Veteran actor, Fred Nii Amugi, says the best way forward for the Ghanaian movie industry is for writers, producers and directors to come up with first-rate scripts, cast appropriately and use the services of truly professional technicians.
The actor was speaking in an interview with Showbiz last Monday, November 9 at a film event at the Kofi Annan International ICT Training Centre in Accra.
“When producers stop using amateurs whose knowledge about photography is limited to coverage of weddings, funerals and parties and decide to rely on trained and tested Directors of Photography (D.O.Ps), things would change.
There are too many fake people out there,” the well-known actor pointed out.
He stated that though some of the challenges currently facing the Ghanaian movie industry were normal to movie establishments in other places, film producers here should explore more stories lines with solid African content and also stop using young people to act elderly roles since there are competent elderly actors around to help raise standards in the business.
Fred Amugi has starred in many movies and television series over the years. His works include Beasts of No Nation, The Destiny of Lesser Animals, The Cursed Ones, Chronicles of Odumkrom The Headmaster, Pieces of Me, Punctured Hope, In the Eyes of My Husband, M.P. (Madam Pink), Holby City (TV Series), Tuesday’s Child, Welcome Home and The Other Side of the Rich.
“I believe using young people for elderly roles is something that does not speak well of the industry. “Costume helps to transform the young actors but no matter how hard they try to change their voices and mannerisms to suit the roles, you can still tell the difference.
“That’s how come you would find these so-called ‘elderly’ people in a movie calling a chief a fool in his palace, meanwhile here in Ghana and Africa, that is not the practice.
“ You can’t insult a chief or talk to him anyhow. Where in Africa would you see a man telling his chief he doesn’t think? It’s a joke.” Nii Amugi also stated that there are too many comedy movies on the market, while real life is not full of comedy.
“Life is not just about laughter. There are different moments in life so why do we want to think about laughter all the time?
“ Life is more serious than laughter; it’s not a one way road. We always want to restrict ourselves to one area and that is not helping the industry,” he concluded.
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