Developing My Little Super Hero Movie

Very very true.

But anyway, like i said, goodluck with your work, bare in mind that ibkaye is eager to see the outcome because she loves nigerian movies

@ibkaye: thanks!   


@teemy: it's not a bad idea at all.  If you can do it, go for it.  Before one can write a Yoruba tale, one will have to read lots of Yoruba history textbooks.   One  challenge is that some of these stories are copyrighted, so you have to buy the rights.   Another is that by picking one culture you're excluding others.

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I've been told the story I outlined is pretty good.  I'm glad because I know it can only get better from here.

so . . . have you given thought to the kind of locations/sets you are going to employ in order to portray "an African village far far away a pretty long time ago"?

depending on how "long ago" you're talking about (you don't mean the 1960s, do you?), you probably can't shoot interiors in any kind of standard, contemporary building with painted and plastered concrete walls, modern floors, ceilings, windows and furnishings, and electric fixtures.

so then the option is to find suitable traditional dwellings where (if?) they still exist. the challenge there is to make sure that they have sufficient electrical outlets for your use.

the other alternative is to have most of the action take place in exterior settings, which is . . . 

depends on the effect you're going for, of course. 

very well, but . . .


how primitive would it be that nothing that cuts has even been invented?

how do they hunt? by clobbering animals with clubs?

that level of primitivism would probably be pre-lingual, would it not?

animal skins and leaves for garments? hmmm . . . well, if they don't have cutting tools, they probably won't have animal skins. but either way--skins or leaves--that's a lot of money (and skill) that goes into costume design and construction, no?

actually, a fight with clubs is one of the least safe things there is!

and i don't see the point of a "poisoned" club . .  .  in order for the poison to be effective, it would have to break the flesh and contaminate the blood. and blood seems to be something that you are deliberately avoiding.

i got the feeling your omission of piercing weapons had something to do with wanting a PG rating, but i wasn't sure . . . i thought maybe it was for some other creative or practical reason.

i will say that if it for the sake of a PG rating, it seems to me a lot of trouble to go through when you don't even need a rating to distribute it via the means you are proposing anyway.

(and smashing people's skulls with a club would not get you a PG rating anyway, blood or no blood!)


i don't know . . . they already do that in some Nigerian movies and stuff and you always see the little black shorts and tube tops peeking out from under the leaves.

to do it properly would require a real costume-maker to give you full coverage and still make the costumes comfortable for the actors to wear. . . not to mention the fact that the leaves would probably have to be synthetic because real leaves will dry up and rip to pieces within an hour.


of course . . . the purest form of cinema is that without words!

but it takes particular skill on the part of the writers, director and actors to convey complex emotions non-verbally.


of course, Pocahontas wasn't pre-lingual!

she spoke and sang Powhatan, but for our benefit, we heard it in English.

it's no different than when we watch Gladiator, Troy, Jesus of Nazareth, etc. and we *hear* them speaking English though in the context of the story they are actually speaking Latin, Greek or Aramaic.

but in your case, you're talking about a point in human history at which language does not even exist in any form . . .  therefore, if your characters are speaking at all, you have some explaining to do.

they can't even have subtitles, really.

that was my point.

how can you have a tense, fast-moving, thrilling fight with two guys trying to poison each other?

having them trying to tickle each other to death would be more interesting to watch!

(although i can think of a few ways in which the poison thing could be staged in a cinematically compelling manner, but it's still pretty limited . . . posion just isn't very visual in general)

i think you're seriously overthinking the whole issue.

"anticipated movies" . . . "passion movies" . . .  these categorizations are meaningless, and they definitely don't have a damn thing to do with the movies themselves. what you are actually talking about is not movies per se, but marketing.

what you are talking about, in fact, is star power. actors are not the only stars . . . sometimes the star is a respected director (like Steven Spielberg). sometimes it is a popular character or intellectual property from a different medium (Spider-Man or Lord of the Rings). sometimes it is an unprecedented level of special effects (The Matrix).

and usually any or all of these things are employed in conjunction with a multi-million-dollar marketing budget to get the word out about these things and stoke the public's interest, to constantly bombard them with awareness of these coming movies until they are ingrained in their consciousness.

now, considering that, does it make sense to say that the plan is to make "anticipated" movies first until one is established and then make "passion" movies? you've got it backwards!

if you're an unknown filmmaker just starting out, there's no reason for the audience to anticipate the movie based on your prior work, is there? a studio is not going to entrust some novice with a multi-million-dollar project like Spider-Man, are they? and you probably don't have the money or resources to create a special effects extravaganza either. you certainly don't have the kind of marketing budget to create anticipation.

so what does that leave you with? the so-called "passion movie," right?

how did Steve Spielberg BECOME The Great Steven Spielberg to begin with? BY MAKING MOVIES HE WAS PASSIONATE ABOUT.

if you look at all the big "anticipated movies" and look at the directors, didn't they ALL start out making fairly personal movies that they cared about?

SPIDER-MAN - Sam Raimi - Evil Dead
LORD OF THE RINGS - Peter Jackson - Dead Alive
IRON MAN - Jon Favreau - Swingers
BATMAN BEGINS - Christopher Nolan - Following
SWEENEY TODD - Tim Burton - Edward Scissorhands
STAR WARS - George Lucas - THX 1138

and so on.

making "anticipated movies" is a right--no, a *privilege*--that you have to EARN. and you earn it by making your "passion movies."

what it sounds like to me is that you basically want a sure thing . . . you want an assurance that your movie is going to be a hit.

well, such a thing does not exist. even "anticipated movies" sometimes fail, despite all their star power and marketing muscle. that's the chance you have to take. like i said before, if you want a secure paycheck, get a job in a bank.

so if you're worried about the marketing end, then what you need to do is get Ini Edo and Van Vicker on the phone.

that's the best you can do, because in Nigeria there is no media machine to create hype and anticipation for movies anyway. if you're looking for "star power," then you cast star actors.