A look at the future of NollywoodBy Yinka Ogundaisi
Published: September 30, 2007
Print HOME-video marketing in metropolitan Lagos has now taken on an aggressive, albeit unconventional form and has reached a feverish pitch.
Our overburdened eardrums already beleaguered from series of underserved noisy assaults now have to endure a compounded and elevated street-din caused by stationary and moving buses loaded with speakers of various sizes that continuously belch out uncoordinated music to attract the attention of passer-by as potential patrons. Hopefully, sales returns from this initiatives justify the efforts and resources being expended, but even at that it seems timely enough for the industry to start giving more than a cursory attention to rental distribution income because that is where the big money lies.
All over the world, Nigeria inclusive, the psychology of an average movie-lover is "watch a couple of time and move on." This therefore encourages the majority to a form of patronage that does not tie them perpetually to the movies. It is also the reason why movie business managers globally see revenue from video sales as opportunity income. They normally never rely on it as a reliable plank to assess a movie financial success or failure. Till now, Nigeria is about the only country in the world where the culture and concept of unit sales of released videos is the standard marketing approach. When it first started, it was accepted as a creative solution to the twin problems of our social insecurity and lack of organized public transportation, which still makes it difficult for people to sustain the cinema-going culture up to a comfortable commercial level. Earlier, the volume and traffic of releases were small enough to fit into the tested musical works distribution channels, and at any rate, being a novel concept that focused mainly on the advantage of ownership with the inherent opportunity for the consumers to endlessly watch the movies and their favourite artistes without let or hindrance, it worked!
However with time, the time-honoured axiom of today's solution becoming a part of the problem tomorrow reared its head. Wearing thin now is the sales campaign built on the attraction of ownership of the released works. A ready counter is the problem of space for the storage of the movies bought. Economic consideration is also weighing in with everyday financial reality forcing the consumers to re-appraise their purchase priorities, and to this is added the problem of irregular power supply - Why buy the movies you have no hope of watching because of constant power failure? There is also the issue of endless traffic of new releases combined with all the attendant problems associated with an unregulated enterprise. They all militate against sales of released videos in any appreciable volume that can guarantee the producers adequate returns on their investments. This has now created a vicious cycle; Producers rush out new releases to earn enough, but poor sales returns continuously diminish these earnings leading them to churn out more new releases with even poorer sales returns!
In Nigeria today, a most visible group of patrons of home-video sales are the video-clubs, and this is because new releases are their stock-in-trade. Very few, particularly the organized ones have a way of compensating the producers or the distributors on their rental income, but most of the clubs are neither formally registered nor structured and therefore do not make any returns whatsoever to either the investing producers and or the distributors. Beyond Nigeria, and as already stated, revenue from video sales is never the core of a movie financial viability. Across Europe and in America, video rental income is now recognized as a strong revenue string rivaling, and in most case exceeding the box offices returns from the cinemas. The first reason for this is the global changing face of human modes of interactions and relaxation. Gone are the days when cinema-going was both an elitist ways of romantic courtship and relaxation. Besides, today's generations obsessed, as they are with their computers which if possible they would want to do their toiletries for them will always be on the side on Internet surfing and downloading! This is a generational attitude constituting a major threat to cinema-going or outright purchases of the movies. Today, unlike in the past, not going to the cinema - or in the case of Nigeria, not buying the movie outright does not deny people the chance to watch the movie. Now in Europe and America, new releases still exhibiting at theatres are on offer for rent (without option of sale) at video clubs and through Internet membership for downloading at a fee. The point is that the face of the movie markets has changed and Nigerian filmmakers need to accept this change and modify their marketing approach accordingly.
Enters the new Distribution framework currently being implemented by the movie industry official regulator; The National Film and Video Censors Board, NFVCB. The framework recognizes and focuses on the huge potentials of movie rentals income, by treating Rental rights as a specific distribution rights that a producer can grant a distributor. But while it is possible to effect physical signs of piracy controls on the movies on sale, it is not so with the administration of rental income. Again, the new distribution framework addresses this with the territorial method of distribution. Here, the country's geographical terrain is taken as known politically, and potentials distributors will be licensed based on their competencies and desires for different territories. Producers will now be able to earn on the rental income of their movies on the strength of the territories, which have bought the movies for distribution. For ease of administration, the Board has classified distributors into national, regional, states, local governments and communities. A national distributor buys the rental distribution rights of a movie based on the national rental income potentials of the movie, and he pays this amount either wholly in advance, or in any manner agreeable to the producer. Having secured the rental distribution rights, the national distributors re-sell the rights to the regional distributors, who in their turn re-sell to states from where the cascading continues until it gets to the final retail point which is the video clubs, or community distributors. Movies on rent are pre-numbered and marked with the names of the right-holding distributors. If a copy is illegally-dubbed, it becomes easy to trace.
The major difference between what obtains now and the provision of the new distribution framework is that the video clubs will no longer be buying some copies of the movies. Rather they will invest in the sales and rental potentials of their territories where their video-clubs are located, and as licensed by the Board. The rental distribution rights payment that they are now to make on the movies via the licensed distributors to the producers would be re-couped from what they charge to hire out the movies to the public, and on all avenues for the screening of the movies for whatever purposes in their territories including parties, public events, beer-parlours and pepper-soup joints. As a person, I cannot recollect when last I bought a movie, like millions of other Nigerians, but this does not mean that we have not been watching the movies. But producers only get money from us only if we buy a movie, and if what we bought is not a pirated copy. If it is, neither the producer nor the distributor gets anything. The new framework has now corrected all this to ensure that by whatever means people watch the movie they pay directly or indirectly and that the investing producer or distributor gets his or her legitimate share.
Another reason for the territorial concept of distribution in the new framework is to ensure that our movies get to the rural areas, most of which at present are cut off from the distribution market because they are either not connected to the national power grid, and even for those on national power supply, there is the problem of fewer playing machines to screen the movies. However, with the new distribution framework, a whole community, with or without power supply, could get to watch the movies by going in groups to the sitting room of that community licensed distributor, who having paid the requisite distribution rights for the territory is empowered to screen the movie for the people in that community at a fee. But though integrating the rural communities into the channels of movie distribution is the major aim of the Board, having licensed community distributors in all our communities equally has the capacity to open up our rural communities to accelerated development, and a means of strengthening them commercially and financially. With a known spot in every community where people can gather to watch movies, there is first a basis and importantly, a catalyst for that community economic consolidation and development. Community distributorship also creates gainful and lawful engagement in millions for our jobless army of unemployed.
In all, it is time for all the stakeholders in the movie industry to accept that in our collective interest, and for the survival and indeed, the future of our industry, there is no other time than now to co-operate in the implementation of the new distribution framework so we can all face the business of producing and distributing quality and profitable movies in earnest.
Ogundaisi, a stakeholder in the movie industry, lives in Lagos
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