By Oluwafemi Dosu
A professional Screenwriter, Mr. Tola Bolaji has disclosed that Film Making is a collaborative effort, so all production persons need one another.
Bolaji made this known on Monday during a WhatsApp training on “21st Century Story Telling” organized by John Oguntuase and Seun Adejumobi in a WhatsApp group known as Art and Media Master’s Class.
He added that storyline must prevail in any production, saying all must decrease and the story must increase, Gospel Film News gathered.
“The moment we outshine another, we distract our audience. Once they say that guy’s acting is wow… Then our audience was distracted… The moment the many shots of our DOP takes us away from the story…. And our Editor threw in a lot of Visual Effects that pours too many maggi into the soup then we missed it,” he said.
He continued: “It’s all about the story. Never begin a story with the mind of wining award but tell a story in a way and manner where you can confidently say. There is no better way I could have told this story.”
Bolaji who has been earning living primarily from Script writing for over 10years stressed that from his interactions with Distribution companies and producers, he saw that they preferred highly funny stories, love stories, stories with large parties, stories that have great wealth and grand lifestyles, and found out that stories about Ghetto that is too serious, didn’t do too well.
He concluded that Nigerians want to be happy, they want to laugh, they want to feel loved, they want to win.
“Imagine a boy Expelled from campus for not paying his school fees. What kind of movie if not of hope that will really help him. Imagine a movie released based on Nigerians facing a disease epidemic and everyone died. As compared to the one where we discovered locally a vaccine that we now sold to the world and Nigeria now became rich, People will choose the later,” he stressed.
He also advised Filmmakers to make a vow to shock their audience every 5 scenes, Make their story true to the audience existence, Make it authentic, Let it give hope and Push in entertainment value.
Meanwhile, this is news item is a fragment of the lecture as a comprehensive lecture material will be available later.