Urgent Creativity is Needed in Nollywood Movies

Need For Creativity in Nollywood 2

This post comes as a sequel to my previous post on three major areas that need urgent improvement in creativity in the technical aspects of film production in Nollywood movies. We had a shot on cinematography, today we will be talking about the remaining two areas:

2) Art Direction
Art direction in Nollywood movies is begging for immediate attention. It seems we pay attention to set design only when we tell historic stories. The whole idea of set design is realism to the story and aesthetics. I have seen a lot of big budget movies suffer from the syndrome of not paying detailed attention to the various elements on our screen. A good example can be seen in the set design of movies with present day props, pictures and artifacts shown in the stories flashback of 20 years ago. To avoid talking too much, I think we can learn some set design lessons from our music videos directors and set designers strength in interpreting back dated and contemporary stories appropriately with the appropriate props and locations. This norm among video craftsmen is worthy of emulation, even if some of the artiste sing rubbish.

3) Lighting
I will quickly refer you to Kunle Afolayan movies. His achievements in lighting is worthy of emulation. He mostly uses low key lighting to tell emotional stories and bring reality to sinister scenes. I would also love you to see the works of David Fincher who uses lighting to ensure audience focus on the subject by reducing the light beams on less important aspects of the scene. This brings less distraction and heightens audience interest as the story unfolds.

A few mentions…

Editing: Editors should be given the liberty to rewrite the story with pictures in line with the director’s vision than being policed around.

Fonts and Closing Disaster Credit: Fonts, opening and closing credits in SOME (not all) Nollywood movies needs prayers and fasting. I know a well reputable film academy in Nigeria, which I’ll personally advice, they hire a font/credit supervisor for their post productions.

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Photo Credit: Bose Oshin Instagram