Upcoming Faces Don’t Have a Chance in Nollywood – Ramsey Noah

Your face is rather scarce in movies these days, what are you up to?
The scarcity is due to the fact that we can’t keep churning out movies that are of low quality. If I probably ask you about the last of my movie that you watched, you will probably say, a movie of about two years ago. And if I ask if you remember the storyline, I am sure you will say you can’t remember it, you will say I think you were just doing this and that, you are hurting this girl, you can’t give me a vivid storyline. That means there is no quality in the movie, what we are seeing is just the faces. The story line does not stick. If the storyline sticks, it will remain in your memory. That is why we are trying to work on productions that will stand the test of time rather than you churning out movies and you are not even seeing it everywhere. Even when that happens, there is what we call the law of diminishing return. You know that the faces will wear out in time if it continues like that.

So what are we expecting from Ramsey?
I am still there. It is just that not as many movies as it were before. I still get to shot my movies but this time, better quality stories, better technical quality, taking time to get into the artistic side of the movie, getting it right and getting it properly done, just going the extra mile to make it better.

Will you say that the FG intervention has assisted the industry?
Yes, it has created huge improvement, a tremendous improvement on the industry, it is really helping us, and the media talking about issues right now is very important, it is very key to helping the industry and the fact that this government has decided to be the one to assist and uplift the industry and make it well established formidable makes me very happy.

In what areas are the funds being deployed?
It is in the area of structures, building marketing structures for the industry and they are working on it already, they are giving out funds for that purpose already. If we take this part we are towing and continue to better it and people continue to see the potentials in the next two or three years I am sure that most Nigerians will be going to the cinemas to watch our films instead of films made in Hollywood.

Why are filmmakers reluctant to bring in new faces into their films?
It is all about marketing, first of all fielding new actors is like throwing money into a new product and you are not sure if it was going to be successful. So there is need for you to look into it, first you will have to either partner a big actor with an upcoming actor. You don’t want to put in so much money because making movies is capital intensive. You don’t want to put in much money and then throw it all away, no businessman wants to do that even if you want to build a new talent, no business man wants to do that so the best thing is to ensure that I make returns on investment. And until we have marketing structures where we can make successful movies, it will be hard for you to say you want to do away with known faces and bring in new ones when you don’t know if you are going to make sales because we don’t have structures in place.