Oluwatise Oluwajuwon and How VFX Shapes Storytelling in Nollywood

The written connection has ever carried the powerfulness to transcend the leafage and beryllium reimagined connected screen, but the translation from publication to movie is thing but simple; it demands countless moving parts. There are truthful galore layers: the prime of lenses that signifier the look of a scene, the cross-cutting that builds tension, the euphony that underscores mood, the framing, the costuming. As a writer who 1 time wants to constitute for television, I person wondered however everything comes to life, however the conception of make-believe really materialises, peculiarly arsenic the conception of place, mounting and clip is concerned. I mean, what does it instrumentality to question successful clip connected screen, to physique oregon make a mounting that situates the contiguous successful the past and the past successful the contiguous oregon adjacent make an alternate multiverse wherever clip itself is elastic?

Nollywood acceptable plan has go a superior craft. To make a satellite that reflects the property and texture of a communicative is nary tiny feat, particularly successful Nigeria, wherever humanities preservation and archival civilization stay underdeveloped. When carnal reconstruction is not enough, filmmakers crook to ocular effects (VFX) to rebuild what has been mislaid oregon to erase what does not belong, and sphere the essence of place.

For example, successful Swallow, Kunle Afolayan‘s 2021 film, Oluwatise Oluwajuwon and his squad digitally stripped distant modern intrusions, caller streetlights, renovated rooftops, adjacent net poles and layered successful the textures of the 1980s. A breached tv was fixed a flicker of past life, a 90s aeroplane appeared connected an bare runway, and the interior of a formation was conjured truthful characters could inhabit it. These invisible interventions let viewers to judge successful a past they ne'er saw oregon lived agelong capable to witness. 

This attraction to clip and spot is indispensable successful Nigerian creation due to the fact that it mirrors the mode readers and viewers consciousness astir a place. For instance, what readers consciousness astir Nsukka arsenic a spot due to the fact that of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s work, and the recurring statement astir whether Ibadan oregon Lagos should beryllium considered the literate superior of Nigeria. Lagos, cosmopolitan, divers and vibrant arsenic it is, often loses to Ibadan, which nurtured truthful galore literate giants and inactive holds a consciousness of antiquity. As Zenas Ubere writes successful his unfastened missive to J.P. Clark, “For astir Nigerian cities I’ve lived in, the past does not readily show. With mandates for inhabitants to springiness a facelift to their houses, buildings are renovated, repainted, and their roofs remade to acceptable a modern trend. Sometimes, to grow roads, buildings are demolished, denying the metropolis its aged face. For these cities, traces of the past tin lone beryllium recovered successful pockets, astatine the margins. But Ibadan cares small astir looking new. The buildings are aged and privation you to cognize it.”

The aforesaid nostalgia for time, for the preservation of memory, underpins the enactment of VFX artists successful Nigerian film. As Oluwatise explained, “Being capable to archer a communicative successful a clip mounting and person radical to judge it makes maine precise happy.” Each project, helium noted, requires probe into architecture, design, and the smallest details of mundane life. That probe becomes its ain signifier of learning, a mode of recovering and remaking assorted aspects of our corporate histories.

His way to VFX began agelong earlier Nollywood began embracing it. While different children dreamed of becoming doctors, lawyers, oregon engineers, Oluwatise was captivated by the spectacle of Dragon Ball. The explosions, the fights, the unusual effects drew him in. He sketched constantly, telling anyone who asked that helium wanted to marque effects for film. At the time, fewer academies successful Nigeria could bid him, and nary viable way to specified a vocation existed. But his persistence carried him into a assemblage wherever helium present help...