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Robbie Lex
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I don't think the genre of a movie really matters, if it did how will you explain a grown man watching cartoons, lol. Generally people will always have their preferences to movies, for example I'm a die hard "who dunnit"type of thriller fan so naturally every one on this thread will give a type of movie they would like to see, be it epic, romance, horror, adventure,
I don't think Nollywood has a money problem, infact i believe big budget movies shouldn't be done in Nigeria for a while, Surprised???well i just do not believe the audience is ready, film watching is like dating, there's a period of the chase and the period of the shakara, before romance begins. I think nollywood got tired of the chase in the days of the first few films that were made, when we the expecting audience eyed nollywood from afar wondering and chattering about it, now the norm in nollywood is to do really bad movies and shove it down our throats. , it's going to take a lot of wooing and chasing and flirting to get them back, and the best way to do that is with good medium and small budget movies that will gradually make the audience have faith in nollywood.
Storylines aren't the problem either, honestly most amercian movies are kind of cliche if you ask me. Theres the typical boy meets girl kind of story, the lets save the world from mass destruction kind of story, the conspiracy kind of of story where its the last person you expect that's the killer, honestly i can't remember the last foreign movie i watched and didn't know what was going to happen in the end, the key thing in movies is not what you tell but how you tell it, it doesn't matter if people can predict the story just take them through an unforgettable journey till they reach the end.
There are two major senses at work when you're watching a movie, your eyes and your ears. The audience takes in everything, the things they see and what they hear. If you want people to connect to your movie then you have to connect to their eyes and their ears by feeding them with the right kind of things that will make your characters believable.
The truth is people do not really identify with the characters in the Nigerian movies, Directors, writers, the whole nollywood making lot do not pay attention to details,
in movies everything matters, from the colour of the rug to the books on the shelves, in a movie nothing is meant to be there by accident, everything on the screen builds the character, too much detail can kill your character by making them fake, (this is now being splashed across most Nigerian sitcoms and soaps, where everything is over done, )
There is no such thing as a villain in a movie, villains belong in fairytales, people have their reasons for being bad and a good movie will show it, we never fall in love with the bad guys in Nigerian movies because they are unreal, they just do not exist, but i have a thing for Lex luther even though he is the cause of mayham in smallville, Bad guys can be sexy and good girls can be irritating, a good movie will show that. I want to be able to choose who i like in a movie, not be told who to like, this is the bad guy, this is the good girl, with movies my eyes and ears should tell me what to choose, there are no rules,
And that takes me down to words, where the Nigerian problem originates from, words aka dialouge, since words build the characters, then the wrong words will lead to badly portrayed characters, badly portrayed characters will lead to bad acting, and bad acting = bad movie,
I think screen writing is probably the hardest type of writing, with prose it's easy to tell your reader what a character is feeling with movies you only have words and very few words at that. A screenwriter has to be able to write with his eyes and his ears, he should be able to transform the thoughts and feelings of the character into words, words that will make me believe this person is real and not an actress. The right words remove the actress from the actress and instead i see the character in the actress, suddenly I'm not watching Omotola or RMD, but I'm watching this character who has a story to tell,
I'm still yet to watch one movie with this very simple but always absent qualities, in an attempt to achieve greatness in Nollywood we forget the important little details, I don't need to see one million cars to know a man is rich, little things like his watch, his dress sense, even the book he is reading can tell me who he is,
Some directors have come close, like Tunde kelani for example, even Amaka Igwe isn't bad at all, excuse my harshness but i am a natural critic, it would have been my alternate career choice if such existed,
Nollywood has promise has good story's, but the emphasis shouldn't be on big budgets of twisted stroy lines but should be on the foundation, remember , the eyes and the ears!!!
Cheers
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