Film journalist and culture promoter, Dr Shaibu Hussein, has advised filmmakers, especially in the Yoruba sub-sector, to shun cheap titles that, he believes, too easily give out their movies.
According to him, once a producer adopts a title that is too transparent, wordy or generally cheap, he or she has lost many potential viewers who can easily guess the direction the story will go.
He said he would not, as a person, give his time to such producers.
He noted this in Ibadan, Oyo State, last Tuesday, when the Theatre Arts and Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria (TAMPAN) held a conference on ‘Alternative Distribution, Solution to Poverty in Nollywood’.
Hussein was one of the resource persons, alongside acclaimed scholar and dramatist, Professor Bode Sowande; Dr Adebukola Adagbada; and FilmOne Managing Director, Babatope Moses.
He decried a situation a producer would fumble to the market with a title like Ádekunle the Killer’, or ‘Ta lo Pa Chief’.
“With titles like these, you have already given out everything. I don’t need to watch your film again. In ‘Adekunle the Killer’, I already know that someone is going to kill. If you ask, ‘Ta lo Pa Chief’ in your title, I already know that a chief is going to be killed, while everyone will be looking for the killer. So, I won’t watch ‘Ta lo Pa Chief’?” He said.
The long-term juror with the African Movie Academy Awards, who recently clocked 50, further stressed the need to devote more wit, energy and creativity to promotion after the movie might have been made.
He said, “Marketing is as important as the film. This is what a company like EbonyLife has realised. It does it like a job, with a department focusing on promotion. This is crucial to the success of every film-maker. Film-making is deliberate, not a pa pa pa job.”
He added that the practitioners should learn to pay attention to details – from conception to completion of the project. Urging them to go into partnership to make the job lighter and richer, Hussein said films were ‘sold’ at three stages: conception, pre-production and production and completion.
