Okoh Aihe
12 July 2008
Mr. Orji, what brings you to Los Angeles?
Well, I came to LA for the annual Nollywood Convention, and also to be at the Los Angeles Film Festival and to receive a presentation from the Nigerian Film and Video Censors Board, NFVCB.
Were your expectations met?
Zak Orji and friends
Yes. All my expectations have been met so far. The convention this year was very thought-provoking, very interesting.
And the good thing is in this particular convention we also had a very strong government presence by way of the Nigerian Film and Video Censors Board, ably represented by the DG, Mr. Emeka Mba, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Information and Communications, distinguished Senator Ayogu Eze, and also the Chairman of the House Committee on Information and Communications, Hon. Dino Melaye.
They were all present at this years convention and also attended some sessions of the Los Angeles Film Festival.
I think this is very interesting; this is very desirable because it gives them first hand contact with industry players not only in Nigeria but elsewhere in the world and also gives them first hand information about probably what they need to do as far as Nollywood is concerned.
On a personal basis can you let me in on some of your observations both at the Nollywood Convention and the Los Angeles Film Festival?
Well, for the Nollywood Convention I think there should be more participation by industry practitioners and I understand the constraint.
Are you talking of Nigerian industry practitioners?
Yes, from the Nigerian end and also those in the Diaspora here in the United States and elsewhere. I know the foundation has been faced with constraints of finance, of funding and it will be necessary for them to start planning well in advance for next year and then begin to stretch their hands to reach out to corporate organisations in Nigeria who would like to identify with this kind of thing to gain more mileage for themselves, both locally and internationally.
Such organisations can then also provide some funding and enable the foundation to do the annual convention in a way that will be more impactful, in a way that will generate more interest, in a way that will enable more industry people, both from Nigeria and other parts of the world to be part of the convention. It will now provide a greater platform for collaboration which can only take the industry forward.
What of the LA Film Festival?
The LA Film Festival also opened our eyes to a lot of things. We attended some of the Finance Conferences and other conferences at the festival and we came to one definite conclusion: the industry here in Hollywood in America and also elsewhere in the world face the same challenges that we face- challenges of funding for filmmakers, challenges of funding faced by filmmakers, the desire to have your film well distributed, the scramble for participation in certain designated and well sort after film festivals like the Sundance Film Festival which receive thousands and thousands of entries but at the end of the day, only a handfuls are selected for screening at the festival.
We discovered that it is the sort of challenges we face back home that they also face here but it is
Mr.Zack Orji,
more complicated here raising fund for any particular project you want to do.
Some projects do not necessarily attract any kind of funding because the funding organisations do not consider it worth their while; for example, any project that is less than $10m, most of the big funding organisations are not interested because they look at the cost they are going to incur in terms of promoting the film, in terms of advertising, you know the cost attached to distribution, the cost attached to theatrical releases, they look at the whole thing.
A film that cost $5m could cost about $35m to get distributed. They look at all these and just opt for high budget projects.
So, this also creates problems for independent filmmakers in terms of sourcing funds. This just makes me come to the conclusion that we should appreciate what we have at home and then give it everything we have got.
It has also made me come to the conclusion that we should not go cap in hand begging, begging people from Hollywood to help us project our own industry, help us do this, help us do that, help us train our people - when we make statements like that, when we make requests like that, they just sit back and look at us as people who are very unserious, very naïve, people who don't know exactly what they want because it is the same challenges that they face.
It is only from home, it is only from Nigeria that we should generate funding that we need to catapult our own industry to international standard the way we want it. It is only from home that we can do that.
I am also very happy that after the convention the National Film and Video Censors Board in Association with the Senate and the House of Representatives ably represented by the two gentlemen who came here, have taken it up as a challenge to meet the various needs and requirements of the industry as long as these needs and requirements are appropriately channeled.
Thirdly, you said there was a presentation made to you by the Censors Board. Could you put us in the picture; what that presentation was for?
Last year in October at the Nigeria in the Movies Road Show organised by the Nigerian Film and Video Censors Board in London, a pitch was organised by the Censors Board in collaboration with the Nollywood Foundation.
At the pitch session was an international panel made up of filmmakers from France, the United Kingdom, from other countries that were there to assess projects presented to them by filmmakers from Nigeria; not only filmmakers from Nigeria but also from the UK and France.
I am glad to say that the project that I pitched was adjudged the most critically acclaimed. In the words of the Censors Board, I came out the winner at the pitch session. They had promised to generate funds to see the winning project to fruition.
The project is going to be set in Los Angeles, in Lagos and in Kinshasa. It is going to be an international features collaboration between actors in the United States, actors from Nigeria and actors from the Democratic Republic of Congo and it is a film that will be done in Negara, in English and in French.
The presentation made to me by the Censors Board was in the value of $5,000 to enable me now to begin to put together a well written script, a script that is written to conform with international standard or to Hollywood standard as you might say, so that at the end of the day when we have a good script we can then begin to talk about casting and other processes.
We plan to shoot the film and shoot it very well and make it a film that we can all be proud of, a film that we can take to any international film festival, a project that will be a catalyst that will now create a veritable platform to enable us reach our colleagues in the US.
At what level is the script now because I do know we had discussed a few things concerning that project?
Prior to my coming to Los Angeles I have already been in touch with Michael Ajakwe Jr. a Nigerian who is a big player here in Hollywood.
He is a writer, a director and also a producer. He is produced some very notable projects. He has been a supervising producer on Eve. He has also won two Emmy Awards, this being the highest award on television, gotten a number of NWACP nominations and nominations from other awards giving bodies.
At the time Michael is involved in putting together a script for the NWACP awards and is also involved in the BET awards. I had already been in touch with him when he came to organise the master script conference at BOBTV early in the year about doing the final script of this project. Right now he is in the process of going through the script and we are having another meeting today (about two weeks ago) to look at the way forward.
He has already graciously accepted that he wants to be associated with the project.
At the airport in Amsterdam we were having a discussion on Nollywood and you mentioned something about transition of the older generation. Can we look at Nollywwod and have a kind of replay of that dialogue?
Well, there are so many concerns about Nollywood. We have a lot of things that we are grappling with.
But talking about transition, the point I made is for the industry practitioners to be able to transit. For example, those who have been in the industry right from time must be able to reach out to those who are entering the industry at this time because the industry is a very dynamic one and there are always changes that are taking place; changes in preferences, changes in fashion, changes in the preferences of the viewing audience, the need to give the audience a wider variety of choices.
It is necessary for the older people in the industry not to be fixated. It is necessary for them to exercise a great level of flexibility, open mindedness, reaching out to the younger ones, collaborating with them to do projects that will always keep them relevant. It should be that way both in the movie and music industry.
For example, recently Madonna, whom you know is more than 50 years, has always been in relevance. Madonna recently did a collaboration with Justin Timberlake. It's like the old reaching out to the new and that collaboration catapulted the album to number one position for a number of weeks. Now we have a number of older musicians who have been there before; the good thing is that they provided the platform, they were there and they were the ones the younger generation was looking in their heydays.
My thinking is that they shouldn't just sit down today and take the back seat and think there is nothing else they should do. I understand that recently Bongos Ikwe is trying to do a collaboration with some younger people. That is the way forward.
If you look around you even in terms of movies you will see older people coming together with younger people to do projects that will keep them in the limelight. The issue is that you must always make yourself relevant.
That is the point. You must always make yourself relevant because that is what entertainment is all about. That you were there before doesn't mean you should now take the back seat.
The other problem we are grappling with in Nollywood is the problems of distribution. A distribution guarantees that you make your returns and you will be able to go back and do another project. I believe the reason why banks are very hesitant about funding films is because they haven't seen any particular project that will be like a test case, an experimental case that will be a reference point.
That is the problem and that is what we must address because above all, this is a business. You may call it show business, yet there is the show aspect and there is the business aspect. We have been doing the show aspect.
We should now face the business aspect. When you have a good distribution network then you already know what capacity you should be pushing into the market. A proper distribution network enables you to plan. It is distribution that guarantees income. It is distribution that pushes production.
That distribution is what we do not have in the Nigerian motion picture industry. And if distribution is well taken care of, it will greatly minimise piracy. When we talk about distribution we do not talk only about videos and VCDs but also theatrical distribution.
There are other problems however, that we are grappling with in the industry. Our scripts are very, very porous. Our scripts are very predictable. Our scripts are very badly written.
A lot of our scripts are plagiarized works, they are not original. It's regrettable. You will see some so called well renowned script writers in Nigeria, believe me what they simply do is pick other people's work and copy verbatim and then give to an executive producer.
I don't think that should be so. We should start doing original works, or if you are adapting the work that somebody already did before, have the courtesy and decency to give credit to that person, have the courtesy and decency to get authorization from that person before you use their works.
Are there other issues you want to raise?
There is a lot of disunity in the industry. There is a lot of naivety. Many industry practitioners are very naïve about things. They sit down complacently and expect to be spoon-fed.
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