The Nollywood model

I came across an article somewhere suggesting that Black American filmmakers follow the Nollywood model.

Nollywood refers to a segment of the Nigerian movie industry. She shoot movies on video on small budgets. They then sell thousands of DVDs for a couple of dollars each.

But all they were talking about was filming movies to be released on DVD rather than theaters. I found it surprising that they weren't doing that anyway. Low budget movies don't get shown in theaters.

I thought the defining feature of Nollywood was the distribution, not the production. Everybody makes movies on video that cost almost nothing. Nollywood's innovation, I thought, was selling thousands of copies for a dollar or two each. My impression is that the DVDs are sold everywhere there.

The closest thing to this that I've heard of was in England. A guy made a very cheap action movie on video which he put out on DVD. But he arranged to sell it in local shops, and they sold for only $5 each. They were cheap enough that people would buy them on impulse, sight unseen, and they were so cheap that no one bothered to bootleg them.

There was something else I mentioned recently. The Spanish Language home video market, the one Robert Rodriguez made El Mariachi for. I don't know if it still exists or what shape it's in now, but it might be a model to follow.

Everything has changed now.

But in the early '80s, before Spike Lee came long, Hollywood was producing nothing for Black audiences. There were attempts by low budget filmmakers to fill that void, but they went nowhere.

An article I read at the time in a radical film journal argued that Black American audiences were too sophisticated to go for very low budget movies. Filmmakers were using Third World Cinema as a model for movies made for a First World audience.

One thing they mentioned was movies where the camera sat on a tripod and wasn't constantly moving as was the fashion in Hollywood at the time.

I don't know whether that would be a problem today. I'm amazed at how good zero-budget videos look now. Steadicams are freely available. Even fluid head tripods are surprisingly affordable. Buy a drone and get arial footage.

Anyone can make a movie now. Distribution is always going to be the problem.

You know who Doris Wishman was? She started out working as a film booker for her cousin, a movie distributor. Her husband died at age 31, and she wanted to something to fill her time, so, in 1958, she raised money from family and made a nudist camp movie.

She could never record live sound, but she didn't want to go through all the work of dubbing, so she was known for movies where you were hear the dialog but almost never see the person when they were speaking.

Her movies were awful, but her background in film distribution paid off. She knew who to take the movies to.

I suggested to a film student that he try to get a job in distribution for that reason, but he pooh-poohed my sensible advice.