Niyi Akinmolayan, director, Nollwood new sci-fi, 'Kajola'

I got a chance to watch a preview of this movie, and I was definitely impressed.  Kajola is a movie that should be on the must watch list of Nigerians who love movies.   It is very different in the subject matter it addresses and the  medium the director uses to address these issues:  science fiction, even though he does not agree with this term.  I believe this movie will revolutionize the way we view movies coming out of Nigeria, period!. 

I got a chance to chat with this extremely intelligent and industrious director of this movie, Niyi Akinmolayan.  I left the conversation with a sense of what a ‘can-do’ spirit can really do.  I hope you enjoy the interview.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background in film making?

Kajola is my directorial debut for a feature film.  I come from a very creative family of artists, designers and musicians,  so the creative arts was very natural for me. Back in Secondary school, I would represent my school in debates and talk shows and would even act in school plays but I never saw that as a means of changing the world. For me, it was just a way to make people laugh! Science, I believed was the solution.

Growing up, I desired to become a theoretical physicist with dreams of working in giant laboratories. I wanted to put an end to the crude oil problems in Nigeria by working on alternative sources of energy. As it turned out, I ended in Yaba College of Technology studying electrical engineering. It was the most frustrating yet revealing period of my life as I realized that I had learnt nothing useful for my true ambitions. I kept thinking: how can I possibly change the world with an Higher Education National Diploma (HND) certificate and no useful and practical knowledge of anything?  It wasn’t what I had dreamed of.

So I dropped out of school and pursued what was natural to me: media and entertainment. But I realized that if I had to make a difference, I needed to try something no one had tried before. As it were, no one was teaching visual effects or animation and the only place I had was the internet. I would spend hours browsing for resources and learning how to use multimedia software .

I’m a bit of a perfectionist and a very detailed person so I wouldn’t stop till I felt I had gotten all the knowledge I needed. My Dad was retired and I had to fend for myself. No one was ready to pay for animation or visual effects work and that made it very hard. Eventually, I managed to gather around me a set of four friends with whom we shared similar interests. The vision to change our world with what we knew was what united us. We started learning stuff together and founded our company, Anthill Multimedia.

Antihill production crew made Kajola a reality

Film making is a medieval job. You have to learn it as an apprentice. I had worked with producers and directors on a couple of TV shows and commercials and built a lot of experience within that period. Much of my film making skills came from working with Ehiz Ojesebholo, a former MBI programs director and film maker. But mostly, I read extensively. There’s hardly any material on filmaking that I didn’t read. I never complained about limited resources. Rather, I use the ones I have and add a touch of creativity to it. After all, that’s how all great things begin.

Your movie Kajola is a science fiction movie – why did you choose to do a science fiction movie? what’s the interest?

Actually I don’t like to think of it as a Sci-fi movie though we played with those elements. As a matter of fact, it is Action/Drama set in a futuristic time. Truth is, there are just a few story ideas in the world, It’s the premise that differs: that’s storytelling. For example, the Story Cameron depicted in “Titanic” is a common theme explored even in Nigerian movies: “ A rich family doesn’t want their daughter to marry a street rat” we’ve seen that kind of story a million times but that same story in a sinking ship takes the story idea even further.

Although Kajola has a very unique story, I chose this medium because I wanted everyone to see the story from that angle. The future is a unique premise because it makes us ask a lot of “ what if questions”. Nigerians need to ask these questions, we have an unstable democracy, religious and tribal clashes, corruption to name a few. What can the future possibly hold? 10 years ago, we had all these “vision this and vision that”. You begin to wonder if things are getting better or worse. I set the story to give the best possible future and the worst.

Besides, Nigerians are tired of the typical parlour and bed room scenes common in our movies and they need to see some new stuff.

What does the word Kajola mean and can you give me a brief synopsis of the movie?

Kajola is the Yoruba word for commonwealth. In the year 2059, Nigeria becomes a totalitarian state. After a second civil war, the rich relocate to the Island areas of Lagos state and turn it into an ultra modern city. The war torn mainland of lagos state is disconnected and abandoned.
A rebel leader, Allen learns of a plot code named kajola to build cities on the mainland and eliminate the remaining survivors. He leads a rebellion against the government and must be stopped by Yetunde, the police chief. Though mortal enemies, both discover that everything they thought they knew was nothing but lies. It’s a story of love and lust and it heightens the fact that if we don’t deal with the segregation and negligence issues facing the country today, then our future is quite predictable because TOMORROW IS TODAY.

What were the challenges that you faced directing and producing this movie?

The first major challenge was getting someone to finance the movie. My budget was a hundred million Naira and it sounded like a big joke. I wasn’t going to do that movie if I didn’t get that much investment so I could only wait and hope to find a financier with a similar passion to start a revolution in the Nigerian film industry. After about three years, I finally found my Executive Producer,  Adonijah Owiriwa who had just finished producing the award winning “Nnenda”. He got very  excited when he read the script and raised the funding.

Its important to note that the movie is 20% pre-production, 10% production and 70% post production.  Post production alone took 13 months. That is why it looks the way it does. We worked on the movie, scene by scene, cut by cut and frame by frame.

The second challenge was that every one involved in the production had never worked on anything like it before. I and my team at Anthill Multimedia http://www.anthillmultimedia.com had done a lot of tests in the studio and we were equipped with all the technical know how to do the movie but it takes more than 5 people to produce a movie. We used the kind of techniques used in movies like the matrix in this movie including extensive use of miniatures and green screen.

I spent hours explaining to the actors what they needed to do and how the movie would turn out to be. Some shots required about 6 camera setups and the action scene took 13 cameras shooting at the same time. We made use of dollies, cranes, devices and gadgets we invented for ourselves and for each scene we would have to calibrate distances and optics so we can composite the visual effects properly in post production.

We had series of pre-production meetings with the cast and crew. I would create power point slides and project them for everyone explaining the scenes in details, from my ideas about the sets to the music. The other painful part was that, most Nollywood crew are stereotyped and I needed people who were ready to try new stuff. The price was that I had to put them through everything and that was not easy at all. For the actors, sometimes, I would have to act the scenes for them explaining how and where they should move. The lead actor and actress had to go through weeks of martial arts training with minimum casualties. Desmond Elliot and Keira Hewatch (lead actress) even had to wear contact lenses!

The third and quite unfortunate challenge was NEPA! It made me realize just like I’d always believed that our economy is the way it is because of NEPA and until we find alternative sources, nothing is going to change. We’ve used 8 Generators (each 7.5KVA) and 2 inverters all costing millions and extending the budget. Then we had to cope with the loss of several Computer Hard drives and Boards resulting in loss of work and us having to start all over again. This really extended the time and budget. Eventually, we spent about one hundred and thirty million naira (N130,000,000) on the project.

I see you have a lot of great acting personalities in your movie (for example, Desmond Elliot) – how was it working with them? How did you get them interested in this project?

I wanted to try relatively unknown faces because I figured they’ll put in lots of efforts in the movie so we decided on using a very popular face only for a supporting role. Desmond Elliot was excited about the idea when he read the script. The first thing he told me was: “I hope  Nigerians are ready for this” and I told him: “thats up to you”.  He is a very intelligent actor and it seemed he finally found something he had always wanted to do which was something challenging and creative. We made him wear contacts, gave him some piercings and he even had to come up with an accent. I believe Desmond is one of the best in the industry and I know there are many like him who would just love to try something new. Every time he finished a scene, the crew would give an applause. Casting him was one of the best decisions we made in the film.

Do you see the scenario that was depicted in this movie ever happening in Nigeria?

Yes I do!. Actually the scenario is just an exaggerated version of what’s already happening. There are no middle classes in this country, it’s just the very rich and the very poor. We still don’t have a democracy and we still silence the voices of reason. If we don’t bridge that huge divide now, it’ll only be a matter of time and fifty years from now might even be too long!

In the preview I saw some form of animation, are there schools where animation is taught in Nigeria and beyond that, are children who have an artistic bend encouraged to go into this?

No school teaches quality animation in Nigeria although some claim to but I’ve met with many of their students and wasn’t impressed. We are working on starting one soon.

District 9 was a South African science fictional movie that came with a lot of controversy – I have a feeling that you’ve watched it or at least heard about it – what are your thoughts on that movie and its impact on the lives of Nigerians?

Correction: District 9 is not a South African Movie. South Africa is the location for the movie. About how it affects Nigerians… I think we all have to be objective about it. The only problem I had was with the use of the name “Obesandjo” (which is a name-play on our former president). We watch movies where they depict other countries like that and we enjoy them…it’s only natural to feel offended and I totally agree with Dora Akinyuli’s decision to ban it. Asides that, I think it was a great movie.

Back to your movie, Kajola, this story is definitely different from what we currently have coming out of Nigeria – was there a particular event, incidence, reading etc that gave birth to the ideas depicted in this movie?

In developing the story, I borrowed ideas from Charles Dickens famous work, “A Tale of Two Cities”. That was a classic story about the French revolution. I also studied the massive movement of wealthy people to the Island regions of Lagos in contrast to the abandoned regions of the mainland and that got me worried.

I had always wanted to use film as a medium to communicate the way I feel about society. During the many years I struggled acquiring all the technical knowledge I used in the movie including animation skills and visual effects, I lost close friends who thought I was on the wrong course. The one that shattered me most was when my then fiancee left me. It was during this heart break period that I wrote the story. I had been trying to do something I believed in and the society was just not in support.

Visual effects and animation is a new thing in Nigeria and it was hard convincing people to invest in it. I thought to myself that if I didn’t do it, then no one will. It was like a divine calling of some sort!. All these problems inspired the Character “Allen” (played by Adonijah Owiriwah) and many of the other characters were gotten from people in my past that have shaped the way I see life one way or the other.

How will you feel if your movie was characterized as being Nollywood? Will you be comfortable with that and what are your thoughts on Nollywood?

That’s a tough one. I think Nollywood is just a name with something associated with it. We all know the kind of stuff that is associated with being a Nigerian (spams, curruptions and now terrorism), but it doesn’t change the fact that we are Nigerians. If Nollywood is representative of the Nigerian film industry, then the movie is Nollywood. It is up to people to figure out for themselves what this movie is doing to Nollywood and its up to Nollywood itself to support this revolution.

Without the creation of Nollywood, I wouldn’t have being able to do this movie. IT IS NOT EASY TO MAKE A MOVIE…HOWEVER CHEAP!!! I owe Nollywood, I owe those who started it all. Yes, the quality isn’t too good and the story telling sometimes can be whack but that’s not Nollywood, that’s “being a Nigerian”. We don’t believe in excellence as a people, we settle for crap!, We are lazy and we love to complain, we can be very selfish and unpatriotic. Why do we expect Nollywood to be any different. Its Nigerians doing movies for Nigerians. It is with this same attitude that we run our businesses, run the country and even run our families. Until Nigerians change from the inside, the Government and Nollywood will remain the same.

For this movie, I had to close my studio in Lagos to come all the way to Port-Harcourt. Sold my car and some private belongings.  My company has been working on this movie for more than a year now. We work 24/7 and that is not an exaggeration. Most shots were worked on frame by frame. Over a hundred million has being spent already and all these efforts are coming from Nigerians: the unusual Nigerians who would not sit down and complain but will take bold steps and do the right thing and that is put their money where their mouth is!

Extra:

After watching the preview and reading the interview,  I hope you will go and watch this movie.  It will be coming out sometime this year and I will keep you abreast as to when and where you can see it. Watch the preview.

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