THE CHEESINESS OF NOLLYWOOD: First Take

Temidayo Johnson
Jul 28, 2017 · 4 min read

Nollywood is the popular nickname used to identify the Nigerian film industry. This is the film industry responsible for the production of Films in Nigerian languages and also in English and Pidgin.

Historically speaking, it’s an industry that has existed from the times before Nigeria’s independence with the works of pioneers like Adeyemi Love Afolayan, Eddie Ugboma, Hubert Ogunde, Moses Olaiya, Duro Ladipo to mention a few.

The boom in the sales of Nigerian films around 1992 has made many to attribute that year as the “start of Nollywood”.

An industry estimated to be worth close to 4 billion dollars (3.3 billion in 2015) is more of a quantity producing rather than a quality producing industry.

With thousands of films produced per year, Most films can be broadly grouped into the following

1. Cultural Stories,Village Shenanigans and Epic

2. Police and Thief, Thuglife

3. Family situation films

4. Ritualistic and Power tussle films

5. Just for laugh films

NB: some movies fall outside this categorization

What is wrong?

There are simple reasons why some Nigerians will never spend money buying a Nigerian film or watching it on cable that they pay for. Many believe it's pure waste of time to sit and watch a Nollywood film but the numbers seem to be in favor of Nollywood as the revenue is quite high.

The gross earnings of Nollywood movies in recent times seem to show that Nigerian movies might be good or things are changing.

According to Variety, “The Wedding Party” capped a record-setting year for the Nigerian box office, which grossed 3.5 billion naira (around $11.5 million) in 2016, with nearly 30% coming from local pics, marking the first time Nigerian films have crossed the billion naira threshold.

Movies like The Wedding Party, Fifty, October 1 and the likes are a breed of movies that many non-Nollywood watchers have subscribed to and they might be seen as new standards but not all high earning Nigerian movies have left the park of “Cheesiness”.

I believe that what is wrong with Nollywood movies at the moment is what should be corrected/Worked on so it becomes better.

Plotting of Nollywood stories

Most of nollywood movies seem to have a semblance of plots to the extent that you can probably predict every part of the movie from the first ten minutes of the movie. Although this does not apply to all movies, the majority of Nollywood films fall in this category.

I believe there are very good writers in Nigeria that can bring to life good stories that would be a pleasure to watch. Maybe the economics of what sells and what is easy to make is what is dominant at the moment but good stories will always sell and would be recognised.

Casting

I would not say we do not have a great crop of talent in Nollywood, but a point of dissatisfaction lies in typecasting. Some actors act the same character across different films to the point that not much seems to be expected from them in terms of artistic expression…Just be gateman always in movies, be the wicked mother in law or be identified with sayings or slangs in all movies.

Well…this is where most cliché comes into Nigerian movies. Although to be fair, most actor who have become victims of typecasting are good actors but I guess they have to earn with whatever comes their way so they take on typecasting roles.

I have watched a few Nigerian movies and I can only wonder who is in charge of casting this?.

To be fair (to those in charge of casting too), maybe they are working with what they have but I still believe that the consciousness of improving the art of filmmaking in Nigeria is needed even to the point of casting quality actors.

Cinematic techniques

Artistic expression of the directors and cinematographers go a long way to make a film pleasurable to watch. Although, a few film directors pay attention to this in Nollywood, some just take a camera “Point and Shoot” in my opinion.

It might not matter to a person that wants to just watch the film and move onto the next but to viewers that appreciate art, a conscious effort to improve storytelling via the visual medium makes all the difference.

Many movies have too many cuts and it seems like they do not know when a cut is not needed or they are unaware of the effect of a good shot has on the emotional feel of a scene.

Many Nollywood movies have a practice of having cinematic shots only at scene transitions and the sad story is that these shots might not in any way tell any story that compliments the movie. They are just cut away shots used to transition.

I guess it was supposed to be CAMPUS CARTEL

There some other things that are still very off about Nollywood including the Subtitling, Title of movies, over flogging issues to fill up time, Jumping on every trending issue to make a movie that is unrelated to the subject matter, making a cheesy version of a foreign movie, unnecessary explicitness…..You can add to the list. (Sigh)

Well, to all that have conscious efforts at making good movies, kindly continue to do so. I hope you would challenge others to step out of the zone of cheesiness in Nollywood.

Temidayo Johnson

Written by

Human; Filmmaker; Photographer

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