Computer-generated films to cut production costs

Computer-generated television programmes and advertisements are set to cut production costs of local content by more than 100 per cent, increasing Kenya’s creative industry’s competitiveness at a time when it is battling it out with cheap foreign productions.

Use of visual effects and animation will enable producers save millions of shillings unlike currently where one has to shoot all the episodes on location which costs more.

The high costs has forced television stations to source movies from Nigeria or Mexico, stifling the local creative industry.

To produce one episode of a local programme costs between Sh300,000 and Sh1 million compared to the cost of airing one episode of a foreign programme, which ranges between Sh24,000 and Sh80,000.

A Kenyan, Ms Yvonne Muinde, one of the creators of the epic science fiction movie Avatar while giving a talk to local creative industry stakeholders on Monday in Nairobi, said the local creative industry needs to adopt techniques of producing cheaper programmes to cut costs and save time.

“Kenya can start small by using visual effects on commercial promos which will not only save them time, but also cost of production” said Ms Muinde. “ A television commercial promo such as ‘Niko na Safaricom’ would have really saved time and cost with the use of visual effects.”

Location shooting not only requires investment on a number of crew on ground, but also consumes lots of time while computer generated visual effects means that a creative firm needs only to invest in fewer professionals, do a very minimal location shoot that will aid the designers to generate other sequence plots of programmes in-house using computers.

Looking for ways to reduce the production costs of local programmes comes at a time when there is growing appetite among local television to air local content driven by change of consumer changes which has resulted into a stiff competition in the television companies.

This has forced the television companies to absorb some of the costs of producing the programmes to remain competitive in the sector.

It also comes at a time when the government is gearing to start implementing a 40 per cent local content rule that came into force in 2009, but has not been affected due to two pending court cases barring the industry regulator Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK ) from implementing the rules until the cases are heard.

Lack of co-ordination

In 2009, Nature Foundation and Wezan Radio Station obtained judicial review orders restraining CCK from implementing the regulations borne out of the Kenya Broadcasting Act.

The two cases are due to be heard in the next few weeks.

The government has also stepped up its effort to boost the production content by forming a task force that will bring together animators, movie makers, graphic designers, sketch artists, gamers and musicians and chart the way forward for the sector.

The Information permanent secretary, Bitange Ndemo during the forum of the creative industry stakeholders said while there exists unique talents in Kenya, lack of coordination has made it difficult for the government to mould the industry into the required heights that can generate massive employment.

“It’s through collaboration that we can identify various skills capacities that we have, scale up on the areas that we have deficit and come up with local productions that will create employment in this sector, ” said Dr Bitange.

The Information ministry also intends to lease a space from where these artists would be meeting, sharing and fine tuning their ideas.

Also in the pipeline is to introduce them to venture capitalists and financing institutions.