Filmmaker Ivan Quashigah has stated that the movie application which his Farmhouse House Productions has created is a good platform for movie producers.
He was speaking at the Graphic Showbiz forum held recently at the Executive Theatre of TV3 under the theme, “Maximising the benefits of digitisation in the COVID-19 era”.
According to Ivan Quashigah, his outfit decided to come up with the app when COVID-19 hit and it had been very beneficial.
“When movie producers take their movies to the cinema houses, they split the proceeds 50-50 but we take just 17.5 per cent and the rest go to the producers to enable them to produce more movies because it is when we have more movies that we can make more money.
“The good thing is that we had produced the MTN Apps Challenge and I had worked with developers who do amazing things so we thought in the wake of the pandemic why can’t we use technology to come up with something so we came up with the Farmhouse Movies App.
“I am excited about the app because it is not a medium for me to make money but for young filmmakers out there to make money. If we have about 100 filmmakers making good movies every year, you can imagine how much we can make as proceeds, we will bring $25 million or even more into this economy.
Mr Quashigah went on the explain that when video came, there were some film producers who called themselves film purists “and it was like you either get involved with video or you die and we are at that point again, when SMS came, not everybody knew how to use it so we need to adapt to change.
“There is a challenge of people believing me immediately but I believe that as we go along they would and that is the time we are all waiting for but for now we will keep drumming it in,” he said.
He added that what filmmakers make on YouTube could not produce one episode of a television series.
“What you make for 13 episodes on YouTube cannot produce one episode so how can you go back and make another film if your film is on YouTube? With Netflix and the others you need middlemen so if you are putting your films there, you are not making anything.
“When you put your movie on the Farmhouse app, you are reaching people in New Zealand, Australia and other parts of the world, which means you are reaching about 100,000 people but when you do your promos and send your movies to the cinemas, just a particular number of people will go and watch it,” he said.
He went on to say that “it is only in Ghana that when you want to come out with a TV series you need to find money to produce it and find money to pay a television station to show it so it becomes a burden on the producers but apps like the Farmhouse Movies app go a long way to help."
Other speakers at the forum were Events Organiser, Sadiq Abdulai Abu; Musician, Okyeame Kwame; Blogger, Ameyaw Debrah; creative entrepreneur, Mabel Simpson and talent manager George Mensah Britton.
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