I don’t teach my students about old Nollywood versus new Nollywood.
They are not students of film studies.
They are students of film production.
For them, taxonomies must be much less ineluctable. For them, taxonomies of all kinds must, in essence and in the final analysis, be more concretely evidential; more utilitarian.
So, I teach them about the two kinds of filmmakers.
About filmmakers who make films.
And about that other kind of filmmakers— those filmmakers who make money.
I teach them that those filmmakers who make films are those filmmakers who do not understand the nature of film—that film is the combination of sight & sound; that film is that rare combination of sight and sound that privileges sight. That film occupies the centrality of position in the mass media mix. That the impact of film is tied to the level of industrialization. That film must earn value.
I teach them that those filmmakers who make films are those filmmakers who do not understand why film must earn value—i.e. filmmakers who do not understand that the context of production is the mix of the social and the technological. Filmmakers who do not understand the value adding significance of the assembly line nature of production—who cannot make capital out of how the 253 different trades/crafts/professions that constitute the film value chain come together to birth a film.
I teach them that those filmmakers who make films are those filmmakers who do not understand that film as a capital-intensive-value-making-and-value earning enterprise is driven by 4 vectors: by the technical vector and the creative/artistic vector and the philosophical/ethical vector and the entrepreneurial/managerial vector.—That the very base of these four inter-twined vectors is the entrepreneurial/managerial; and that, consequently, film has to be business before it can be art.
In contradistinction, I teach them that those filmmakers who make money are:
• Those filmmakers who understand the nature of film
• Those filmmakers who understand why and how film must earn value; and
• Those filmmakers who understand that film is business before it is anything else.
In teaching them about those filmmakers who make money, because of the primacy of the entrepreneurial/managerial vector, I decompose the business landscape of film—I teach them how those filmmakers who make money, unlike those filmmakers who make films, must design the business template which yields them invaluable information which they factor into their film project.—Information bearing on:
• Marketing & distribution plan [including the demographics, psychographics & geographics of the audience; including, also, the strategy that creates top of the mind awareness by exploiting the relationship between product, media and audience]
• Sales & revenue targets
• Below and above the line expenditures
• Business risks
• ROI; cash flow [of investor capital, of income and of distribution of income]; and
• Schedules/Timelines.
In further decomposing the business landscape of film, I teach my film production students how those filmmakers who make money, unlike those filmmakers who make films
• hardly ever commit their own funds in the making of their films—how they know only too well that the money they need is out there, within reach—for they know all about proposals, pitching and the sundry techniques of sourcing production capital resources from sundry sources; and
• their frenetic search for techniques for the very deliberate deployment and exploitation of all the identifiable milestones [previews, media advertising, initial release in major theatres, promotional tours, planting articles and tidbits in newspapers and the social media, strong advertising campaigns, release in theatres across the country, and CD/DVD release] in the film’s journey to markets near and far.
Consequently, to the film production student, the impassioned distinction being made between old
Nollywood and new Nollywood actually does amount to a distinction without a difference.
The reason is simply this: to the film production student, any distinction must be pragmatic and empirical—any distinction must be sourced within the potential of film to deliberately
• Create value
• Distribute value; and
• Earn value—
and all this in that inexorable context defined by the vectors of creativity, ethics, technology and entrepreneurship.
And so, with my film production students, I attempt to systematically comb through the application requirements for some film grants and loan portfolios. I go into Project Act—Nollywood and I show why only three Nigerian filmmakers were able to access the highest grants; and why most filmmakers drew a blank….
I take a sample from the highest grossing Nollywood films and another sample from the most significant box office flops. From the two samples I build a case study on the business of film—on making money with films or merely making films.
Yes, I don’t teach my students about the so called distinction between old and new Nollywood.
They are film production students—and so, I have to return again and again to that distinction which applies in every film culture: the distinction between: those filmmakers who make films; and those other filmmakers who make money.
