Pre Production Wk 1

Oliver Aleogena, the producer of this film is an enigma. Tall, light-skinned with a deep, full-bodied voice, he can be likened to a young Pete Edochie. One of the first things I had to admit about him though was that he knew his shit. He knows film and he knows what it takes to make films. Correction, he knows what it takes to make good film. Completely down to earth yet scathingly honest, he was the kind of person I knew I could trust taking my baby steps in the Nigerian Film industry with. And trust gained or earned in this industry bears its weight in gold.

Our first meeting for Braids was discussing and finalizing our production schedule for the film- from week 1 of preproduction to week 8 of post production. Where crewing, casting, location scouting, principal photography, exports for feedback, music cuts and picture locks fell. We locked on and signed off on the schedule and I threw a couple of bags in the trunk and took the journey down to Kaduna to start up on what would and should be a pretty interesting journey.

Week 1 had two priorities on the books – actors and locations. Working with me on this is our beautiful and fabulous Production Manager Anee Icha; a recent graduate of Theatre Arts from ABU Zaria, she came with a dogged yet detailed ‘get the job done’ approach as well as that much needed female touch to matters that would well, become sensitive. She brought on board an interesting character that helped in a production capacity called Papa E, a retired clown/ children’s entertainer. My scepticism for him faded when in one of our first meetings he delivered a location and a set designer.  We set out to hold auditions and that’s where my first taste of how different things were going to be came. There is a lovely website- ‘castingcallpro.com’; it’s more like a database of actors in the UK, with their headshots, CV and a couple of clips of their performances. All the auditions I’ve done have been aided by this and similar websites and scheduled after correspondence with the artists.

In a country with dodgy power supply and even dodgier internet access; open auditions had to be held which had us print and paste posters in different parts of town. I had heavy reservations about this but save for placing ads in the newspapers, TV and radio which we had neither the budget nor the time for I couldn’t  think of any other more efficient way of getting word out. There are no talent agencies to mention, however, there is an actor’s guild and they were notified. Poster pasting happened in schools, the post office, churches, bus stops and DVD stores. With the word out, I anticipated a couple of different but very possible outcomes: there’ll be a good turnout of a lot of talentless people, nobody turns up or the far chance that there’ll be a mixed bag turnout of the good, the decent and the downright awful. We were holding auditions in both Kaduna and Abuja.

On the location front, we were fortunate to find a yard that suited the purposes of the film however, the difficulty became the size of the rooms in the yard- they were too small. The thought of fitting two actors, a cameraman, a sound man, continuity, the director and possibly the AD had me already sweating not even getting to think of lights! So already, the production designer’s job was cut out, matching our exteriors to whatever interiors we choose.