Film producer Socrates Safo says filmmakers in the country have killed the future market of the movie industry.
According to him, filmmakers, out of ignorance, televised their movies on national television stations for a token and a six-month advertisement for their next movies.
Speaking in an exclusive interview on Max Morning Agenda in Accra on Friday, Socrates said his team realized that Ghana Television (GTV) showed more foreign movies, so he decided with his team to present their films to them for airing instead of showing them in cinemas.
“We give our movies to GTV and we are paid 2.5 million old Ghana cedis and six months airtime for our new movie, that was ‘Stepdad.’ We thought we were smart because ‘Ghost Years’ we paid for adverts but little did we know that we are killing the future market,” he said.
Socrates indicated that their mistake was out of ignorance since they did not get enough orientation and education on movie marketing.
He noted that Kaw Ansah, a professional at the time, did not orient them well, though he spoke against their acts, which he and his team failed to listen to.
“But now Kaw Ansah’s words resonate in my mind. It got to a point everyone was sending their movies to the TV stations so they reduced the 2.5 million to 1million and the advert airtime was also reduced for one month. Later, they decided not to give money anymore only advert: take it or leave it,” Socrates added.
Even so, he said they continued giving their movies to the television stations with the belief that watching part one would spark the interest of viewers to go and buy part two of the movies, but to no avail.
“The watchers knew it would be shown on TV so they would not buy the movie. Once they buy, it would still be shown so they got wiser while we also got more stupid,” Socrates noted.
He then attributed the current dull industry to the market that filmmakers collapsed in their bid for money years ago.
However, Socrates observed that the current filmmakers were still repeating the same mistakes they made in the past, stressing that “we graduated from ignorance to stupidity.”
Source: Ghana/MaxTV/MaxFM/max.com.gh/Joyceline Natally Cudjoe
