Kaboozi with The Critics, A Group of Nigerian Teenage Filmmakers

[Muwado – Africa’s Storytelling Platform]

The Critics Company is a collective of Nigerian teen afrofuturist filmmakers who make incredible looking, smart science fiction movies with camerawork courtesy of old, busted mobile phones and VFX generated in Blender. Their showpiece is Z: The Beginning, a ten-minute short that took the collective 7 months to shoot and edit.

Join the conversation with them this Friday 14th February at 12 noon EAT as we chat with them about their hustle and what it means to them. You can participate by using the form at the bottom of the page to ask a question. To respond to a thread, hit reply on the contribution you want to comment on so it’s easy to follow.

[Muwado – Africa’s Storytelling Platform]

Those who might not have heard of the critics and want to know more in order to participate, here is some of their work and press that they have received.

Nigerian teenagers produce sci-fi films with smartphones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klKRoOYK5c4
Nigerian teens make sci-fi films with smartphones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D25NrAQZLng
How Teenagers In Nigeria Are Making Big Movies With Smartphones https://nofilmschool.com/nigeria-filmmakers-the-critics

Hello we’re the critics company from, Kaduna Nigeria, we made sci-fi shorts with our smartphone & old laptop and got featured on aljazeera, BBC and so many more platforms, Ask Us Anything!!!
byu/thecritics001 inIAmA

https://kottke.org/19/08/these-nigerian-teens-are-making-sci-fi-shorts-with-slick-visual-effects
https://www.konbini.com/ng/cinema/conversation-critics-nigerian-teens-making-sci-fi-films-phones
https://www.africanews.com/2019/08/14/nigerian-teens-make-sci-fi-films-with-smartphones//
Z:THE BEGINNING (Sci-fi / Post Apocalyptic Short Film) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4dfVgFsjQc

[The critics]

Hello everyone, good morning from Nigeria.

[Rolex]

Hello Critics. I saw in of the press pieces covering you that Star Wars’ J.J. Abrams, among other celebrities, knows of your existence. Please go ahead and humble brag about this what you are cooking with these people from Hollywood?

[The critics]

Hello Roland, it is true some Hollywood personalities know of our existence , it is actually surprising for us, because we never ever thought our work would catch the eyes of top celebrities like that, for now information’s on the second question are confidential.

[Roy J]

Hi Critics. I learnt about you from the announcement about this session and your story is nothing short of inspiring. You remind me of Nas X who also became a star through social media. He was very intentional about self promotion on social media till Old Town Road blew up. Reading about your story, I couldn’t help but wonder, did you intend to go viral on social media when you started this? Were you strategic about the process or was it just you doing something you love and going viral accidentally?

[The critics]

Hello Roy J, thank you very much, funfact is Lil nas commented on a video of ours on YouTube, we wanted to actually go viral at least in our country because we sort of felt our work deserved it, it never went as we planned tho, there wasn’t a really serious strategy, what we did was just actually jump on any thing that’s trending that we could jump on and we gave up on that at times, we just created our works and when it was time to go viral it just happened

[Vihamba Esther]

Nas X commented on your video!!! OMG I’m jealous. Are you like BFF’s now? Can we be friends so I also know him by association? I”M SUCH A FAN!!!

[Irungu]

Have we started?

If they are cool with sharing, I’d like to know what project they are working on with the money they raised with Kemi Adetiba….I was impressed with Z and have FOMO for this project!!!!!

[The critics]

Hello irungu, our projects in works are confidential, and the fundraiser Kemi Adetiba helped us with was to actually get better equipments to help us make better content

[Fatuma]

CriticsO..Hehe. I need to stop adding O to everything when interacting with Nigerians.lol
Anway i wanted to know how u even started this project. How many are you…how do you know each other…why are you making movies instead of doing your homework…lol…I wish I was like you when I a teenager.

[The critics]

Hi fatuma, we started this close to 7 Years ago, we were originally 5 and we were all cousins, we are now 10 and majority of us are related, we started by acting dramatic plays in wrappers, shooting with our phones and it grew from that to where we are now. we are actually making movies and doing our homeworks too, lol

[Abbias]

This is very innovative. I hope you are planning to stay in school till you have finished. I see a lot of the young generation thinking talent is enough and dropping out of school. Finishing school is important.

[The critics]

Hello abbias, thank you very much, its being hard blending school and what we do, but we believe education is important, and we’re doing our very best to keep on.

[Rolex]

To have that much passion that you wet ahead to start making your own films, you must have major love for watching movies.

When did you get hooked to movies?
Who are the actor/directors that inspire your own craft?
What are your top 10 movies of all time?

[Jaonita]

Hello Critics. What kind of African parents do you have that allow you to get away with this, eh?

My own mother burned my notebook when she found me writing a very inspired romantic novel because time wasting. I have never recovered…

chei!!!

[The critics]

Hi joanita, our parents are mildly supportive, sorry about the notebook, I can relate to it because at a certain point, I used to draw in a notebook and I was up at night, my mom found out, then she collected the book, burnt it and threw it away, we’ve been quite persistent and resilient, stubborn is the word they’ll call it here, but it paid off eventually.

[Caleb]

what is being international celebrities when you are still in school

[The critics]

Hi Caleb, for some reason we don’t consider ourselves international celebrities, we know a lot of people are watching but things feel sort of normal at times, it’s overwhelming a little bit but its cool.

[Alex Sinayobye]

guys, this is really dope. what i want to know is if you have made any moeny from this passion apart from the crouwd funded money. i hvae an interest is joining the industry but i worry about the money sustainabilty

[The critics]

Hello Alex, thank you, we’re making money and more to come lol, well our advice is money shouldn’t be the motive of wanting to joining the industry, be creative, hardworking, money would come.

[Alex Sinayobye]

sorry for the typos

[Vihamba Esther]

hi critics. happy to hear about you and the work you are doing. I especially like that you do behind-the-scenes for those who want to see what your process is like. As someone that also works in the movie industry, I want to know about your production issues as you learnt on the job…those moments where the challenges tested your resolve and the team spirit… they must be many so the 3 ost memorable will do

[The critics]

Hello Vihamba, thank you for the kind words, some of our most memorable challenges came while we shot Z : The beginning, it was our biggest project at the time, the phone we used to shoot Got seized frequently during production, at a certain point we had to beg for the phone from parents to shoot, which represents our first major challenge lack of equipments, the second is Mobility and accessibility to amenities like Internet, electricity and sometimes transportation, the third one was that we had help some people around us, we learnt to work with what we had but we still couldn’t get some things we wanted to get done because we didnt have any money to pull stuff like that off.

[Caleb]

You always mention how you learnt video making from youtube. That’s very selfdriven. How do you choose which stories to shoot and how do you brain storm the scripts and story flow?

[The critics]

Hi Caleb, the stories we choose to shoot are usually decided by the team and are inspired by a lot of things, music, movies, environment, stories, news and all, brainstorming and the story flow is usually a collective effort of members of the team.

[The Critics]

Thank you for having us, we had an awesome time with ya’all and hope to be back some day. We’re active across most social media platforms. You can reach us here
Facebook: Facebook.com/the critics official
YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UComu3ao5983Wpni7R_JcovQ
Twitter: twitter.com/thecritics001
Instagram: instagram.com/thecritics001
[email protected] for mails and
+2348098732366 for calls and WhatsApp

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[AnthonyEX]

Its interesting that we have a number of people on a site like this that kind of cringe at PETA Im another.

I cant help you with the book, though, Ive never read it, or heard of the author.

[AnthonyEX]

Ill be there, but Im afraid I dont have a lot of the hip young runescape cats usernames or anything. Perhaps people can sign on to our lil chat channel at the same time? Might make coordination a bit easier.

[Author]

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