Ike Nnaebue is a filmmaker, entrepreneur and art critic. In this conservation with IKECHI NZEAKO, he speaks on the film industry, how to improve storytelling in Nigerian films. He speaks on other issues in Nollywood. Excerpts:
Some years back, you were training young people in how they could make films using their smartphones; can you expand on what you have done?
Some years ago, we were touring Nigeria, teaching young people how to use smartphones to make films, create content but we were stopped by COVID 19.
However, I am excited that post-pandemic many young people are using smartphones to create all kinds of content, skits.
It always warms my heart when I see that, that means a lot of people are getting the fact that the phones in their hands are a huge asset for creating content, for monetising content.
We have picked up again in partnership with Eastern Nigeria Film Festival and Eastern Nigeria Art and Film Initiative.
We are about to launch a new tour to continue to teach people how to use their phones to create content. Now people are creating content using their phones, they can tell new stories, documentaries and fiction.
We just launched a competition for South Eastern creatives. It’s about them telling us a story about their family history. It’s something called the “Magic of the People” and you can tell your story using your smartphone. And we have prices in millions of naira and I am offering mentorship to the top five.
If a young person comes to you and says he or she wants to become a filmmaker, what advice will you give that person?
I will advise the person to go and learn as much as possible about the craft.
Understand that it’s a craft and not just an avenue to be famous. Many people don’t understand that; they make a lot of mistakes that they want to be actors, they want to be in the film industry, and their aim is they want to be famous. If you want to be famous, you have to make it clear; in that sense you don’t have to be in the film industry.
Yes, the film industry will make you famous, but it is important that you learn the craft and begin to network with filmmakers, that will help you actualise your dreams.
But, when you network with filmmakers and you don’t have any skills to bring to the table, it takes you back to square one.
The first thing is to learn the craft, if you can afford to go to film school, go to film school, if you cannot afford to go film school, go to YouTube film school.
There is so much you can learn from YouTube. I didn’t go to film school formally; I had to learn on my own. I was an apprentice to a lecturer in the film school in Jos.
Film is a practical art form; it’s not really what you learn only within the four walls of a classroom.
In fact, there is an argument that no matter what you learn from the film school, if you don’t start making films, you haven’t learnt anything yet.
What can be done to improve the quality of Nigerian films?
Story development is a big issue in Nollywood even with the big budget films. A lot of people do not understand the importance of storytelling in films.
Film is a storytelling medium but a lot of filmmakers don’t understand that. Many people are still investing a lot of energy on who is starring in the film, in the equipment, but the story telling is being ignored.
I think what can be done to improve the quality of Nigerian films is to focus on story development.
There is the criticism that the faces are always the same, how do you bring in new people in the industry?
The faces are no longer the same; it’s like the little guys don’t rely on the old faces, they are going their own way.
Many young new faces have cropped up on that side. For us who make high end films, we are also not concentrating on the old faces anymore.
Now there is a lot of diversification because people are now beginning to understand that it’s not only about the faces, it’s about the delivery. If you have the biggest face in your film and you go to the cinema and you don’t do your marketing very well, the thing will hang. People are learning that instead of using all the budget on one actor, get good actors, in fact, these days the trend is gravitating towards people who are popular on social media; people from Big Brother; even people who stumbled into fame through social media, who don’t even have history of acting or prior training in acting; they are used just because they have millions of followers on Instagram, tiktok.
Producers prefer to work with those kinds of influencers; they imagine that this will help them cut down on promotion budget and leverage on the popularity of the young stars to sell their films. That is the trend we are seeing in the industry.
What is your assessment of the Nollywood industry?
It’s growing, we are exploring more universal themes that help our films to travel around the world and we are now doing major festivals and being represented in top global conversations.
Aside from the fact that Nollywood has grown in terms of the quantity of the films that we make, we are also growing in terms of the quality of films we make.
We will always have categories of films; even Bollywood has B-rated and A-movies, the same thing with Nollywood.
We have different types of sections; we have people like me who are making high-end films, who are taking our films to global platforms and representing Nigeria in international film making cycles.
And we also have other films that are made for the streamers and sometimes for the cinemas and then you have very low budget films made to be released and distributed on YouTube.
What are the consequences of releasing films directly to YouTube?
I have argued that making a film and releasing it straight on YouTube is a good development in the industry and being that Nigeria is the only film industry that releases films directly on YouTube, the reality is that it’s a market that exists for Nigerian filmmakers and many Nigerian filmmakers are able to explore the craft and because of the enablement of the ease and democratised distribution that YouTube offers.
Maybe there is a way to look at it and see how to maximise that opportunity for the people who are working within that market.
Perhaps we need to start having conversations on how to make it better because the fact that you can release your film directly on YouTube means that there are no gatekeepers anymore, meaning that people can just do production anyhow they want and they can just upload it on YouTube.
There is nobody to watch it and say oh this is not working, or this part of the story is not making sense; quality control is no longer necessary for people who release directly to YouTube.
The idea of eliminating gatekeepers will be an interesting development; it’s always better not to reduce gate keeping in any industry but for everything that has a positive aspect, there is a negative aspect to it.
What is the essence of gate keeping?
The positive aspect of gatekeeping is that it allows for quality control. It allows for theme/production to be vetted before it gets to the audience to ensure that audience will get value for their time, YouTube is usually free but people spend money on data to watch these things.
After a long time if the films that are released on YouTube are not vetted properly, the quality of storytelling will be watered down, the audience might get disillusioned, frustrated or walk away.
In that sense, the industry will lose that market and that window. I don’t think it’s what they want to see.
I see a lot of comments on social media complaining about the very lackadaisical attitude of filmmakers who don’t pay attention to simple things, coordinate well and I pray that the audience is not taken for a ride.
I fear that if the audience continues to complain like that, it might get to a point where they might just walk away and ignore Nigerian films and that is good for that sector in the film industry.
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