Producing Nollywood portal films: Navigating precarity through informal social relations and hope

Abstract

This article examines the production practices that underpin the production of portal films in the Nigerian video film industry (Nollywood). Following the recent surge in the number of streaming portals focusing on the distribution of Nollywood films, a nascent video on demand (VOD) market has been created. This new market has given rise to a crop of filmmakers who now produce straight-to-portal films. This article draws on semi-structured interviews with 30 industry stakeholders comprising producers, directors, writers, and streaming executives. Adopting a critical media industry studies approach, I argue that, in the face of pervasive precarity in the Nollywood VOD market, portal filmmakers adopt informal social relations and ‘hope labour’ in navigating productions and ensuring the market is sustained. The article contributes to extant research on Nollywood's production dynamics and extends existing debates about precarity in cultural industries through a less-studied context like Nollywood.

‘They are now pocket videos, not home videos’: Streaming and reconfiguration of video consumption in Nigeria

“…A key component of the traditional video viewing culture is the pre-eminence of informal consumption practices among the audiences. This reflects the video distribution system in which video reproduction and circulation exist outside the official realms of government oversight and documentation (Miller, 2016; Simon, 2022a). Access protocols for audiences in the video market also align with the broader informality of the system.…”

Ambivalence of informality: Covid-19 and unmasked precarity in Nollywood

“…In this context, precarity is associated with work and employment conditions that share social and economic risks between businesses and workers through practices such as casualization of work, low pay, and insufficient social protections, among others (Alacovska and Gill, 2019;Kalleberg, 2009). In Nollywood, it manifests through low wages, wageless labour, minimal health and safety mechanisms, and extended working hours (Miller, 2016a;Simon, 2022a). These patterns of precarity are rooted in Nollywood history.…”

“…Reflecting the broader informality of the industry, precarious labour is a key characteristic. The film production industry is largely sustained by poor wages, long shooting hours, and relationship-based labour (Miller, 2016a;Simon, 2022a). While Nollywood's industrial conditions demonstrate some productive elements of informality, the Covid-19 pandemic exposed the counterproductive implications which hitherto have been at the margin of industry discourse.…”

The Role of Social Capital and Knowledge Capital for Freelance Creative Workers in Audiovisual Industry

“…Owing to that, aligned with Alacovska (2019) and Simon (2022), this means that the precarious situation faced by workers is usually normalized by the workers.…”