My 2022 AMAA Award As Best Director Is A Call To Do More – Ogo Okpue

With a string of feats, UK-based filmmaker, Ogo Okpue, has added another as the Best Director (First Feature Film category) at the 2022 AMAA awards. He shares insights about the winning film, ‘A Song From The Dark’ and his future projects in this interview.  

Excerpts:

Your first feature film, ‘A Song From The Dark’ won you an AMAA as the Best Director (First Feature Film category). How does that make you feel?

It feels great when your work is recognized especially as it was self-produced. I had a great team and it was an ambitious project for the budget and timelines we had. Also these are not the type of stories the system as a whole encourages black filmmakers to make so getting the recognition from AMAA, which is a global platform for black film industry is quite encouraging. The award is a call to do more.

You seem to have waited to conquer the short film genre before proceeding to make a feature film. Is there any reason for this?

Well, I won’t say I conquered the short film genre; but I get what you mean. If I made an Oscar-nominated short then probably I’d agree. There are quite a few reasons why I waited for ages before making my first feature. I wanted to understand the medium of narrative storytelling and discover my filmmaking voice and as well hone my craft in specific areas before attempting the mammoth task of making a feature. It’s such a complicated beast and you could fall flat if you don’t know what you are doing.

What are the challenges of both forms of filmmaking?

Making features require a lot more stamina: psychological, emotional and physical stamina. First of all, your prep to post timeline is longer and then the marketing and sales part of it makes you feel like you are being drawn and quartered especially if you want to see it do well commercially. I feel with shorts, if you make a bad one, maybe it could be forgiven, based on the fact that it’s universally accepted that it has a lower barrier to entry and it has little to no commercial value for distribution pipelines.

You wear many hats in the creative industry; how succinctly would you like to be described?

I am a multi-media creative. I believe and actually some of my clients believe this as well, that artists with multiple skills, strong attention to detail and lots of energy, shouldn’t be boxed into one area of expertise. If God gave you gifts that are needed in the world, why bury it. Imagine, if Leonardo Da Vinci was born in our time, he’d probably be painting, coding apps, writing books, designing cars and shooting films.

Making films in the UK must have some pros and cons; could you share both experiences citing instances?

Making films in the UK is great. The nation as a whole respects the craft of filmmaking, so there are a lot of educational opportunities and young talents that are keen to help out with productions. Having said that, the problem I find is that the UK has minimal entrepreneurial drive when it comes to independent feature filmmaking. And when you jump start a production yourself without any external funding, you do get looked down on even from crew members who might be struggling to find regular work, very ironical. It’s crazy. Of course you get support from your close allies but the wider creative community? Not so much. There’s a reason for that which I understand but it’s just not fair on most truly independent productions.

Could you share your journey in the creative venture?

As far as I can remember, I have always loved the arts especially when it came to storytelling. My older brothers taught me how to draw when I was around 5 and I was drawing my own comics and selling them when I got to primary school, thought that didn’t last long. It’s hard for me to pinpoint my key artistic influences growing up as they were so many and they evolved as I got older. It was an eclectic mix. I was definitely very aware from a very young age that I wanted to do something artistic and creative with my life. I knew I wasn’t going to work as a lawyer, banker, engineer etc. Now what that job was, I had no idea hence why my pursuit for it led me to wear many hats along the way.  I tried different things during my teenage years until I came across an American animated website called 2dvanced.com. It belonged to a California-based company called 2advanced Studios. This was during the years of macromedia flash. I was blown away when I saw what 2advanced Studios was doing. They were making amazing-looking animated websites for brands all over the world. They turned these websites into short cinematic and highly interactive experiences. They literally made buttoned-down organisations look hip and cool and that was it for me. I got the tool, learnt it, pitched to a few companies and in time, brands and a few celebrities started paying me to create their websites and animated portfolios. I evolved from that over time, eventually got hired to join the brand communications team of a former leading bank in Nigeria and when I decided I needed more exposure and evolve my craft, I applied for an MA in England and moved over.  It is when I started schooling in England that my interest in narrative filmmaking peaked.

‘Catface, your short film, gave you an award, and ‘A Song From The Dark’ gave you 6 AMAA nominations?

I will say it feels good. Perhaps, my ‘little efforts’, spoke to the jury in a profound way. The lesson in this is that I have more people looking at what is going to happen next. That’s definitely means more work. I hope to live up to the huge expectations from the industry.

What inspired your first feature film, ‘A Song From The Dark’?

The inspiration of the story dates back to a certain period of my childhood when my family would visit my grandmother in our village. She happened to be a well-respected traditionalist. Tales of her would intrigue us and as I grew older I regretted not knowing her more. She was an enigma and I wondered what it would have been like if some of her tales were captured in books.

Have you decided on the cinematic itinerary of ‘A Song From The Dark’?

We are in talks with a couple of distributors but nothing concrete yet. I am open for more conversations. Either way, a release early next year is something we are working towards.

Juxtaposing ‘Saving Cain’ and ‘A Song From The Dark’, one would wonder what is with Ogo Okpue and horror films?

Well, I do love horror, thriller and the action genres. I enjoy the suspense and cinematic possibilities with these three genres. Horror has a wide array of subgenres. Some of them I’m not a big fan of… the body horror subgenre. So you’ll never see me make a complete body horror or a full on slasher film, no disrespect to these sub genres though as they are equally hard to make. The ones I gravitate towards are supernatural, folk and psychological horror which is where most of my works fall under. They are quite layered and they have a lot more to say. And I feel the terror that emits from these sub genres feel more organic.  Also from a commercial point of view, when you have very limited resources, horror films as a whole are the most practical to make and sell internationally if commercial filmmaking is what you want to do. I will definitely love to make an action film or full on gritty thriller though hence why I always have thriller and some action elements in my works as I find it fun to make.

Which horror film directors in the international scene excite and challenge you?

I actually love directors that blend drama and genre seamlessly whilst keeping it entertaining, so not horror directors. These directors excite and inspire me: Park Chan-Wook, Kim Jee-Won, John Carpenter, David Fincher, Antoine Fuqua, Late Tony Scott, Micheal Bay, Zack Snyder, Nicolas Winding-Refn, Guy Ritchie, Gina Prince-Bythewood and of course the inventive Akira Kurosawa.

Animated films are still not as mainstream as it should be in Africa, what are African filmmakers like you thinking of doing in this direction?

To get animation right requires a lot of time and capital. We already have the skill and passion for animation across Africa. It’s the finance that we need. I have a few animated projects that are fully developed with animators attached; all we need is funds to get them into production. I actually pitched one of the projects to Disney and Turner a few years ago at a children’s content conference in Sheffield, England but they were not ready then to invest in Afrocentric IP then. I think that has changed and the world is ready for us now so it’s something I’ll be looking into soon.

Getting personal; what kind of family do you have? And how do you balance the family-work-life relationship?

I have one lovely wife and two boisterous boys. Work life balance is hard man but I hope to achieve some form of balance someday. Other than that, my family life is great.