The African movie industry has grown leaps and bounds. From such infantile beginnings when movie production was considered as self subsistence undertaking by an individual, when a simple piece of cheap camera can be used for a production, when crew members for each movie consisted basically of the camera man, the lighting person, and director, the current milestone it has achieved now certainly is worth commendation. The producer mostly wrote the story and did the screenplay, and therefore didn't have to contend with any extended cost associated with getting different personnel for that. Movies could be shot entirely in a single house and therefore the contracting a location manager wasn't did not have any appeal. But overtime, things have changed. The quality of the movie productions have improved, the investment levels has risen, there is an adoption of better production equipment, and overall a better package.
The bastion of movie production was centered in Nigeria, an industry that has adopted the name Nollywood. The producers had their shops and would replicate copies of the movies on VHS, which was the standard medium available for viewing movies in the late 90's. The marketers extended their reach by a concurrent distribution to other locations in the country where they had other annexed shops and outlets from where they reached out to the local market for each segment of the country. VHS copies of movies were not easily replicated on mass basis within a short period of time as such the marketers were able to sell most of the copies they had in stock based on this strategy before the bootleg market got a grip of the product to have a field day. The neighboring countries of Cameroon at the eastern corridor, Chad and Niger to the North and Benin to the west which shared borders with Nigeria, were all francophone countries and as such extending the movie market beyond the shores of the country was limited by the language barrier. This however did b not stop the extended reach of Nigerian productions onto the Ghanaian market, a twin neighbor in the West African sub region that has an intricately linked societal similarity with Nigeria. Fellow established marketers in Ghana therefore had a syndicated mechanism with the Nigerian producers that allowed them to equally get the same movies on the exact release dates as their Nigerian counterparts. This therefore allowed for the movie producers to maximize profits on productions that had limited budgets but an established market that was closely guarded.
Things began to change however after the inception and adoption of compact discs (CD) as the new format for replicating and mass producing movies, which had already taken root in all Hollywood and become pervasive also in most other entertainment industries globally. The Nigerian market also had to adopt and use CD's which unfortunately was the flood gate bootleg producers needed, since they could easily pick up a CD, make hundreds of copies with a single or multiple computers and equally trap a market segment of their own. The whole marketing machinery was based on speed and protected medium but the CD killed off that leverage, leaving the marketers scrambling for alternative means.
So as the movie industry has thrived and experienced growth with an explosion and presence especially in Europe and the United states, the bane of the problem for the industry remains finding a solution to the crippling and diminishing market locally.
The bastion of movie production was centered in Nigeria, an industry that has adopted the name Nollywood. The producers had their shops and would replicate copies of the movies on VHS, which was the standard medium available for viewing movies in the late 90's. The marketers extended their reach by a concurrent distribution to other locations in the country where they had other annexed shops and outlets from where they reached out to the local market for each segment of the country. VHS copies of movies were not easily replicated on mass basis within a short period of time as such the marketers were able to sell most of the copies they had in stock based on this strategy before the bootleg market got a grip of the product to have a field day. The neighboring countries of Cameroon at the eastern corridor, Chad and Niger to the North and Benin to the west which shared borders with Nigeria, were all francophone countries and as such extending the movie market beyond the shores of the country was limited by the language barrier. This however did b not stop the extended reach of Nigerian productions onto the Ghanaian market, a twin neighbor in the West African sub region that has an intricately linked societal similarity with Nigeria. Fellow established marketers in Ghana therefore had a syndicated mechanism with the Nigerian producers that allowed them to equally get the same movies on the exact release dates as their Nigerian counterparts. This therefore allowed for the movie producers to maximize profits on productions that had limited budgets but an established market that was closely guarded.
Things began to change however after the inception and adoption of compact discs (CD) as the new format for replicating and mass producing movies, which had already taken root in all Hollywood and become pervasive also in most other entertainment industries globally. The Nigerian market also had to adopt and use CD's which unfortunately was the flood gate bootleg producers needed, since they could easily pick up a CD, make hundreds of copies with a single or multiple computers and equally trap a market segment of their own. The whole marketing machinery was based on speed and protected medium but the CD killed off that leverage, leaving the marketers scrambling for alternative means.
So as the movie industry has thrived and experienced growth with an explosion and presence especially in Europe and the United states, the bane of the problem for the industry remains finding a solution to the crippling and diminishing market locally.