LBMM Consulting Producer, Chris Ihidero On Creating Nigeria’s First Animated Feature Film

Consulting Producer of Nigeria’s first animated feature film, Chris Ihidero shares his experience meeting Blessing Amidu, the Executive Producer, working on the movie, and LBMM’s  impact on the Nigerian film industry.

So, LadyBuckit and the Motley Mopsters?

Did you see LadyBuckit?

Did you see the kind of animation quality that was delivered on that project?

 Do you know that it was done by Nigerians in Nigeria?

What was your reaction when you were invited to join the project team?

 No, I don’t do animation, I do live action.

I was like “oh great, that’s exactly why you should do it and if you do it, this would be the first animated feature film in Nigeria. I think it is something you should consider”.

And of course my interest was piqued at that time and I felt like this should be cool.

How did you become LBMM’s consulting producer?

[I got a call], I’d like for you to come in as a producer and help deliver this film and I was like, okay, challenge accepted and let’s see how this goes. That’s how I jumped on board. Met up with the dreamer, Blessing Amidu and we started working on it.

Things weren’t working out… she thought to search, and found me. 

And here we are 17 months later and the film is in the cinemas. I’m immensely proud of that.

How were things turned around?

My philosophy has always been that, fix the story first, when you fix the story, every other thing would be added unto you. 

So when I came in, one of the things we did was to look at the screenplay and one of the things I have enjoyed most on this project is working with Blessing Amidu. 

Sometimes when you’re the dreamer of a project, you do not see beyond certain things and then you do not allow other people to bring in their own thoughts and ideas.

You are looking at a project that has taken us almost 3 years to deliver.

My conviction overtime has always been that Nigeria has all the requisite talent that you need to deliver anything at any level. Oftentimes, the difference is proper funding and time.

The moment we were able to lock down Adebisi Adetayo as our director and lead animator, we had seen his work and I was convinced that he could deliver the quality we were looking for.

We brought in Ava Momoh to do the music score, Ava connected us with DJ Clem, who then produced.

The film has got 14 original songs. Dj Clem produced the 14 songs and it was fantastic working with him, one of Nigeria’s best.

Then we had to look at other components and you could tell that we were on the way to delivering a project of this magnitude

How did you manage the project timelines and tight deadlines?

As a producer, you always want more time but you also know that you have to deliver your project on time and on budget and that’s what we’ve been able to do here.

Nollywood has been waiting for a film like LadyBuckit for a while. This says to anyone anywhere in the world that this kind of quality is possible right here in Nigeria. 

When you say LBMM is 100% Nigerian. How do you mean?

No second of this film has been done outside Nigeria, nobody that is Non-Nigerian is involved either in its conception, in its production, in its delivery, at whatever level whatsoever.

There are different aspects of our industry like every other film industry in the world and you can deliver at this level (higher), at this level (low) and you can deliver at this level (mid). LadyBuckit says we can deliver at this level (very high), if we have proper funding.

LadyBuckit and the Motley Mopsters changes the conversation  around Nollywood, it changes the perceptions about Nollywood.

I’m just really swept away by what we have finally been able to deliver with LadyBuckit and The Motley Mopsters.

We’ve wanted this for a while. People have tried, it is very hard to fund, it is expensive, it is time consuming, it requires infrastructure. We did all the rendering for LadyBuckit here in Lagos, so what you see at the end of the day with LadyBuckit is what happens when you fund a project properly, when you gather the best creative hands when you’re the executive producer like Blessing Amidu and you let people get on and do the work. You get LadyBuckit.

I just think that over and over in your career you do those things that the powers that be just say “take this one, go make history, go do it”. 

I have been kind of lucky to do that over and over with Hush, with MTV Shuga, with Fuji House of Commotion and now LadyBuckit and The Motley Mopsters.

What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a content fund and we are churning out content through the content fund for Pinpoint media, which is my media company. We are just about to sign a deal with an international distributor now. So we’ve found the pipeline that will take our content, which is what we’ve been working on for a little over a year now.

What we are doing with the Pinpoint content fund is to deliver content that is of high quality, at certain times and in certain ways. Like someone said to me when I shared what we had put together as our pitch deck and he said if you deliver this, you would actually be the first person doing it around here because you may not know it, what you are trying to do is very hard and that’s what we are doing, that’s what we are going to do. We are going to deliver it.

Final words?

Hi everyone, LadyBuckit and the Motley Mobsters is in cinemas all over the country. Please go out and see it. It is an amazing project, I promise on behalf of Blessing Amidu, our executive producer and all the amazing talents that brought this amazing project to you, please go out and see LadyBuckit and Motley Mopsters and have fun!