Ghana Film Industry, Act One, The Independent Problems.
I can be somewhat petty when it comes to film entertainment. I often have the indulgence to be overly judgmental about how the opening credit of a film is done as an indicator of the thought put behind how everything is edited about the film. I want to know why the dialogue couldn’t have been better in another sentencing, sometimes I want longer expressions and at times shorter expressions. Showing off how much I have read about a film can be a pet peeve to people at times. I know such behaviour deserves no patting from St. Genesius. Take a walk with me and do not feel I am nagging about this subject.
Some many years ago, one of the greats to ever speak into the Ghanaian radio microphone, Komla Dumor of blessed memory, took a break from Joy FM to do a program at Harvard University. He did a Masters in Public Administration there. Of course, he came back to Ghana radio with some experiences from a place known to be at the frontier of higher learning in the world. In a later radio programming, of his own show, something came up about the discussion of Ghanaian movies. He picked an experience from Harvard. He said he was part of a group of friends who occasionally watch a film from their home country and out of it came a conversation about their cinema and society. Those from Asia did their part on their day, Europeans did their part on their turn, you don’t have to be told whether the American(s) among them took a part in this. On another time, Komla was to present a film from Ghana. He said he bought some Ghanaian DVDs for that. Knowing the intellect and sense of humour of Komla Dumor, I wasn’t sure what he wanted to prove, whether he had fine taste for cinema as a Ghanaian, whether he carefully selected a title to invite a deeper discourse or maybe he wouldn’t care that much, the coursework at Harvard is too much, let’s release tension. I cannot recollect the titles he mentioned. I will hit the return button on his experience getting somewhere later at the end of your walk with me on this subject.
I have grown out of asking when our industry is going to make movies like Gladiator, Terminator, Home Alone, The Lord of the Rings, Spiderman, Shawshank Redemption, Phone Booth, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and many others. My positivity about our potential to be great even makes squeaking sounds when Blair Witch Project is in our to do list of cinema. The making of these movies contain a lot of rejections, intimidating paper work, inventing ways of doing things, near death experience for crew and actors, a lot of problem solving and tug of decision making. The moving parts are just many for our kind of short termism goals we mostly do here. This is a yeoman’s job. You can be given all the software and tools, including the education that goes along with it. You can be be given professional contacts with their reachable addresses and you wouldn’t have scratched the surface about the work ahead of you.
When I watched Baahubali (The Beginning), a product of Indian cinema, I was very much impressed about how far they have come. It was a combination of staying true to their cultural story telling, polishing what we know of their visuals and showing off a big team of Indian people involved in the production. As a growing movie fan, it can take a lot of screens to get you to understand the concept of the making and business of moving pictures. My ascension was like this, from television, I had my first cinema experience at Subin Valley in Tema. You paid a ticket at the gate and entered a courtyard structure, the center stopped running a long time. Then our household had our first video deck. I had my second cinema experience at Vision 66 in Tema again. It felt a step up about its design, air conditioning was provided. It has also stopped running. Then our household got a DVD player. The menu that came with DVD entertainment gave me goosebumps. I still remember what it felt like watching the Director’s commentary for Angelina Jolie and Denzel Washington’s The Bone Collector, mesmerizing stuff. I discovered the internet there after and my curiosity dam began to crack.
Film production is not rocket science. It starts with an idea of how and what you think will make a good story to show visually. One will have to come up with what is called a script to make people in the business get a picture of what you want to produce. When you get the financial backing, one hires a crew or a team to do the production. When the film is done, the film will have to be watched by a lot of people to recoup investment on it. The slight technical explanation is, the Producer is the first role a film idea creates. The Producer has to find a good script. He will also have to raise the budget to be able to make the film. The Producer finds a Director who can craft a vision for the film within budget. It takes an exhaustive process to break production down to what will need to be done with various expertise to make the film a success. Once a while, sit through a rolling credit of a film and take notice of some of the job titles. Yes, carpenters also get their credit in filmmaking.
The term for Independent filmmaking or Indie films as it also known has changed over the years. The United States of America is still the largest market for the business of films and as such some thought leadership of the subject of filmmaking maybe ahead of certain parts of the world. Independent filmmaking used to describe filmmakers raising money away from the corporate structure of the major studios to have more control over the artistic vision of their project and impress with their abilities. Today, some major studios own streaming services and subsidiaries that venn auteurism and big budget. With the changes capitalism brings, among many purists, Independent filmmaking still holds a right of passage for aspiring filmmakers.
The Ghanaian Indie scene is not that interesting. The pick of stories been produced are not thematically and artistically competitive as showing to prove a strong skillset. There’s not enough good journalism going about the filmmaking landscape. Few notable cinemas are somehow thriving on foreign content even for a monday to thursday. No diverse award shows to nominate excellence and not much regional film festivals. You might be critical to say the ecosystem of what describes an Indie cinema active country is not here. I have shot two film projects and even worked with a local scholar before on telling the story of an aspect of our dying cinema. I am familiar with a thing or two to say the least.
The independent problems of filmmaking in Ghana is in two parts. The descriptor used here is that in independence, there is a crucial formation period for skills, ambition and reflection. We can stand a chance to be influenced by unwanted corporate agenda and missing government grand plan or take a plain sheet of paper, and be interested to be great. Movie studios hinting and devising ways of having a business presence in Ghana can better their investment with us by observing the identity we are putting into our solution.
The first part describes how the Ghanaian film industry is not self-organising enough. Self-organisation meaning here the persistent, creative and standardization ways to compartmentalise a single unit of excellence in the way it wants to do things. This does not need the explicit help of government, I believe. People know the popularity of the Oscars as encompassing the greatest excellence in filmmaking in the world. Despite a very complex yearly undertaking, it must be understood the Oscars in itself doesn’t do capacity building for it has its own sustainability mechanisms to make it more relevant. This point is not to deconstruct the Oscars for strength tests, far from that, but to shift our perspective from an award or certain kind of reward interest system. There are a lot of film professionals who are not associating well in Ghana and it calls for worry. This includes cinematographers, writers, directors, production engineers, art directors, film critics and more to mention a few. There might be few individual brilliances but group think is very important in this collaborative industry. Group think that makes a tunnel vision on collectively raising the bar at whatever level they find themselves. As an example, if within a certain time frame, Ghanaian movies are not meeting a certain good rating, various film interest and professional groups can make peer reviews within their domain in the filmmaking sphere. The reviews from an industry standpoint can be communicated to academia or film schools for the education of filmmakers. It is what it is that beyond the glitz and glamour, film is a science and needs some scientific approaches to problem solving. Movie fans may not be interested in the detail of advanced camera configuration or light temperatures, they may not understand the manual of a cinematic lens but they can have a feeling whether there is an organisational prowess to a work of art or not. It doesn’t take much of a billboard advertising to know that our film industry is not organised.
The second part of the independent problems is the over reliance on filmmakers to be solution to the same problems they have created or have come to meet. Year in, year out, we see several conversations about bettering the Ghanaian film industry. There is a program I used to watch on BBC called Talking Movies by the ever brilliant Tom Brook. The entirety of three episodes out of its year’s telecast is more subject handling than a lot of years in conversation watts Ghana has turbined about film development, it has never lighted a bulb. Personal professional experiences are good but when solving a problem at scale, what comes to relevancy are new perspectives. The Ghanaian film industry needs to borrow or invite ideas from other industries. There are big questions in film financing, tax implications, talent management, copyright & digital rights management, entertainment law, macroeconomic models for GDP inclusion and more that needs delving. Cramming filmmakers into rooms or so called town hall meetings maybe marking time in most cases. In most cases, you do not need most of them in the room. It promotes scope creep after scope creep due to a sense of opinion entitlement. Notable world class content creation companies are averagely founded by less than five people and till today, everyone knows their jobs in their entertainment mission. Their staffing is not likely to be filled by only filmmakers. They constitute a flair of diverse teams of various backgrounds. When we hear the announcement of their positive strides, there is mostly a chance of not looking at the diverse contributions because a Director is praised. We do not have much of a big problem except the way we look at it.
Some people think outside the box. Some people align to thinking as if there is no box. It shouldn’t be a place of competition for the place of the box and thinking in such a forward action, results should only matter. I have called this piece an act one to connect you to how filmmakers tell narrative fiction. Act one raises incidents and sets you thinking about what could be coming. In act two of this continuing piece, I will confront some ideas more deeply but will not be setting another tone to talk about problems.
If you have stayed to the end to know what happened to Komla Dumor’s experience, as what he said about it on radio, I will like to leave you in suspense, will continue in the article’s sequel. Cut ! That’s a wrap !
