We are a Filmmaking Collective from Nigeria, It took us 3 years to make a short film inspired by Yoruba mythology and we got Morgan Freeman involved. Ask Us Anything!

How were you able to reach Mr. Freeman and what got him interested about your film?

Well, we were able to reach Mr freeman through our representatives and the rest is history!😁

What were some of the challenges you had making this film? Things we would not expect?

Well, challenges arose at every phase of making this film, a chunk of them were from Post-production. On several occasions, the team kept going back on certain VFX shots just to make sure they helped effectively tell the story.

Edit :

Another challenge was finding the actress who plays the mother, as the project was very low budget we couldn't afford bringing in a professional actress and there was zero to no actors who were available in our vicinity. We had to delay shooting for almost 3months to find a schedule that could work for our available actors , a part of the delay was also finding the right house for our characters, we eventually had to settle for an uncompleted building in which our production designer worked on to look like a house that would work for the scenes we wanted to have filmed.

Was the final fight scene in that uncompleted building?

Yes, very correct! the final fight scene was in that building.

Hey guys film student in Ireland and would love to say congratulations on making the film. Can I ask who would you say are influences for you guys when it comes to cinema?

Hello, just realized our reply to your comment came as a stand-alone so here you go.

Reply: Hello, thank you for the kind words, our major influences comes from the work of filmmakers like Nolan, Tarantino, Michael Bay, Alfonso Cuaron, J.J Abrams, Bong Joon Ho. For most of us on the team, our influences do not only just come from film.

Did you see the film? What are your thoughts?

Will the film's themes and plot make sense to people who aren't familiar with Yoruba mythology?

oh Yes we tried our best to make sure that the film appeals to the global audience both verbally and visually.

Have you guys thought about sometime in the future doing a “crossover” film that brings Yoruba mythology together with mythology from other indigenous cultures in the world?

To be honest, We haven’t thought of that before, but that’d be interesting to see, Thank you for this 😀

Curious your thoughts on Morgan Freeman's comments about writer directors...

"Too many of them get in the way. You get the title of ‘director’ and you start directing actors rather than directing the movie."

“I don’t like to be directed. The worst culprits are writers who direct their own material. Oh God.”

“When you arrive on set and the director goes, ‘Here’s my idea for this character,’ I go, ‘I’ll be right back!’ Or — and this was told to me by a really good director — he said, ‘Okay, here’s what I think your character is thinking at this moment. "You tell me what I’m thinking? I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. You figure out where to put the camera and the light.

"If you want me to go faster or to go slower, you can say that.”

Well, we think that every actor or even any professional on a film set has their process and approach to work, some actors might enjoy the director that says 'Here's my idea for this character" and some actors might not. What's most important in the end is that there is a conversation between both parties (Directors and Actors) to figure out a way to work and bring out the best possible product.

Can you recommend some Nigerian films that in your opinion are interesting ?

Some Nigerian films we can recommend are: 1. Juju Stories: This is an anthology by the surreal 16 collective 2. King of Boys (the first film and the next installment which is a series ) are available on Netflix, directed by Kemi Adetiba, 3. Eyimofe directed by Ari and Chuko Esiri, 4. O town directed by C.J Fiery 5. Lionheart directed by Genevieve Nnaji 6. The lost okoroshi by Abba T. Makama, 7. La femme Anjola by Mildred Okwo

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Most of these films are available on streaming platforms like Netflix or Amazon Prime.

We hope this was helpful

Super helpful, thank you. Also your movie is very impressive, very impressive. Good work !

Thank you very much, this means the world to us.

If you are still there, one more question. Is it common to mix Yoruba and English in everyday language ?

Yes it is common to mix both languages together. We have a language derivative of English called pidgin, it sounds like English if you listen closely but it’s broken. It’s spoken in other countries in West Africa.

Congrats! And love the chance to hear about unfamiliar mythologies. Are there any other specifically interesting stories or gods in Yoruba mythology?

Yes there are so many other gods with different specialties in Yoruba mythology.

In this wiki page, the gods are listed and their abilities are explained : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoruba_religion

Hello, thank you for the kind words, our major influences comes from the work of filmmakers like Nolan, Tarantino, Michael Bay, Alfonso Cuaron, J.J Abrams, Bong Joon Ho. For most of us on the team, our influences do not only just come from film.

Did you see the film? What are your thoughts?

Congrats!!! What has been the most challenging from the project?

The most challenging things about the project came at each stage of the production.

During Pre-Production, it was figuring out how to approach some of the scenes in the film creatively, and finding our main cast as there are little to no actors and we could not afford the available ones.

In production we paused shooting for about 3 months to find the house that was perfect for some of the indoor scenes in the film, we eventually settled for an uncompleted building that was modified by our Production designer.

For Post-production, Visual effects were the most challenging aspect of making the film, as we wanted it to be very good.

We were working with the mantra "there should be no buts" and we really hope there isn't for the audience. haha

does this answer your question?

Hi, congratulations on your new film and thanks for the link! My question is; over the 3 years of making 'Ogun Ola' did your ideas for the film change from what you had originally envisioned? If so how much would you say?

Thanks!

Hello, thank you!

Our ideas for the film did not necessarily change, we had to modify it down to the level that our budget could afford and that was early in the development stage.

70% of the film remained the same, the one thing we had to really compromise for was the final scene and it influenced our decision on how we approached the scene greatly.

We can go into details but would have to spoil the film, let us know if that's fine.

How did you find your cast? The mother was very genuine.

BTW, I quite enjoyed but was expecting not to, haha. I love folklore, and African folklore is an untapped treasure trove in my opinion.

The actor who plays the son came for the audition of a previous project of ours so we had a relationship with him and after the casting call for this particular project didn’t provide us the actor we thought would be right for the role, our producer suggested him and that’s how he got the role.

The actress who plays the mother has no prior acting experience and is also a friend of our producer, after months of searching for an available actress, we settled for her and did a couple of rehearsals and made it work.

We are happy we did not disappoint haha, expect more African folklore from us 😀😀

How is it finding specialists in filmmaking where you are in Nigeria? Cinematographers, film producers, audio engineers, screenwriters, composers, animators, etc.?

I’m assuming there’s tons of talent, but is it an easy process to hire a film crew?

Hello, we think this is a great question. Yes, there's a ton of talent, for us hiring a film crew isn't an easy process as most of them are situated in Lagos, Nigeria and we are based in Kaduna, Nigeria (it's a 12 -13 hour journey by road and 1hr by air) where there are little to none of these specialists available. The good ones are very occupied too, we have resulted to taking most of these jobs ourselves until we can afford to bring in these specialists.

What were your inspirations for composition or cinematography styles for the film? Do you feel that there is a need to innovate for more camera movements in order to tell unique kind of stories like ones based on Yoruban Mythology?

We like to pride ourselves on the fact that our films look a certain way but we can't really tell as you know maybe seeing the footage a million times does something in our heads.

We do not honestly think there is a need to innovate for camera movements, like what other movement is possible in the PTR axis, at least we don't know that for now, but what we do know is that so much has been made in over 100 years of film and i believe its a shared space where one can take inspiration to approach each scene differently depending on the mood and the feeling that should be evoked from watching a particular scene in the film.

We do not honestly think there is a need to innovate for camera movements, like what other movement is possible in the PTR axis, at least we don't know that for now, but what we do know is that so much has been made in over 100 years of film and its a shared space where one can take inspiration to approach each scene differently depending on the mood and the feeling that should be evoked from watching a particular scene in the film.

Innovate might not be the word but we believe that the approach to filming certain scenes should be well thought out.

To be honest with you, we had no idea we had famous waterfalls 😀, where is this located?

Are you inspired by ‘who killed captain Alex’?

No we aren’t, we had no idea of what captain Alex was until about 2-3years ago

Just watched your film - and it's great! Is there any plans to create a sequel/series following the ascent of the young god, Ola?

Also, have you guys submitted this short to some film festivals?

Thank you very much, we are very glad you liked the film. The short is a proof of concept and we hope that we are able to get funding to make the bigger and complete version of this film. fingers crossed!

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We submitted to just a few festivals.

Will you be making movies for any other Yoruba myths?! I love myths and folklore and trying to find some of the less popular, well-known myths from non-English-speaking countries is tricky.

There’s a possibility of that happening, this is just one god out of a couple of other gods, we are looking at expanding this world and focusing on some other characters, it’s going to be interesting journey for us.

Finding these myths can be very hard even for us as Nigerians as there are little to no resources available on them. For this project we had to travel to a state (Ekiti State) to meet with people who worship these gods.

Would you be interested in casting a white actor?

yes if the project requires it