Battle of the Woods Nollywood Versus Hollywood - 980 Words

The Battle of the Woods: Hollywood and Nollywood Cinema of the United States has played an undeniable role in the transmission and interpretation of many values that we hold today. We perceive real life situations based on what Hollywood has taught us. Some ninety years after the first huge success of American cinema, â€Å"The Great Train robbery† was released, we were introduced to a new brand of films. The cult classic â€Å"Living in Bondage† was distributed. This low- budget film produced in Onitsha, Nigeria set the scene for what would become an explosion. So impressed were the filmmakers and actors by their work, they coined the term Nollywood- the Nigerian Hollywood. The different environments and practices have resulted in obvious†¦show more content†¦Hollywood movies employ creative and bold methods to market their movies. A good deal of promotion and advertising is targeted to getting people into theatres. Media blitzes are launched to tout the movie s weeks before its release. Posters on buses, billboards, designed T-shirts, websites are used to promote Hollywood films. These films are then distributed to a diverse audience. Unless they are extremely unsuccessful, Hollywood movies are always first shown in cinemas across the world, before they are released on DVD. Nollywood films, on the other hand, do not put in a lot of money and effort on the marketing of their films. Other than the movie posters which are usually seen at the selling point of the films, not much advertising is employed. As all Nollywood films go straight to DVD and VCD discs, the industry thrives on direct-to-video marketing. As many as thirty new titles are delivered to Nigerian stores and market stalls every week. Producers rely on the fact that with this outpour of releases, their movies would most certainly be picked up among the crowd; hence, employing further marketing practices is unnecessary. Currently, the available cinemas in Nigeria do not exhibit any Nollywood movies. The costs, methods of distribution, and themes of Hollywood and Nollywood films reflect strongly their target audiences; how the target audience affects the production of a film and how the production of a movie is designed to capture a specific