I watched the 95th Oscar awards hosted by Jimmy Kimmel tonight and I can not help but wish and imagine when Nigerian-made movies will be getting nominated for the Oscars and bagging the awards.
Just like the way our music and sounds (the afrobeat) are winning on the International stage, our movies need to start getting International recognition too. Nollywood movies need to start winning International awards to attract International recognition in the industry just as the world’s beam light is in our music industry. When you attract International recognition, you will as well attract International big money spenders into the industry and that will be a game changer.
If you watch all the movies that won awards in tonight’s Oscar award event and then compare them to our Nollywood movies you will know that our movies are still very far behind with their production qualities, casting, script writing, editing etc.
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We are not there yet but we hope to get there in the near future and the fastest way for us to get there is for our moviemakers to start spending big money on their movies. Most Hollywood movies gulp millions of dollars as their production costs and that is why the movies do come out in an excellent state, unlike our Nigerian movies where a meager sum is spent to create a movie. It is garbage in and garbage out kind of situation; If you spend money on your movie, the movie will come out spectacularly and it will gross you big money at the box office but if you are frugal with your movie budgets which Nollywood movie makers are fond of, the movies will come out in a haphazard state.
You need to spend money on your casting/characters; pay your characters well especially the lead characters to motivate them to put up their best performances, you need to spend money on the script writing and the writer(s), you spend money on digital equipment for recording and production, you spend money on editing equipment for post-production, you spend money on sounds, costumes, designs, marketing etc. Most Nollywood movies never had the budget for all these things I just listed but Hollywood does have a budget for the minutest thing that took place inside a movie and those minor things are what add up to make a classic movie.
Do not even give me the excuse that Nollywood does not have the money to spend on movies like their western counterpart; I know just like I know my name that there are banks (both investment and commercial banks), individual investors, NGOs etc out there who are ready to fund movie projects. Some Nollywood producers have explored this form of funding. If you make great movies or write good scripts investors will approach you to fund and be part of the project.
Truth be told that some recent Nigerian movies have been stepping up in their games but it’s all baby steps. We need to invest more in the scripts, work with good directors and pay much attention to the production quality. For instance, most often you would see a Nollywood movie in which the voices of the character (if it is pre-recorded) are not properly synchronized into the acting; how can you win an award for such a movie with low production quality?
Just like I said, we are currently taking baby steps and moving towards the right direction with our recent movies; movies like Shanty Town (with a spectacular performance from Chidi Mokeme, the lead character), Linda Ikeji’s Dark October, Glamour Girls, Bling Lagosians etc are all high-quality movies in terms of production and good directing but we are not there yet but if we continue like this and spend more money in our movies then there is a possibility that Nigeria movies will win Oscar awards soon.