editor@adonis-abbey.com UK: 0207 795 8187 / Nigeria:+234 705 807 8841
Table of Contents :
Computer Graphics, Animation and Special Effects: A Creative Way of Producing Igbo-Themed Nollywood Movies for the Global Audience. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31920/2516-2713/2018/v1n2a1
Ikenna Obumneme Aghanya9
Nollywood filmmakers are wonderful entertainers. They have told great and amazingly inspiring stories, through their movies, for decades. Film production in developed nations has gone digital, and the old way of producing movies is gradually dying. The Nigerian movie industry, popularly referred to as ‘Nollywood’, is yet to come to terms with this, despite being ranked as the third highest growing movie maker in the world, behind ‘Hollywood’ in the United States of America and ‘Bollywood’ in India. Computer graphics, animation and special effects created with computers have been embraced by movie studios in developed nations. Film editors, who for decades worked by painstakingly cutting and gluing film segments together, are now sitting in front of computer screens. There, they edit entire features while adding special effects, animations and sound that is not only stored digitally, but has been created and manipulated with computers. Viewers are witnessing the results of all this in the form of stories and experiences that they never dreamed of before. The emphasis of this paper is to create more awareness on the need for filmmakers, producers, directors and all other stake-holders involved in the making of Igbo–themed Nollywood movies, to incorporate computer graphics, animations and special effects in their movie productions, and also to encourage more people to get involved in this virgin area of film production. By doing this, the movies produced would be globally accepted and would compete with other movies from around the globe. This, in turn, would create positive awareness for the Igbo people, in a globalized society, create employment for them, create wealth for all the other stakeholders involved in the movie industry and most importantly would be generally beneficial in terms of promoting Igbo culture and dignity. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of all this, however, is that the entire digital effects and animation industry is still in its infancy in Nigeria. Igbo Nollywood practitioners must tap into this very virgin area of film production. The future of Igbo-themed Nollywood movies looks very bright.
When major publishers release strings of books on a single phenomenon such as African cinema in general and Nollywood in particular, it is an indication that the phenomenon deserves serious scholarly attention from researchers and vice versa, given that graduate students have already established assembly lines of dissertations focusing on this industry. In 2013, Indiana University Press came out with Global Nollywood: International Dimensions of an African videofilm industry, edited by Matthias Krings and Onookome Okome (2013) as a follow up to Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century edited by Mahir Saul and Ralph A. Austin (2010) and published by Ohio University Press. This bibliographic essay will review some key books, ebooks and special journal editions that focus on African cinema. The following items are among 200,000 to show up on a basic search of the Virginia Tech main library materials and a sample of the titles will be purposively selected from the list for this bibliographic review article. The essay will be structured around books on African celluloid films, books on Nollywood and other home-videofilms, articles and electronic resources on African cinema, a brief comparison with publications on African Diaspora cinema, and a brief survey of syllabi on African cinema available online. The availability of many syllabi online is indicative of the relevance of the bibliographic essay to undergraduate programs in the humanities and the social sciences.
Offering a mix of urban scenes and village encounters, reaching out to local audiences in several Nigerian languages including Igbo, Nigerian Pidgin and Engligbo, Nigerian films have long spilled out of Nigeria to reach the rest of Africa and beyond. While most of those films, produced in Lagos, Onitsha and now Enugu and Aba, are set in large towns, Igbo protagonists still tend to adhere to ancestral beliefs and carry on with most of rural traditions. The ancestral village that nurtured these beliefs never disappears entirely - it is nearly always the scene of at least a few family encounters. A number of films relate stories firmly rooted in villages and set in the distant past, with all the paraphernalia of tradition: traditional architecture, attire and body adornment, traditional music and group dancing, festivals, daily occupations and leisure activities (farming, local wars, moonlight plays, music, wrestling, storytelling, traditional medicine and divining). The perceived aim of these films, a popular version of Nigerian history books, is to help viewers re-discover their history and take pride in their traditions, and they usually present an upbeat, very positive picture of the past. Other films seek to feed into current debates on more controversial aspects of Igbo culture such as polygamy, widowhood practices or the osu system. This article, based on the study of more than thirty films produced/directed by Igbo men and women between 1991 and 2013 , considers the various ways in which the Igbo heritage is presented in Nollywood. It reports on Diasporic Igbo audiences’ response, evaluates the impact of these films on the Igbo abroad, and discusses the place of Igbo language in these films.
One of the most compelling aspects of filmic narratives is the ability to engage viewers with complex questions of life. They do this by interrogating the ‘status quo’ in order to call for change as a necessary tool for development and progress. This, arguably, is the trajectory of most ‘new’ Nollywood films, which, as vanguards of a new dawn, probe the labyrinths of some appalling cultures in Nigeria from the grassroots-up. In this paper that discusses narrative concerns for social issues, two texts are critically examined to unravel the ideology and mission of Nigerian ‘diaspora’ films as well as point to the ways by which they negotiate values in society. The films Onye Ozi (2013, directed by Obi Emelonye) and Dry (2015, directed by Stephanie Linus) are chosen as typical examples of diaspora films that carry out this task. Here, by applying nuanced textual analytical methods, I will be showing how the issue of social concerns is deeply implicated in the narratives as tools drawing attention to situations of those living on the sidelines of the society. It is hoped that the findings of this study would help extend the cinematic voice of Nigerian diaspora filmmakers in challenging culturally grown ills in order to advance integral human development.
Annual Subscription Rate |
Individual Subscriptions |