My Jonivi aka John Dumelo, my sugar brother made history today, hitting 1million likes on facebook!!
I am very happy for him, but what does this really mean?
It means he has a huge fanbase but what is fanbase? In the grand scheme of things, it is what matters? In my opinion, it is the quality of those fans that make a difference.
By quality, I mean what those fans do to support your career.
Have we ever sold 1million copies of films with a Ghanaian title? be it in Ghana alone or worldwide? I've spoken to many distributors and that has never happened. Not to a Ghanaian movie.
This is largely due to quality of the audience. I bet that 900,000 of Johns fans would rather wait to watch his films free on youtube, rather than dip into their pockets and support their role model with their substance.
John will continue to make low budget films that circulate within Africans in the diaspora only unless his fans change their mentality towards the art he creates.
I think 1million fans is a great thing if those fans can benefit the filmmakers John works for. It's a give and take thing. The more Johns' fans support his work, the better work he gets to make. Good filmmakers will take a chance on him in any title and budget, knowing it will yield dividends.
I recently had a meeting with a studio executive who wanted to know how they could tap into the African market and first thing out of my mouth was, USE AFRICAN ACTORS. If Africans see their countryman in a big film, of course they gonna go support the film.
When I'm called into another meeting, pulling up Johns facebook page and saying
"look, this is an extra million in numbers for you if you use this guy in the package", will add something small to the argument, don't you think so?
But my argument will be futile if the quality of the fans remain the same. Free free free.
Jonivi, it would be great to use your platform to sensitize the audience. Talk to them about the need to support the arts instead of downloading films onto their drives.
I hear filmmakers talk about financing. No one is going to give you money when they know one act of piracy would dry up the capital invested. Instead of whining about lack of funding, use the time you have now to do some house cleaning. Support each other to educate the audience on the adverse effects of piracy. Journalists and bloggers, please take it easy with the "hips don't lie" headlines and use those pages to educate and sensitize. You are ultimately helping yourselves too.
I remember when I was fighting UTV on twitter for showing bootleg movies on their channel, I got attacked by a swarm of bees, interestingly, not one chirp came from any other filmmaker who all have this same piracy issue. They are all scared of being tagged "controversial". If your leaders who fought for your independence had that same fear of being tagged controversial, you'd not be wearing Brazilian wigs cos you'd be cleaning houses for a white man and picking 500 pounds of cotton on a plantation and be raped by your master. If Moses had that fear, you'd still be in Egypt building pyramids.
People think that when they extend a hand to help others, it takes away from them. it doesn't. Anytime you help someone, you have made an invested that one day you'll cash against. Doesn't happen all the time that way but, who's counting?
Like John's fb page here:
Jonivi
