COVER STORY

COVER STORY

by Tony Francis and the Editorial Team

Posted on 24 Oct 2008

WHAT A PRODUCER DOES.

AKIN FADAHUNSI: The producer is the guy who runs the whole show. He organizes all the other components of the entire production. He is the one who disburses fund and makes sure that everything that needs to be paid for in the production is paid for. His creative input is not necessarily needed in the

production.

FAROUK LASAKI: The producer is the man who owns the production outfit. It is on his shoulders that the entire weight of the production lies.

MELLAMBY ILEOGBEN: The producer is the umbrella of the production. He shops for everything for the production from conceptualization to finalization.

WALE FANU: The producer may be somebody who has a small set-up like mine. He may be somebody who has just a brief case. We have many of them around. That is part of the development we have gotten ourselves into. The producer quotes for a job and the agency may ask for a treatment. That producer can now get a director employed by him to do that job. It is that director’s treatment that the producer will sell to the agency.

BUDGETING THE PRODUCTION:

AKIN FADAHUNSI: Every production needs the right budget to get the right treatment. A poor budget can turn a wonderful copy into a mediocre work. Agencies should realize that a measure of advert would require an equal measure of budget to interpret it properly. If for instance you need to shoot a commercial with a convertible car and a very classy guy, and you need #500,000 to put the car on set; if the agency says you have to make do with #100,000 and you therefore get the kind of car that sum can afford, the quality of the end product of the wonderfully crafted copy would be reduced. Poor budgeting forces you to use a dolly when you need a crane. Instead of the production blowing out the copy, it collapses it.

FAROUK LASAKI:

Budgeting is very important for every production. Though some production houses try to make money to the detriment of the production, but in here at ark resources, we plough back every money made into the business. That explains why we have almost all we need. I’ve heard of commercials in the range of 50 to 100 million naira been released for commercial shot in South Africa. If we can invest even one-third of the money in the local industry, we would be giving the locals the opportunity to be trained, to be empowered as well as to be gainfully employed.

MELLAMBY ILEOGBEN:

Every businessman wants to save money and have a high return on investment (ROI). However, quality is at stake here. In production, everything has to be paid for- sometimes even on an hourly basis. If you need to spend #100 on a job, why should you be offered #50 particularly considering the fact that human beings are people who need motivation. If you try to undercut them, you do not get the best. I’m aware of some producers who would cut corners and even record impressive results. But it is painstaking and not as easy as it seems. Besides, it is a competitive market; therefore, your price needs to be competitive.

WALE FANU:

I do not believe budgeting is a problem. When you go to London film school, at the end of your programme, you are given a very small budget to make a final year film. You are tied up with sound man, camera man, set-designer, make-up. It is you the producer that sits down to see how you can work with your team with the small budget. But when I am given money as a producer and the next thought that comes to my mind is that “hey, that dude just got a hummer2, therefore I must save money so I can buy a hummer3”, no doubt that will affect the job.

FAROUK’S POINT OF VIEW

NAIJA’S TECHNICAL CHALLENGES: Technically speaking, the problem of Nigeria is not that of equipments, but that of hands to man them. What we lack are skilled people. The skilled people we have need to update their knowledge and constantly retrain themselves. I think we also lack good gaffers to light the set. Many people don’t understand what it means to be a DOP. I look at what they have done and I see that they are just camera operators. There is a difference between a DOP and a cameraman.

MY WEAPONS: I’ve shot on 16mm, HD, normal digital DSM 570, 250, PD150.

MY IDEA OF A STANDARD: Look at what they’ve done. A standard production outfit can be known by looking at its show-reel for the past 6 months or one year.

THOSE TRAVELLING ADS! : Personally, I believe most agencies take our ads to shoot outside the country because they want to travel. The MTN commercial that we all love was shot here in the country, even though expatriates were brought in to execute it. I was in South Africa 2 months ago and was speaking to the director of a very top production company who told me that he doesn’t really understand why our agencies bring their ads here. “We’re just eating their money. These jobs could have been done in Nigeria.” When I asked why and he said “they just want to travel. They see it as an opportunity to travel.”

INDUSTRY VIRUS: Our biggest problem is the black skin. We believe that when a white man comes to do what he may not even know how to do, he’s the best person for the job. Whereas, there is a black man that can do it better. As long as the person is white, they believe he is superior.

MOST TASKING JOB: Zenith Bank and Ariel Gold for SO&U Saatchi& Saatchi. I had to construct the market from the scratch in my building. All I did was bring in the (traders).

PROFESSIONAL BADGE: Diploma Film Production; New York Film Academy, USA plus stint as associate producer at Even-Ezra studios.

SHOW-REEL: GALA. ZENITH BANK. ARIEL GOLD. CBN.

AKIN FADAHUNSI’S POINT OF VIEW.

NAIJA’S TECHNICAL CHALLENGES: I think we have good hands. But, we are not giving the ones with the potentials and the training the opportunity. The more you give your directors more exposure to good equipments, the better they’ll get. A client needs to believe in you to use. I think that belief is near non-existent.

MY WEAPONS: I’ve used DVC Pro HD which I got from Kingsley Ogoro. When I shoot documentaries, I use DV Cam 370 or the 570. The 370 has a better tonal quality but the 570 has a better skin display. Use of appropriate lights, HMIs and lots of movement. I love movements!

MY IDEA OF A STANDARD: I think first and foremost, the first thing to consider is the human resource. How much experience does the executive producer have? What is his focus? You should also take a look at the agency’s show-reel.

THOSE TRAVELLING ADS! : It is a very touchy issue because a lot of interests are involved. There are so many reasons why they take their jobs out. However, I believe many agencies take their jobs out because they believe they would get a better result. What they should ask is that are they not paying for the quality they seek after? You can’t pay a foreign company 25 million naira and pay the local 5million and expect same quality. We are not magicians!

INDUSTRY VIRUS: Agencies need to start believing in Nigerian productions. We have people who are as technically deep as these white people we seem to always want to give the jobs to. Where you are supposed to use a 4k, you are forced to use a 1.2 because the budget has been cut. Where you are supposed to use a 6k light, you are forced to use a 2k. Sometimes, they cut the budget so much that you want to shoot on HD. If this industry must grow, clients and agencies need to start believing in the local hands.

MOST TASKING JOB: Nah! None.

PROFESSIONAL BADGE: Communication and theatre arts (combined honours) from university of Ibadan. Worked with Tade Ogidan as assistant/associate producer.

SHOW-REEL: Buttermint sweet. Luckies sweet. Mobil. The first V-mobile commercial (purely graphics). CBN. Gossy spring water. Christmas carol ad for FCMB in 2004. NSL and all Transcorp tvc.

MELLAMBY’S POINT OF VIEW

OUR TECHNICAL CHALLENGES: Same old challenges. Power, access to facilities and so on.

MY WEAPONS: I rent most of what I use.

MY IDEA OF A STANDARD: It is about the producer who is able to get the best hands and every other thing needed to have a good production. A producer who can save some money for the company without compromising quality. I think it is all about brains. The ideal production house is that which can harness all these factors together to get the desired result.

THOSE TRAVELLING ADS: It is a dicey thing. Maybe, because of accessibility to higher equipment. The truth is that we should believe in Nigeria and the people working in Nigeria. Nothing stops the agency from commissioning a job for a local producer and then instructing him to source for materials from outside. Sometimes, it could be because you like the work of a particular director and you want to replicate it. But I have a problem with all the works going out without giving the local hands a chance to express themselves and prove themselves.

INDUSTRY VIRUS: Mediocrity. There is a lot of mediocrity in the industry. There are so many charlatans masquerading as producers and directors. They are the ones that give the rest of us a bad name.

MOST TASKING JOB: I put in the same amount of energy into every job I do. There’s no small job to me. They’ve all been challenging. If I see a job where finance, logistics or the agency producer is a problem, I try to step over it. But if it still doesn’t work, I opt out.

PROFESSIONAL BADGE: Director with over 15 years experience spanning across sound, television editing and producing.

SHOW-REEL: GLOBACOM, Documentaries for MTN, First bank, promos for V-mobile, Coke, Nestle Golden morn, Delta soap, and Lulu drinks.

WALE FANU’S POINT OF VIEW:

ON TECHNICAL CHALLENGES: Our technical hands have just simply refused to develop. Everybody down to the carpenter is vital to a production. We have good lighting people who if given a little more training have the potential or being D.O.Ps. Instead, what we do is fly a white man from abroad. Our people too have refused to learn. We have not taken time to really educate ourselves. It could be expensive and slightly difficult in the beginning, but is achievable. At the time television started to blow technically, that was when we had ‘cock-crow at dawn’, ‘mirror in the sun’, and ‘winds against my soul’; people started to see the beauty of the story as executed by the technical parties. Good sound, good pictures and good lighting. Some of the things were not as easily produced as you saw them on the screen. Some could just be wooden sets, flower pots put here and there… well groomed directors came into set. You were able to communicate your own vision to your cameraman. No matter how beautiful a building looks, it was built by a group of artisans, carpenters, painters and of course, supported by the right budget.

THOSE TRAVELLING ADS! : If I decide as a marketing person to take my job to Saudi Arabia, maybe, because they have the ideology I want, nothing should stop me! It is left for you the home grown producer to prove to me that the work I was going to take to Geneva can be done here in Ajegunle and will cost less than what I’ll spend in Geneva.

Presently, we don’t have any legal limitations. In the early days, you can’t just pick up your camera and start to shoot in the streets without being a member of ACCT. But you come to Nigeria and every Tom, Dick and Harry picks the camera and shoots everywhere. We are just developing ourselves and we are doing it very slowly. We need to take our time. So, when you are working on a commercial and you need to put up a frame, you start to look around for it. There are no hardware shops. But the whites have a catalog of everything. With just a call it would be delivered, cut to size.

INDUSTRY VIRUS: In all honesty, how much has our society developed. You go out to the street to shoot a street scene; you battle with cables that are an eyesore. Does that portray Nigeria in good light? But when you lay the same camera in oxford, you don’t see one single cable. Who takes you into consideration when they are constructing these roads? Who says “don’t forget our film people oh! They might need it in the future.” No! It’s not done. We have to our own detriment many things working against us. We are half baked but think we are full baked. We have to admit that we are not there but we can get there and start to work towards getting there. From the days of our fathers, we have learnt to respect the man in the white skin. You discover that they still command superiority from us!

PARTING SHOT! : Tunde Kelani was trained as a cinematographer in London film school, but he loved stories, so he developed the art of writing his own films. Tade Ogidan studied film in the United States. He also has a flair for camera movement. But, I’ve never heard him say he is a cameraman because it is morally wrong for him to claim that. It is easy for people to claim such in this industry because there is no control.

QUOTABLE QUOTES

“The young generation is unwilling to learn. Without discipline, you can not fit into any part of this industry. Whichever area you go, there is an opportunity for you. Everybody wants to be a director. Thank God the equipments are getting smaller and lighter. In our days, they were bigger and heavier. I remember that omo was shot on film and ran for about 10yrs. In fact, the present generation may not be able to do film as they lack the discipline required.”

WALE FANU

“There is a generational gap in terms of knowledge on the job. We need to begin to train people on the job. Right now, it is very hard to get a good editor. Everybody wants to free-lance. In that way, how do you develop? You want to learn with other people’s jobs. I’m not saying we need paper qualification, but experiential qualification is very important.”

AKIN FADAHUNSI

“There is a lot of mediocrity in the industry. If the new generation does not train itself, what we would eventually have is a generation that has lost it. A generation that cannot stand side by side by their foreign counterparts. A generation that cannot meet up with the standards of the profession.”

MELLAMBY ILEOGBEN

“The new generation is in too much of a rush to get there that they neglect the basics. Some people call themselves editors. Yet, when you give them a script, you still have to sit with them to tell them what to do. Your ability to press buttons and turn knobs on the console doesn’t automatically make you an editor. It only makes you an operator because you lack the creative wherewithal.”

COVER STORY

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