to invest, at best I'd say you can squeeze out a 5-minute animated short, as I'm aware of a couple of independent animators, like Bill Plympton and Brian Lemay, who entirely fund and produce their own [award-winning] animation for about as much as you say you have [to spend] --$3,000.

i am also interested,i am a good scriptwriter and would like to join the team that makes a difference.i am also on facebook.

just curious, jemit, 

i suppose i can understand why you might say that you don't see the future in it (since it's so difficult to do), but what do you mean that you have not seen "the best"?

2D animation is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than 3D, IMHO.

i dare you to show me any 3D animation that exhibits a comparable level of sophistication, innovation and raw beauty as Fantasia, Spirited Away, Suzan Pitt's Asparagus, or even Tex Avery's Warner Brothers shorts.

in my opinion

3D animation (as it exists today) is frightfully stiff and despite the simulation of 3 dimensions, it often looks extremely flat. it doesn't have the kind of fluidity and grace of movement you find in classic 2D.

furthermore, i think it's faddish and disposable. i don't know whether it has to do with the fact that the technology is still in its infancy, but when you look at a 3D animation from just 3 years ago, it already looks dated. on the other hand, if you look at something like Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, it still looks fresh, innovative and competitive with anything that's out there in the market now. and that movie was released in 1937--70 years ago!

but the thing i HATE about 3D animation above all else is the extent to which it represents the death of imagination among contemporary filmmakers and audiences.

Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett and the others in the crew at WB Studios helped develop animation as a wildly expressive art with its own unique language. when you look at stuff like the classic Bugs Bunny shorts and stuff like that, you'll see the way that they were showing how animation can be used to tell stories in a way that live action never, ever could. they kicked realism and naturalism out the window and became more surreal, more expressionist.

now with 3D, the drive seems to be to make everything look as "real" as possible,  which is moronic, if you ask me. because we already have live action film. why on earth are we trying to make animated movies that look like live action? it's redundant, it's retarded and it's f__ing boring!

but alas, what can one do? it's been made official: 2D production is dead in the USA. thank God that they haven't bought into this horrible 3D crap in Japan, Korea and India, though,  they still understand the reasons why 2D is superior and probably always will be.

it kind of saddens me to see so many Africans buying into 3D, though i guess i can't blame them since it's so much easier (and cheaper) to do.