In September 2019, I decided that I wanted to make my directorial debut with the coming of age romantic dramedy Who’s The Boss. Given the things that were interesting to me, it was the perfect film for my debut:
- Female Lead
- Found Family
- Coming of Age
- Romance
- Work Life
The cast and crew were amazing and I loved the end product. Is it perfect — of course not — but it’s mine and I love it just the way it is. And of course, we’re grateful that it is available on Netflix, and so if you haven’t seen it. Check it out:
One of my most treasured memories about the film was the feedback we received from young women in their early to mid careers. Sharon Ooja, who played Liah, told me that she received tons of messages from young women who told her that the film inspired them to lean in at work, stand up for themselves and chase their dreams. It’s early days yet but of course I can and will hope that our film stands the test of time and ends up being as influential as Working Girl or Devil Wears Prada were to their generations of women.
To pivot again, I say often that I wish that more Nigerian filmmakers shared their scripts. Yes Hollywood scripts remain the gold standard and you should read them, but there is something to be said for posting scripts of Nigerian films so that aspiring filmmakers can read commercial Nigerian films, especially films that seem to resonate with the audiences. I’ve shared a number of ours for educational purposes and will continue to do so. To that end, I’ve added the Who’s The Boss shooting script to the mix.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pi9yp77m1v50dje/Whos%20the%20Boss_Sep19.pdf?dl=0
As I may have mentioned before, the shooting script is my preferred version of the script to share so the writer can see the difference between what was intended on the page and what was shot, and eventually released.
I can categorically say that being the executive producer with significant creative input in post production in collaboration with my directors made me a significantly better writer. However if you can’t be in post, the next best thing is to compare the drafts to the finished version.
A change that should stand out once you read the script and compare it to the finished version is the scene I have posted below:
Ini and Blossom did amazing work in this scene, and the decision to remove it was one of the hardest things I’ve done, but it had to go. Blossom’s amazing performance in the silent disco scene made the scene redundant. This is a further reason why writers should seek exposure to post production (and production for that matter). They need to fully understand the truism of the sentence that a film is made three times, on the page, during production and in post production.
Anyway that’s enough waffling from me. Thank you all for your continued love and support of our projects. We can’t wait for you guys to see the next things that we’re doing, but until then go enjoy some more Who’s The Boss.
Laters.
