New Telegraph

BOBOLA ONIWURA: Poorly graded films, embarrassment to Nollywood

Bobola Oniwura is a film colorist, a career in the filmmaking chain that’s barely accorded significant plaudits. Late 2019, before the coronavirus brought the box office to its knees, Nollywood screened one of its biggest movies yet – Sugar Rush. The film which was a Jade Osiberu comeback screened locally for more than eight weeks and soldiered on to gross N287.06m in ticket sales. Oniwura worked on this project as a film colorist and in this interview, he spoke to YUSUFF ADEBAYO about his creative journey and graduating from Yabatech as an Architect to become an internationally recognised film colorist. Excerpts…

 

 

 

How did you become a film colorist?

My journey was quite accidental. In 2013, I was the Creative Director for AfriNolly. We had a discussion with a number of Nigerian producers on what was a big filmmaking challenge for them and color grading was named as one of the big challenges. The look and feel of the films they were producing was not at par with Hollywood but to achieve this quality of work, the investment was massive.

Though the software cost $1,000, the hardware to power such application cost $30,000. AfriNolly looking at this situation invested $31,000 and placed two of our in-house editors on it, learning the magic of color grading. One year went by and they couldn’t achieve the magic. I was taken aback and decided to take a handson approach to figure it out. The console was downstairs and I relocated it to my office permanently to learn. And that was how I became an accidental film colorist.

Did you get clients after this investment?

Yes. AfriNolly became a Bank of Industry Partner for equipment and post production. They sent producers who have borrowed money from them to us and then we became the post production partner for them. Before I left, I worked on two big budget films. One feature length was ‘Shadow Party’ by Yemi Amodu.

How was Afrinolly birthed?

Back in 2010, I co-founded a digital marketing company named Fans Connect – this was the company that gave birth to Afrinolly. What Fans Connect does is to promote brand ideas to youths using passion points such as football, music and movies. That same year, Samsung launched a developer challenge and our company entered this challenge with an app we designed. We won and got N1m as a prize. In 2011, Google launched an Android Developer Challenge for Africa. This was the competition we built Afrinolly for and it won $25,000 in the entertainment category. The app was positioned to be the IMBD website for African movies as they have little to zero information about the movie industry that surely exists in Africa. If a film didn’t go to a festival abroad, you won’t find information about the movie. We created this app and we became the biggest data base for films made by Africans, and film practitioners from Africa. Afrinolly website hosted the data – producers, directors, actors. This was what we used to win the competition. Fans Connect gave birth to Afrinolly. In all of this, I was the Creative Director doing all of the UI/UX, handling social media and engaging users.

When did you become independent?

2019.

I’m curious as to why you left?

It’s a long story. I am not ready to share that.

A disagreement?

Yes! Something happened. Maybe, when I am writing my autobiography you will read it there.

Did this huge shift work out for you?

It’s been good. God has been faithful. The biggest project in my careers came after this shift – Sugar Rush and Merry Men 2.

How did you get to work on the Sugar Rush project?

The producer reached out to me about colour grading the film on recommendation and the rest they say is history.

Was there anything in particular that the production did to get such good visual frames?

The cinematography was great and the production design made the scenes quite colorful. So, I will say the various departments did a great job under the supervision of the producer who has an eye for quality. But without the production design and a good cinematography those scenes you enjoyed, the vibrancy, might not have been so.

Why do you think the film did so well in cinemas?

I feel the audience can relate with the story and more especially the characters. How coming into money can change the way people behave and all the various elements that had to do with the source of the money. The Nigerian audience related with the story which was embodied brilliantly by the amazing cast and well directed. There was also no dull moment from beginning to the end.

Over seven years working professionally in this field, why is it important for filmmakers to colour grade their film?

The switch from the use of analogue camera to digital camera in filmmaking presented the need for colour grading. While Hollywood made use of analogue camera and did not quickly embrace new types of camera, Nollywood filmmakers adapted to the use of digital camera as a cheap alternative for all their projects. This means that today, most of our films are shot with digital cameras and the output this device gives is a log/raw format. All of this makes it imperative that our films must be colour graded after being shot with a digital camera so that the colours, the tone and the story can be enhanced and well communicated to audiences.

What factors determine how you charge a Nollywood Filmmaker seeking to colour grade their big budget film?

How much I charge depends on the length of the film. What was it shot on? Am I grading it in your studio or in mine? What delivery timeline are you looking at? Do you want to hurry me up? Are you facing a tight deadline that I have work 24-7 to complete your work? I put all of this into consideration for me to give you a quote.

Interesting, would you like to share your quotation range?

Yes, there is a range for cinema films – from N600, 000 to N1.2m. That is quite expensive… No. This is ridiculously low compared to my international colleagues in South Africa, America and Europe. In the US, colorist studios charge per hour which is set to $500. A feature week takes around two weeks to colour grade. So, that’s eight hours per day per $500 for two weeks

Let’s zoom out. What’s your take on heavily investing in big budget domestic films?

For cinema exhibition, I think it gets better annually. The more screens we have, the more money can be made. Hence, we have films breaking records like Omo Ghetto. Mind you this is just one window of distribution. I feel if you get your story right and execute well, then your money can be recouped.

What do you think is the major consequence of not grading a film properly?

If a film is not graded properly, it repels the audience and it’s an embarrassment to Nollywood as a film industry. Audiences see misplaced colours, artefacts, noise and distortions. All of this distracts the audience and gets them frustrated about paying to watch it on the big screen. This is a major consequence. Hence by all means, colour grading must be done properly.

Is this – colour grading – your major source of income?

My work time is mostly colour grading feature films, music videos as well as commercials. I get other side jobs such as UI/UX design.

Read Previous

Like DJ Spinall, DJ Neptune, DJ Selex aims to make impact

Read Next

Let youths be your priority, Temitope Ajayi urges government

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *