As the opening scenes came to view on the large white projector, I heard someone whisper “Charlie well-done.” It was a familiar voice coming from behind me, and it was the voice of my friend who had been with us through the whole process. As the whole thing came to an end and the sound of ovation kept echoing in my ears, I felt like I was a projectile and the seat I sat on had shot me straight into cloud nine. It was such an amazing experience. I was born on the 5th of February 1992 in Ile-Ife, Osun State, in the southwestern part of Nigeria, a town that seems to have its share of civilization owing to the only federal university located in the heart of town. Just as any average student born in that kind of environment, my fate seemed sealed.
Seeing the making of that movie kindled the love for filmmaking inside of me and changed my perception about filmmaking which I saw was more than shooting with a camera and a tripod stand. From that day onward I decided if movies could be done this big way, then I want to make movies myself. By senior year in high school, my filmmaking aspirations had grown stronger and I had started making friends of like minds with whom I discuss filmmaking. Then, a lot of my peers were fascinated by escapist movies, but I wanted more out of movies. Being a student of literature, I longed for movie with organized set of diction and not just seeing a movie for seeing sake. Although I was in secondary school, I had developed a deep taste for movies with strong themes ranging from crime to romance and epic movies that have good storytelling and are infused with good music. With our passion for filmmaking, my friends and I once tried to shoot a movie, but due to the unavailability of adults with their busy schedule, we couldn’t go on with it, but we pulled all the energies which was supposed to go into the movie and focused it on some documentary which we did for the class of 2009 of the Obafemi Awolowo University Interntional School, which was the set I graduated
Even though we were not paid a dime for our work and we had to work with a couple of DSLR cameras and tripod stands, the experience of having to work on that kind of project has only motivated me to keep working on myself and thriving to become a fine filmmaker. Since that day, I just wanted to write, cinematograph and sometimes direct my own movies which I hope to use in changing the face of the Nigerian movie industry and I believe graduate studies in your institution would be valuable to me in several ways. First, I see graduate studies in filmmaking as a professional stepping stone that I believe will pave the right ways for me on my return back home after completing my studies as people tend to take professionals who have intellectual understanding of what they do more serious in this part of the world I come from. Further, your institutions holistic approach to filmmaking where students are being pushed to understand every aspect of the filmmaking process is what I believe will help students have an all-round knowledge about filmmaking, one which I have not found in other schools I have been checking out. In addition, the constant emphasis on the ‘hands on intensive program’ of your institution is something I believe all filmmaking students need and not the common theoretical approach by some film