Zimbabwe’s emerging filmmakers, Ivory Pictures hits 70000 DVD copies in two months.
HARARE – Locally produced feature film, LOBOLA, has successfully reached over 70000 DVD sales at the close of a second month direct public sales, thereby establishing the film as one of the topselling motion pictures in the country, and positioning the youthful filmmakers as an unrivalled forces to reckon with in the Zimbabwean film industry.
“The release of LOBOLA and our subsequent direct public sales has empowered us to clearly define our goals for future productions. We are pushing almost a thousand copies a day, and right now we have sold slightly above 70000 copies in two months.”
“We had to switch strategy to direct public sales that have seen our branded buses travel to several towns and cities around the country including Bulawayo, Harare, Gweru, Chegutu, Kwekwe, Murehwa, Chitungwiza, Chinhoyi, Bindura, and more. One way or another in order to define our market penetration, we had to reposition ourseleves and change some arrangements with some leading retailers. This we did in favour of direct public sales as a counter measure to improve our sales,” explained producer Rufaro Kaseke, one of the finest cinematographers in the country, who partnered together with actor and Big Brother Africa 3 & 5 finalist, Munya Chidzonga and Joe Njagu, who wrote and produced the movie Bitter Pill, to form Ivory Pictures.
As with regards the recent press report in a local daily that dismissed LOBOLA as a “flop” because of a technical challenge caused by poor sound-scoring, Kaseke said that it was an admissible challenge, “The writer of that article took a very serious note and we admit that the sound mix was not perfect. Events that led to our oversight can be understandable taking into coignisance the fact that we overlooked the area of sound-scoring as we were working on a shoe-string budget.”
The dreadlocked film producer said that Ivory Pictures had paid their own tuition fees in the making of LOBOLA, but now they know the basic fundamentals in sound-scoring as far as their films are concerned.
“The first sound specialists that we contracted did a shoddy job because they had difficulties balancing the sound and the dialogue. There are very few experienced professionals who do sound-scoring in the country, in a nutshell I would say we had not identified the good sound-scoring people for film in Zimbabwe.” he said.
“We have taken time to calculate our judgements and have reached an agreement with ourselves that in our forthcoming production we will commit enough resources and attention to sourcing the best sound scorers. We have discussed this widely with our technical team as well as our next sound technicians.”
Kaseke said, “Now in our next production we are working extremely hard to improve our sound.”
Different sound-scoring options have been considered from a professional sound scoring perspectives, and we are working with local and international sound producers to find ways to improve our sound-scoring.
