Liberian Movies Suffer Budget Setbacks

With entertainment being a ‘must thing’ after the famous proverb; “work without play, makes Jack a dull boy,” the founding president of the Liberia Movie Union, an Actor who is also part of the local movie entertainment based group; ‘Lollywood’ says the local industry continues to produce low budget movies.

“We continue to make low budget movies, because of the discouraging situation of the movies not being sold,” he said.

Mr. Slyvanus Turay announcing this to The New Dawn in an interview about the prospects of the movie landscape in the country, said despite the low budgets, they still have lots of activities ongoing and that there are event plans to recruit more new actors.

He told a New Dawn interview, matters relating to man-power development is an issue that is still being looked at, where they are currently trying to recruit and develop artists, camera-men, and editors who according to him, will live the dreams of a booming movie production.

Mr. Turay told this paper looking ahead; there is a need to prepare for the task that is now being envisaged before us” he said.

“Looking at the year 2010 as a different year, we are opting to use some excessive force to outlive the task for what is before us out there,” he said. He also disclosed plans to collaborate with other Liberian movie stars outside the country to revive to the industry.

“We are currently perusing and practicing scripts for a television series which we are about to shoot. It will soon be out for public viewing,” he told this paper. He told the paper that the act on piracy is not strong in the country, movies isn’t making much income.

Turay also stated that, the movies are not being sold because; people would choose to buy and market movies at any cost since there are the duplicated versions in its surplus already out before the original.

He stated that most movies on the market are known to be pirated and sold at any price, which distributors would want to attribute to not pirated movies. The former movie union’s president said at the moment there is not any network to evenly distribute the movies on the market, specifically here in Liberia.

He said based on his ten years experience with the movie market, the purchasing power on Liberian movies being marketed is very low, and as such; there are not much productions on the market, adding that the losses usually incurred are huge.

“We’ve to keep going and working, with that; we will continue to work with low budget movies, but called on the consuming public to purchase the Liberian movies to enable them continued works of the business,” he stated.

He gives the total time in shooting a movie as eight weeks, which according to him is enough time given a movie based on its setting.