BY CYNDI GREENING, PHOENIX, USA - FilmDailies posted a piece on Filmmaking in Nigeria. Thanks to CNN, we now know that Nigeria’s blossoming film industry is number 3. That’s third place after Hollywood and Bollywood.

"The efforts of early Nigerian filmmakers were frustrated by the high cost of film production. Nollywood, however, is a video movie industry. Nigerians call them home videos. All Nollywood movies are produced using digital video technology. Television broadcasting in Nigeria began in the 1960s and received much government support in its early years. By the mid-1980s every state had its own broadcasting station. Law limited foreign television content so producers in Lagos began televising local popular theater productions. Many of these were circulated on video as well, and a small scale informal video movie trade developed.

A report on CNN featured a production which had all the features of a low/no-budget production: a video camera and NO lights in sight. The scenes were shot in the blistering hot Nigerian sun! They could have used a reflector to soften the light but they probably wanted that gritty look - it looked like a gangster movie.

They are buying Sony FX1 and Panasonic HVX200 by the dozen. They are shooting a movie a week - they need to shoot 20-30 setups a DAY!"

Thanks to the folks at FilmDailies for this report ... they're on my new "must read" list.
For more information:
http://www.nollywood.com
http://www.nollywood.net
http://worldfilm.about.com/od/africa/