NOLLYWOOD Vs HOLLYWOOD <vote>

Pitting Hollywood the entertainment capital of the world versus the struggling “film industry” of Nigeria. So why compare the two? Because that is what most of the actors will tell you, the Nigerian film industry is, or at least is going at par with Hollywood.
Most “Nollywood”, which first of all is a ridiculous unoriginal name, would tell you they are recognized all over the world. By whom! Other Nigerians, or foreigners that have Nigerians as friends .Or do they simply mean that if they walk down the streets any where in the world .That’d they’d be recognized, the way Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts would be recognized. With screaming fans, clamoring for their autographs, and the necessity of security so they aren’t torn apart by those trying to catch a glimpse of them, or just brush up against them. Somehow I don’t think so.

Hollywood is a completely different industry from what we have here in Nigeria. Hollywood has been around from early turn of the century. And even then they turned out high quality movies, featuring stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, The Three Stooges and many more.

Silent movies shot in black and white kicked off motion picture. The actors played out the script, and through their body language, their actions/reaction and subtitles the viewer was able to understand what was going on. Later on classics like; Gone with the wind, From Here to Eternity, Casablanca came, introducing color and sound to the silver screen. They also presented unforgettable characters. Clark Gable presented a charming Rhett Butler, and his line on exiting the mansion “Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn” said over 50 years ago, still rings in the ears of any one that has had the opportunity of seeing the movie.
Over the years many unforgettable characters have been brought to life by magnificent actors. The character of Michael Corleone adapted to a screenplay from Mario Puzo’s book The Godfather, was critically acclaimed and was so successful it warranted two sequels. And it is considered and rated as one of the greatest movies ever made. Al Pacino’s delivery of his role was excellent. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, The God Father cleared the Academy awards that year. The God Father is still a classic, enjoyed by many, and is a must in any serious movie collection

In preparing for his role in the movie Gone in sixty seconds, where he plays a Car thief. He went to two different driving schools. First of all a stunt driving school ,then a fast driving school, that taught him how to handle a high performance car ,at speeds of over 100m/h.This learning process took over six months .For an actor of his status he could easily have left it for a stunt double to do. The same went for Keanu Reeves for the blockbuster sci -fi hit, The matrix. Reeves and his co-stars Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus), Carrie Ann Moss (Trinity) ,went for several months of physical training, hand to hand combat and martial arts. For those that never watched The Matrix ,it is the action movie that revolutionized the way movies in the action genre where made. It’s no wonder it went on to become a trilogy with Matrix: Reloaded, and Matrix: Revolutions as follow up installments.
The hit movie Troy, which brought director Joel Schumacher’s view of what the battle of Troy must have been like starred Brad Pitt(Spy Game ,Ocean’s Eleven)Eric Bana(Hulk, Black Hawk Down)Orlando Bloom(Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean).For the 3-5 minute scene where Achilles(Pitt) fights Hector (Bana) ,to avenge his cousins wrongful death. The two trained three months for this scene alone.

Rene Zelwegger in her portrayal of “Bridget Jones”, a much loved character from a popular British novel ,put on several pounds ,to fully play the role of the overweight hopeless romantic. The sacrifice paid off because the movie was a huge success. The writer of the book was overwhelmed at how well she brought out the essence of the character that till then existed only in print. Zelwegger shed the weight for other roles, and once again put the weight on again for her reprisal of the role in 2004 sequel.
Action star Sylvester Stallone of the “Rocky “and “Rambo” installments, put aside his muscular tough guy image, to play a slow overweight sheriff alongside Harvey Keitel in 1997’s Copland .Christian Bale (Equilibrium, Snatch, Reign of Fire) shed several pounds to play the emaciated, sleep deprived, Machinist in the movie The Machinist .For his role in the upcoming movie Batman Begins he has to beef up to fit the role of “the caped crusader.“Rapper/Actor and Academy Award nominee Will Smith ,for his role as “the greatest” Muhammad Ali underwent several months of training, to convincing portray the boxing legend, he also had to bulk up for the role, which required a strict diet, and regimented physical training.

Jamie Fox ,the 20005 Academy Award winner for Best actor, only the third black man to win such an award, after Sidney Portier and Denzel Washington .In preparation for his portrayal of the late music legend Ray Charles, whom went blind at a tender age. Fox not only spent time with Charles virtually blind for 14 hours of the day. All day while on set, and even during his lunch hour off set. Just to be able to get into the role. Fox was so successful in pulling it off; a life long friend of Charles was convinced that it was his friend he was watching on the screen.

What exactly am I driving at? How many of our actors, are wiling to show such passion and dedication to their craft. How many are willing to make such sacrifices; lose weight, add weight, months of training, week& weeks of learning, for just one role.
Most of the Hollywood actors when given a role, they go the distance to be consumed in that role in order for them to play that role to perfection. If playing a soldier, they spend time on a military base, going through boot camp and talking to soldiers. If playing a blind person, they experience what it’s like to live day to day without sight .If playing a boxer; they go through the training professionals boxers go through, taking the hits and the falls, the diets and the weight training. Somehow I don’t picture our “Nollywood” stars going the distance for a role.

In the western world, film making is a project and like any project run by a company. It takes serious strategizing and planning to bring to reality. Everyone is assigned his role, the producer, directors, editors; cinematographers right down to the personal assistants each know their role. And anyone that doesn’t play his role well, risks delaying or jeopardizing the entire project, which is more money for the studios. Such projects usually take weeks and months to shoot. The process of auditioning alone is long and tedious, in which hundreds of hopefuls are screened for a single role. Thousands of actors line up with their pictures and acting resumes, and the casting team is tedious, with hundreds rejected.

The filming of the hit Epic The Lord of the Rings, which is probably the best trilogies of all time, was shot back to back over a two year period, in the lonely mountains and plains of New Zealand.

The Hollywood star will star in an average of 3- 5 movies in a year. Here in Nigeria an actor averages that in a month. Out of ten movies you will see the same actor at least six times. Which means it’s a little under a week to make the average Home Video .This is the same period it takes to shoot a music video which may not be up to 5 minutes. If you doubt me watch MTV’s making the video. It takes about three days to shot a music video, and that includes the all nighters they put in. This is the same period, in which we choose to shoot a movie of about 1hr 30 minutes, it’s quite sad.

There’s a lot wrong with the Nigerian movie industry that needs to be corrected if we want to be at par with Hollywood. Now you’d probably say, how we can compare ourselves with Hollywood, they are many years ahead of us in the business and they have big studios backing their films with million dollar budgets. Yes! ,that is true but in the western world the film industry is split into two .There are films backed by big studios such as Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount,Tristar etc,Then there are movies called Independent movies. This means they are on their own privately funded, and can’t afford to waste any part of the budget re-shooting scenes unnecessarily, or irrelevant scenes. There are also movie makers that fund everything out of their own pocket. The movie Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels featured unknowns, on a tight budget. The movie was a runaway hit, and it shot Jason Statham to the international scene, he’s since starred in movies like, Transporter and alongside martial arts superstar Jet Li in the futuristic The One.

Many “home videos” lack the basics that go into making a movie. Some of the basic things that are required to enable the viewer understand the story that the director is trying to tell. The scripts most of the time have no head or tale and hold no water.
When a director is making a film he’s meant to
1) Convey a lot about a character in a short time.
2) Convey to the viewer the period in which the story takes place.

The establishing scene at the beginning of the movie is meant to tell us about the setting of the film. The time period, in which it is set past, present or future and the setting urban or rural .We are then meant to understand about the main character that the movie revolves round to a certain extent, within the first ten minutes on the scene. What kind of background he’s from, what kind of job he has, is he introverted or extroverted. All these can be read from the types of props used .Props help establish a scene, whether it be clothing, cars. In the majority of our movies there exist various plot holes that don’t go unnoticed. “The term "Plot Hole" is a catchall word that includes several common writing mistakes. Those can be: A character inexplicably looses her personal drive, desire or need (or gains a new one) A character starts acting and thinking in a new way suddenly and without explanation. An event that has nothing to do with the story suddenly happens conveniently solving the story or "thickening the plot". The author starts talking about a completely different theme without finishing answering (or even questioning) the previous one. Either way, a plot hole is sensed as if someone took out several pages of the book or several feet of the film”.
The monologues and voice overs, such as thoughts or conversations going on in the heads of the characters, sound like a child playing with a recording device. These are vital aspects of a film that convey the moods and thoughts of the characters. Close up’s of a character, show his relevance in that scene. Action, dialogue and how the film is shot, go a long way in telling the story.
The Nigerian film industry is plagued with mindless scripts. We are either displaying Prostitution, Witchcraft, The Occult of forced marriage. We seem to lack the ability to come up with stories that actually have a head or tail. When we actually do, there are the same plot written over again and re released with new characters and most of the time the same actors. We are lacking in originality of both script and movie titles. We have silly titles, titles stolen from foreign movies, or titles that have no relevance to the movie.

The directors shoot irrelevant scenes that have little or no place in the telling of the story, and this leads to sequels that aren’t required. The actors underplay or overplay scenes. Scenes that require them to show a certain extent of emotion such as; anger, sorrow or frustration, they lack the ability to convincingly show us such. A situation where a character, meets up with another character that previously defrauded him, and then has the effrontery to show up without remorse and ask for a favor, the reaction is more like that of somebody who a spoon of rice had stolen from him. A character inexplicably looses her personal drive, desire or need (or gains a new one) A character starts acting and thinking in a new way suddenly and without explanation. An event that has nothing to do with the story suddenly happens conveniently solving the story or "thickening the plot". The author starts talking about a completely different theme without finishing answering (or even questioning) the previous one.
To be a 100% sincere with ourselves, do we have any “home video” which we can present at the Cannes Film Festival. Can we say that we have any movie that is worthy of an Oscar. Do we have any movies that we can compare in every aspect from production, direction and performance to The sound of Music, or west side story, movies made over 40 years ago.

Do we have any thespian (actor) that has given an Oscar deserving performance? Do we have any unforgettable characters like Michael Corleone played by Al Pacino, Maximus by Russell Crow, and Forest Gump by Tom Hanks? Where are the Anthony Hopkins, Bruce Willis, Denzel Washington, and Morgan Freeman’s of Nigeria. Magnificent performers that are capable of fitting into a variety of roles no matter how diverse. If our actors leave the shores, can they get work in Hollywood, and will they be able to co star with Hollywood’s finest without making complete fools of themselves.

We should stop using a diseased yardstick in judging ourselves, declaring that our films are watched all over West Africa, and use Hollywood as a benchmark for the quality of movies we make.

Nollywood, Oh Puh Leez, Spare Me

Too long ...dont feel like readin

u could have summarised it.

the length kind of put me off reading the whole thing. But to the first few lines i read, i don't think Nigerian actors are claiming such fame. It's more like Hollywood being a "role model" for Nollywood. i don't think anyone in their right minds would put them on the same level. besides, you've got to give it to them. it's not like the resources to produce "great" movies are readily available and at a reasonable price in Nigeria. They are doing the best the can with what they have.

I freaking read the whole thing.

@luciengrey

I read it all and you are spot on - assuming there is anyone barmy enough to put both side by side.

Still there are those that will think you are talking rubbish

The truth in what you say is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.

Is it original?

Yes it's original, and sorry that it was so long,noted that it could have been summarised,but there's so much to say.Concerning the money spent on films. You don't need a whole lot of money to make a great film, just a great script and dedicated cast. There's no need for pyrotechincs,big explosions and blue ccreen technology.Most Nigerian films are dramas or romance, so all they need is a well written script,and great peformers, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels had a not so big budget, and look at how good it was.

NOOYWOOD IS THE BEST

Good post if a bit too long!

But just to balance the scale a bit, you have to add the Nigerian audience as a factor.

Nigerians tend to watch any old crap and mostly via pirates.

This does not encourage filmmakers to put a lot of effort into it as they will not see much profit.

The crap being spewed out by the 100's in Nigeria should be shown on TV and financed by the TV, giving the film maker more incentive.

Piracy needs to be attacked in Naija

and we need companies/institutions that have money financing a proper movie and get it distributed worldwide.

There was a program on Nollywood in the UK and one of the actors/directors of Lock, Stock came to Nigeria to shoot a Naija movie and it documented his experiences of nollywood.

Too Long 2 Read

Too Long , cant be bothered.

jayvinnie:

NOOYWOOD IS THE BEST

Hahahaha  you couldnt have put it any better.

i voted for hollywood movies.

nollywood is better

Hopefully, things will change fast. Nice stuff and spot on girl.