CREATIVITY DROUGHT HIT GHANA FILMS

Everything about movies from beginning to the end boils down to creativity. Creativity leads to innovation. The industry is lacking behind in innovation; in the areas of graphics and effects. Storylines are poor, no tension, no suspense and

the most annoying of them all the movie will just end. You might think there was a black out. Then you are told watch out for part.. Your guess is as good as mine.

When you end up spending part of your time to watch some Ghanaian movies to the end you are bound to ask yourself was that a movie or a joke.

The shocking side of it all is that it doesn’t cost money to end a movie in a nice way. All you need is a sense of creativity. But so painful to admit is that this creativity is lacking. In the end the filmmaker comes out with a Schlock movie

and his so proud of his handy work, when many others would have buried their faces in the palm in shame.

Some filmmakers are of the opinion that since movie enthusiasts are consuming their films then there is no need to be creative. Consider this, the film that brought fame to the American filmmaker George Lucas was ‘American Graffiti ‘. Lucas again invested in a seven years CGI (Computer Generated Image) project and later joined by Steve Jobs of Apple. The outcome was Pixar.

They release the first 3D animation, Toy Story which was a box office breaker. Lucas invested his earning in the development of new technology for movies. The outcome of the investment in innovation was the effects in Star Wars. As it turned out Star Wars become the highest gross film ever, until the release of E.T by Steven Spielberg. Now the spot has been taken over by

James Cameron with his Titanic and Avatar, this was the result of heavy Cameron's  investment in creativity and technology. So who told you investment in creativity doesn’t pay?

The actors seem to be pulling up their weight but the industry isn’t supportive enough. Majid Michel is supposed to have been after an action packed story to act but no such script is available.

The industry is bogged down to love and romantic films, pastors and witches. So we appear as a bunch of jokers making movies and proudly calling ourselves filmmakers.

Being creative in storyline means coming up with four to five alternatives for a situation or a scenario and selecting the best. It sound simple in writing but in practise it can very tedious and if you are not used to it, it become impossible. Thomas Edison captured it this way; man will do anything to avoid to the labour of thinking.

In Shirley’s film Check Mate (2011) there was a section shot under water where Nadia and Senanu went down the pool.  All though that scene was brief, but it constitutes a brilliant piece of innovation and a rarity in Ghanaian films. 

A scene shot under water.

When the film industry starts to show signs of creativity we can then turn our trumpets to the organizers of Ghana movies award and blow it too hard to make them honour and award creativity.

Creativity pays dear Ghanaian filmmaker. With apologies, let try and change a mediocre mind setting to a creativity mind setting and press okay. The creativity pill is a bitter one and if anyone endeavours to push the frontier of filmmaking in Ghana he must be ready to swallow the pill.

Is there any who can pick up the challenge?