SHOOT! Training programme originated from the apex body of the film industry, the Nigerian Film Corporation (NFC).Since its debut, the programme has served as an intermediary between filmmakers at the grassroots and the professionals in the industry. It has recorded enormous success and has helped introduce innovations into the film industry.
The annual workshop series takes place at the Nigerian Film Institute (NFI) Jos, the Plateau State Capital, but it suffered absence due to communal/religious crises that erupted in the state two years ago. This year, the organisers, introduced a professional partnership with the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) to feature the training portfolio for the filmmakers in Lagos, AL-AMIN CIROMA looks at the overview of the programme and its impact on stakeholders.
The seed of SHOOT! Series workshop was first planted by the Nigeria Film Corporation (NFC) in 2005 to serve as a training and capacity building programme for film stakeholders and professionals in the motion picture industry. The workshop is aimed at broadening the horizon of practitioners who have individual areas of interest. It also serves as an avenue for stakeholders to gain expertise, exchange ideas and discuss emerging creative tools and applications for quality production. So far, statistics shows that about 817 persons have fully participated and benefited in the programme since its inception four years ago.
Created by the need to democratise the access to content creation tools, SHOOT! Observed that Nigeria was yet to be transformed into a net of exporter of quality films. Although the progamme was designed for producers and film distributors, video and television broadcasters, as well as directors of cinematography, it was also a platform where audio-visual experts in related fields and organisations reaped from its wealth of ideas.
According to the managing director/chief executive officer, NFC, Afolabi Adesanya, the workshop will be improved on in subsequent editions. He opined that NFC will keep exploring core competencies at driving this special training and improvement programme forward.
For example, the year 2009 series of the workshop, being the 5th edition, was slated for July 20 to 24 with the theme ‘’Reel Life, Real Sound,’’ where international resource persons for all scheduled courses showcased their talents in conducting the training courses.
This year, NFC in collaboration with NBC have announced the date for the annual training and capacity building workshop for motion picture practitioners in Nigeria. The event tagged, SHOOT! 2011 will hold in the last week of July at the Lagos office of the NBC. The partners, through a statement, gave the theme of the workshop as “Towards Digital Transition”.
According to the statement, the partnership underscores the aptness in preparing all stockholders, both broadcast content providers and distribution networks for the global migration from analogue to digital broadcast technology, scheduled to be concluded by 2015.
NFC and NBC have thus, in their quest to adequately prepare the Nigerian polity for a successful migration, decided to use this year’s edition of SHOOT! Training series, to sensitise stakeholders, film practitioners and radio and television professionals in the Public and Private Sectors. Media executives and information officers at the Federal, State and Local Government Agencies also form the core stakeholders.
Aspiring filmmakers and broadcasters who want to enhance their skills would, according to the organisers, benefit from the workshop, with basic courses, structured to be beneficial to participants. These courses include Digital Editing for Film, Television and Radio; Production Design for Film, Television and Radio; Digital Production/Editing; Digital Cinematography, and Techniques of Audio Recording in Digital Format for Film, Television and Radio.
The SHOOT! Training series started in 2005 as an international training platform for Nigeria’s motion picture practitioners and has since become a permanent feature within the motion picture sector.
Since its emergence in 1979, the NFC has had a profound influence on Nigerian and African culture and tourism, economic empowerment and social integration. Adesanya, its Chief Executive Officer is doing all in his ability to enhance the Nigerian style of dress and behavioural eccentricities through the transmission of Nigerian films around the world. He has come to be directly associated with the culture in the industry by working diligently. His idiosyncrasies at NFC are effecting tremendous change and are affecting those he leads positively and they see him as their role model. Likewise, many Nigerians have come to terms with the rare qualities that are embedded in this dude whose other name could be Humility.
The most sleaziest aspect, however is that so many stakeholders and practitioners in the industry cry that the nation’s motion picture apex body, NFC lacks awareness machinery that will drive the players to come into such forums and acquire wealth of experience and professional know-how so as to counter challenges in the profession and also meet up the global trends in the motion picture world. To this effect, filmmakers who cut across all the geopolitical zones in the country throw this challenge to NFC to further strengthen its cause for awareness, if at all such workshops truly meant for the filmmakers.