Monday, May 29, 2006
there's nothing like ....
.....minutes after doing the postman part of the producer's job (i.e. driving to the other side of town to deliver a script), running into an actor who has been having said script for two days and hearing him say "THIS IS JUST BEAUTIFUL" about it with the bright spontanneous smile to match and an empahsis on beautiful..now the cynics (and i am one) may comment on the fact that dude ACTS for a living and they may have a point. i'd still enjoy it though..
In other news, i think i'm tired of Magnesio's voice and Kuduro beats in general.. my new musical temporary addiction is La India's voice singing about Yemaya, Ochun, Love, Happiness and her first rumba...
Also, after very complicated calculation (and excell and appleworks files for info extraction, i love this word), i realized that we need to shoot a little over 7 minutes of usefull material a day on average..
now of course this means sometimes less but also sometimes MORE..
in school, i've been taught that the average in europe, on professional sets was 3 minutes... but we're not in europe (we can be faster) and we're new (we can be slower or faster depending on an infinite number of circumstances)..
that didn't stop koko from thinking that was extremely low..
debate followed (as always).
solution was found (sorta).
so between the western 3 minutes a day and the nollywood 30 minutes a day averages there is a middle ground, right ?
that's what we're aiming for..
what's the average in HK, btw ?
aflakete the wunderkid at 6:13 AM
Saturday, May 27, 2006
can't stop won't stop
As i'm sitting in front of my laptop (yes it's an ibook) ,alone (koko is with his children at some children's day celebration) i realized how much i enjoy this breaking down the script thing.See, to succeed the production of a movie, you need INFORMATION. Not only having it ALL but also being able to give very specific ones on a very short notice ("by the way, how many time does Character appear in Location during Nightime ?and Producer, it will be nice if i also knew if it requires live sound and what he wears" said Other Producer just before looking at his watch and adding "ASAP").
So you take all the information you have from the script, from your dear writter, from our dear director and put it in an ubiquious appleworks file and then think hard, very hard about what may be asked at ANY POINT and how to properly and quickly extract the required info ANYTIME...
And of course, it should be comprehensible to me but also to anyone else...
Ahh "work as conversation" as Tom Peters defined it in "Crazy Times Call For Crazy Management" (yes, people, sometimes i take breaks from african litterature, semi historical latin american novels, atlases and russian artsy filmmakers memoirs)..
So yeah, that's the only way to properly prepare the shooting of a movie when your director is 6 times zones away.. But then again, the script, past (saved and classified) conversations and ongoing email exchanges aren't fast enough for me to get the info in the first place.. so trust me, if there is a "next project" (and i believe there will be), i already plan to spend the equivalent of the budget of TOO MUCH BEAUTIFULL WOMEN on transcontinental plane tickets, accomodation for emmergency production meetings in random places (Praia is equidistant between Boston and Lagos, isn't ?).
But for now i'm back to my on-task.. and somehow thinking about the last time i did it for a feature film (or rather script).. it was quite early in the process so it was the "All Out" one, you know, no second-guessing, the script said "large view of greenland's icy immensities", you put "helicopter or plane" in one of the boxes. Only god knows how much fun i had doing that, and how much i wanted to be there, in greenland, iceland or wherever sitting in front of a laptop and doing "stuff" that would have helped the beautiful script i read and re-read and re-read again become an actual movie.. sadly, the process of production (especially pre-production) takes a helluva long time in the very formal European Union.. so... hmm... my (very modest) participation ended up a while ago... the rest of this particular story will be told latter.
now what i wanted to say is that, even if the actual production of TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMEN may seem a little rushed, i'm actually happy we decided to "just do it" (or some may have forced that decision on others, lol).
I didn't want to have another tale about a missed opportunity.
aflakete the wunderkid at 12:01 PM
No Shaking
So the few entries below, though posted on the same day, have been written over a cut-down-from-the-innanets week..Some of them are glommy, huh ?
Well, for those who want to know I FEEL VERY GOOD. I'm not hospitalized (as apparently an automatic response from my email suggested). And i'm still in constant excitement..
so few facts:
- during the champion's league final my brain was divided, half analyzing the disposition Wenger choose to (try to) stop the usual Riijkard tactics, half organizing, calculating, reorganizing, listing information about this production.. oh yeah .. about TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. Now people who know me know that when Barça plays, my brain can't think about anything else past noon. Trust me, what happenned that day was even more surprising to me.
- we met a few actors. Not all since everybody but the leads will be casted in Calabar.
Interesting encounters. And it's nice to start to put faces on characters. I can't wait to hear the feedback on the script they're probably reading right now.
oh yeah:
being able to introduce myself as "a producer" to actors and see them being semi impressed (or may be it was something else) by my silence ?
priceless.
*ego parenthese closed*
the simple fact that they didnt laugh at us was priceless.. lol
- i wonder how long Koko will hold on until i convert him to the "producers can freely talk about how good a potential MALE actor looks and not feel akward" school of thought... héhé
- Calabar is a few days away and that will determine a lot.. may Allah/God/TheGreatArchitect/YamanjaOshunEshuSango'n'em/Nzambi/Krishna/alltheBuddahs/AndTheRestOfThem be with us.
- i have more entries planned already.. (day by day diaries are boring)
so soon
and thanks for the support.
aflakete the wunderkid at 11:57 AM
No Shaking
So the few entries below, though posted on the same day, have been written over a cut-down-from-the-innanets week..Some of them are glommy, huh ?
Well, for those who want to know I FEEL VERY GOOD. I'm not hospitalized (as apparently an automatic response from my email suggested). And i'm still in constant excitement..
so few facts:
- during the champion's league final my brain was divided, half analyzing the disposition Wenger choose to (try to) stop the usual Riijkard tactics, half organizing, calculating, reorganizing, listing information about this production.. oh yeah .. about TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. Now people who know me know that when Barça plays, my brain can't think about anything else past noon. Trust me, what happenned that day was even more surprising to me.
- we met a few actors. Not all since everybody but the leads will be casted in Calabar.
Interesting encounters. And it's nice to start to put faces on characters. I can't wait to hear the feedback on the script they're probably reading right now.
oh yeah:
being able to introduce myself as "a producer" to actors and see them being semi impressed (or may be it was something else) by my silence ?
priceless.
*ego parenthese closed*
the simple fact that they didnt laugh at us was priceless.. lol
- i wonder how long Koko will hold on until i convert him to the "producers can freely talk about how good a potential MALE actor looks and not feel akward" school of thought... héhé
- Calabar is a few days away and that will determine a lot.. may Allah/God/TheGreatArchitect/YamanjaOshunEshuSango'n'em/Nzambi/Krishna/alltheBuddahs/AndTheRestOfThem be with us.
- i have more entries planned already.. (day by day diaries are boring)
so soon
and thanks for the support.
aflakete the wunderkid at 11:57 AM
lagos.. again
"It was as i feared, a descent into imagined hell. All semblance of community had vanished. The noise, the frenzy, the disorder! This was a mere labyrinth of clogged alleys and overburdened streets, dark mounts of indeterminate sludge, tinsel imports on sales racks or inpedestrian motion, festering carrion, abused and abusive humanity that called itself a city"From "You Must Set Forth At Dawn" by the great Wole Soyinka
Funny I read that part during breakfast (eggs and coffee if you want to know) while i typed a first draft of this entry last night...
so...
when i first got here Uchenna kept asking me if Lagos was as chaotic as i imagined..
back then i confessed to be a little disapointed..
now after 3 weeks ?
hell yeah it is.
not because of nepa, not because it feels unsafe, not because nigerians are the loudest africans (and they're not), not because they're all crooks (419=Feymania ?) or whatever..
Lagos is an assault on my senses. eyes, nose, ears...
Constant.
The Soyinka quote could be about any african city if it was written by a non-african.. But these words, by someone who lived/lives (?) in Ibadan or MY feelings are a strong indication of the amplitude of Lagos's monstriousity. Lagos's residential areas have the density of Brazzaville's "busy" areas and the size of .. Brazzaville. and when i tried to do what i always do when i get to a new city: getting a mental picture of its general structure, well my brain failed me. Except for Lagos and Victoria Islands, there is no indication that you leave an area and get in another. And there's a serious lack of "orientation points".. you know, remarkable buildings, monuments, squares, parks.. And the crowds.. oh my the crowds.. May be i'm develloping my own version of my mom's fear of crowds (the thought of india or china makes her nauseous). And the lights.. too many lights, not too much, TOO MANY. And the contrast with the absence of street lights...
I was suffocating..
yet excited...
So yeah, i know that as soon as i get back to my dear and calm home country, i'll start complainning about its boring tranquility and dullness again but somewhere deep inside, a side of me will breathe and appreciate the calm days and nights.
aflakete the wunderkid at 11:54 AM
i'm frustrated..
I'm frustrated because i still think uchenna should be already, i'm frustrated because sometimes koko takes naps, i'm frustrated because i'm far too dependant on that source of information and mean of communication that the internet is AND my access is limited, i'm frustrated because i'm not independant, i'm frustrated because i miss you, i'm frustrated because i don't blog enough, because we don't go fast enough, because there are only 24 hours in a day, because i'm obsessed to by worst case scenarios, because it's my job to be obsessed with worst case scenarios, i'm frustrated because i feel than we're so close to greatness and yet close to failure, i'm frustrated because i'm anxious of seeing the result, i'm frustrated because i need to work even harder.now i hope writing this and having a good night of sleep will allow me not to be overtaken by my frustration.
aflakete the wunderkid at 11:49 AM
Have you checked my co-conspirator's blog ?Well i hope you have.. if not, well, here's the link:
Uchenna
interesting, isn't ? great music, great pics and stuff.. it somehow puts you in the mood of "TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMEN" (hé i'm doing my part too)..
Well THIS is what I (yeah the oh so grand me) have been listenning to while i work.. Add to that the strong fix of 80's funk i'm getting from Koko during our oh-so-long car rides and you get an idea..
Which reminds me that i've been thinking about making an entry about the different personalities in this troika..
Which would be corny..
basically we are 3 nerds. and each representing three different sides of African Nerdism (i should register that .com).
aflakete the wunderkid at 11:46 AM
overload
Have you ever worked on a film budget ?It's an interesting thing, really.. You sit in front of an Excel file and try to fit every single one of your expenses in pre-determined categories. So yeah you have to know what your expenses are, you gotta know where to put them in, both can be quite hard.. i mean where do you put your main actor whiskey addiction ? (well that one is easy, it's harder when the addiction is not legal*, lol).
So yeah hours of typing, configurating and all the blah blah.. boring
But also any producer in the world can picture the movie being done in his head while doing it..
It's funny because things get really more REAL in front of an excell file.
Now what hit me this morning as i was working on it was the amount of work left to be done..
Location scouting, smaller parts casting, actually shooting, accomodating all the people, handling the schedule, recording the voiceovers, organizing this and that and then... pre-editing, raising money from more investors, clearing the music, the additionnal shooting, working on a soundtrack (if anyone is interesed...), editing, post-producing (picture equalizing and such), sound mixing, mastering, converting to 35mm or other, pre-marketing, negotiating/signing with theater distributors, video distributors, tv channels, defending the movie.. and then hopefully getting paid.. (and that means more headache about paying the investors back).
so yeah there is a huge amount of work.
and weirdly enough i'm excited...
oh yeah: TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMEN is the title, lol
aflakete the wunderkid at 11:41 AM
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Mes que un Club
(now i hope no one thinks this was spanish, and i'm serious too)
Today, around 6:45 pm UT, the Champion's League final will start in Paris (well, St Denis but y'all don't know where it is, do you ?). And for the first time since 94 (and a severe 0-4 defeat against the great Milan AC) my team, the great, the invicible, the oh-so-glorious FC BARCELONA will have a chance to win it. Thierry "King" Henry is the only obstacle left (and the funny thing is that he may join Barça this summer) and Ronaldinho and Samuel Eto'o are surely hella motivated.
So yeah Great Evenning.
But this reminded me of something. I'll watch that game surrounded by strangers and a friend who doesnt like football much.. So i'll probably emo for a second and have a thought for my friends who are away and probably as excited as i'll be.
so.. shoot out to Greg, Muriel, Jeff, Philippe, Remi, Mohamadou, Samantha..
now i know some of you are for Arsenal but whatever. My Juju's stronger than yours. Let's just have fun.
aflakete the wunderkid at 9:03 AM
So this starts to make sense...
Yesterday after working for hours on the contuinity and the itemization and other logistical issues, i said to Koko "it is doable".. he looked at me and said "if this wasn't doable, would you be here ?" then i replied "i thought it was doable but didn't know HOW".. Now i do know it is .. and how to do it.So yeah it seems like this isnt as crazy as i thought i'd be. which doesnt mean we're the sanest people in the world either.
But yeah, I have a better vision of everything and the team just works great.
Me and Koko perfectly get along and perfectly communicate.
Even when we're not on the same page the lines stay open and we quickly find a compromise.
And our dear director shouldn't feel left out because he is the Soul and Spirit of all this.. WE CANT WAIT TILL YOU GET HERE, SON.
Now a few people have read the script and the feedback is interesting. Mostly positive with a few very relevant suggestions on the weak points.
We still have a lot of work to do though..
aflakete the wunderkid at 8:57 AM
Friday, May 12, 2006
Lagos is burning..
Well not exactly. But still.Yesterday as we were in the car, a special radio report was talking about riots in Aja (i think..). Quite scary news if i was in a smaller city but this is Lagos. Plus the reason behind those riots (some conflict between the chieftancy and the land owners) is so specific that the violence cannot spread outside that part of town. *EXHALES IN RELIEF*..
But today we could see this:
from one of the bridges. impressive huh ? That was totally unrelated to the riots.just some fire on a pipeline.. cusualities tho ? 100 deads and still counting.. Let their souls rest in peace.
in other news, hmm.. I finally could read the latest finalized version of the script. Great ending, son if you're reading this.. Now all I can do is thinking about the work that has to be done and of course work.. lol.
I also went to Ibadan a few days ago.. I didnt expect to it to look this way from the Wole Soyinka novel "Ibadan, the pelicumess years", but i wasn't disapointed neither. The red dirt and the hills reminded me of Yaoundé.. I was suprised to see that many mosques there, but oh well..
what else can i talk about ?
hmm.. i drink too much coke. lol. those who have been knowing me for years know that i used to be a big coca-cola addict.. like 2 or 3 litters a day easily. and i stopped when back in november.. so i drank like 3 bottles in 6 months and now.. i'm not back to my former standard but close, too close.
now gotta go and work.. more equipment rental places to visit, more tailors to meet for the costumes, more script breaking down, more traffic to be stuck in...
aflakete the wunderkid at 11:41 AM
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Why do i post in english ?
One of the reasons my blog aint that very intersting in my opinion is because i write in a foreign language.Why would one do that ?
Well, just of practical reasons.. My Francophone friends have at least basic english understanding skills, my Anglophone friends can't read anything but english for the most part. Plus i don't give a single damn about french as a language so why would i do it differently ?
Speaking about that, I felt lost a couple of times since this is my first journey to a completly foreign language country.. yeah South Africa for one week with my mom and sister when i was 15 doestn count. For many reasons..
so yeah, i get lost and feel dumb sometimes but i still follow, give me 1 month and even heavy pidgin wont be that hard to understand.
Now weirdly enough, it's the money i have the most trouble with. 1 Naira = 4 CFA Francs, that's WAAAAY easier than converting from French Francs to Euro (yeah i was there during the currency switch) or from CFA Francs to Hrivnas.. Still i get lost.. May be because the values is actually a little close and because I'm not sure I had the time to totally adjust to CFA.. And Nigeria's cheap so I have trouble to control my personnal budget.. you know how during the sales you end up spending more just because well.. it was on sale..
I'm also fascinated by the Nigerian pride. When they say "african", they mean "nigerian". Seriously. And they're proud of Big Brother Nigeria having after a weeks having generated more phonecalls/textmessages and rating than Big Brother South Africa has after it ended. Now really, there are "around" 140 millions of you, what do you expect ? so it's amusing and interesting. Big direct-to-video market in volume, huh ? Well I wonder if some people don't actually stick to video just because of that.
Anyway, I know i come from a small insignifiant country, I shouldn't be talking.
now i need to meditate on why do i use caps after some of my dots and why I don't in other cases.
aflakete the wunderkid at 11:43 AM
.
Fuck Geography, this isnt a travel blog.. Who cares about all those nerdy details ? This is about moviemaking.. well particularly about one movie, called TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMEN written and directed by the most talented guy I know..yeah that's for the promotion.
So anyway, the whole point is that TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMEN is supposed an ambitious, artsy and yet interesting and quite commercially viable movie, with better "quality" than Nollywood movies BUT WITH THE SAME BUDGET. And i'm one of the producers.
So this will probably be about cutting plenty of corners. As a matter of fact we started. Hell, we started a long time ago.. But I wont reveal how..... for now, dear reader(s)..
So what have i been doing since i got here ?
Itemizing... contacting people here and there.. translating my pre-prepared documents (i went to film school, yo) to english and stuff.. And saturday we spent the afternoon talking with a producer and an actor/director that are quite established in Nollywood.
Funny how most of their advice was about how we should be arrogant know-it-alls since they saw quite a few guys come here and be like "we'll show you how it's done" and those guys ... hmmm.. failed. They were quite realistic about the how and the why too. Basically the whole thing about the not-so-great technical quality for instance is just that the market doesnt reward it.
Well it actually does, but not enough financially for the distributors/financers to invest more (time, money, energy) in doing better movies.
I can understand that.
Economics rule over everything, people.
Now the thing is, we're not coming to teach anything to anyone. We're coming to do TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMEN using all the ressources, the inventivity, the tricks we can find, be they from film school or from nollywood veterants (condoms on mics, HOLLA). So don't expect arrogance and naivety (spelling?) from any of us.
As a matter of fact, i wished our director was more naive. so yo, if you read this, WE ARE SUPPOSED TO TELL YOU WHAT CAN BE OR CANNOT BE DONE.
And Koko, the other member of the troika ? well, let's say that Koko probably stands for Cost Killer / Cost Killer. lol (i hope this was funy).
So like yeah, we're moving on, and while i enjoy the time i spend watching the city while we're on traffic, i'm not here for tourism.
You heard about Guerilla Filmmaking ? Well this is Mau Mau Filmmaking..
EVEN CRAZIER.
ps: i juts decided i wont shave before this is done. i know someone who's probably happy about this.
aflakete the wunderkid at 11:40 AM
Monday, May 08, 2006
blah blah
i'll be back...time goes so fast..
aflakete the wunderkid at 10:41 AM
shit, yo
shit, yo, i haven't been blogging like i should have right ? Well, hmmmm, i really feel bad about letting my baby (who spent hours htmlizing this blog) and my readers down (funny thing is that they're probably the same person).So anyway..
Nigeria.
I don't even know where to start.. the trip may be ?
Hmmm.. during my night in Brazzaville i watched a few episodes of a series made by Les Guignols d'Abidjan. A super famous ivorean crew of comedians.. And as always, while the story or the acting weren't that bad, the visuals and the general rythm sucked. I mean when a character says "ok we're out", do we need to see them getting in a car one by one (the guy was holding the doors for the ladies, so tresvanty) and then turning the engine on and everything ? what are those 2 minutes for ? Do they matter in the story in any way ? and that didnt happen once.. So yeah that was motivating..
While i was waiting for my plane (that was OF COURSE late) i had an interesting convo with a friend of my dad's. We talked about the craziness of this whole project, some of my fears and everything and he basically was super supportive, saying that being resonable is boring and that success or failure is relative.. Ah. Quite predictable you'd say ? well, you'd be suprised to know that THIS in the mouth of one of my parents' friends is NOT COMMON AT ALL..
So then i get on the plane, first deception, I thought the flight was via Kinshasa and Douala and i was excited at the idea of at least looking at the neighbourg giant through my little plane window.. but no, the plane was coming from Kin. Hmmm.. That was soon compensated by the fact that i got a drink that reminded me of my childhood, funny thing is that i can't remember its name now. Shit, that's another thing that sucks about Pointe-Noire, too far from Kin. Hmm..
So i openned a book, boring flight and then DOUALA. I've lived in Douala, Cameroon for 2 years. the last two years of high school. And while I've lived longer in Paris for instance, Douala has left a bigger mark on me. So i was a little moved just by looking at it through the window.. So many memories... And just looking at that city made go up on my "city to move to" list. So one other thing about flying through Douala is the view on Mount Cameroon. That 3,000 meter volcano just standing there near the ocean ALONE. It's actually part of a chain that is mostly submarine (if you look at a map just see where Sao Tome e Principe are, then Malabo and then Douala and you'll have an idea).. So ok, the geography nerd i was looking at what was down there and trying to recognize places, Bonaberi, Buea (speling?), Limbe, and a bunch of fishermen villages. Those were funny because they were sometimes very close to the city but you could see there were no roads linking them to it. Where the people there visiting Douala from time to time ? Just the fishermen or all the families ? those were the random questions is my head..
And then after 15 minutes i could guess we weren't in Cameroon anymore.. how ? well because i'm a nerd and also because the flight wasnt quiet anymore. Turbulences, fasten you seatbelt.. lol, quite a symbol. I was living the slow and quiet central africa.. no more bantu languages, no more french, less mining, more trade..
And then Lagos..
I wonder if my observations from the window are really interesting to my dear readers, but i actually don't care. IT IS TO ME.
So i expected a pulp, a giant and that's what i got.. i could see the end of the city while i was still starting the landing process.. In Brazzaville from almost every part of the city you can see the surrounding still empty hills (well almost empty, BZV too is growing)..
so yeah, here i was, Giant of Africa and all that, all excited because that meant it's on...
i guess i'll stop now..
aflakete the wunderkid at 10:39 AM