Behind every convincing visual effect is a great deal of technical work that audiences may never notice. For self-taught VFX artist and director Jerry Ossai, the craft is about making the impossible look real. One example is the scene in BB Sasore’s God Calling trailer in which a woman falls from the Third Mainland Bridge, a sequence he helped make look convincing.
“The only way you've done good VFX work is if people watch and they can't tell that this is a VFX shot.”
With credits including Banana Island Ghost (2017), God Calling (2018), Breath of Life (2023), 3 Working Days (2024) and Jagun Jagun 2 (2026), Ossai has built a career in Nollywood visual effects. He has also moved into directing, with the web series My Best Friend’s Wedding (2017) and the supernatural thriller Ms Kanyin (2025), which premiered on Prime Video. Across these roles, his focus remains on the story and how his craft can serve it.
Speaking with The Nollywood Reporter, Ossai discusses how he entered the industry, his transition from visual effects to directing, and why he believes Nollywood has increasingly recognised the importance of VFX in recent years.
Growing Up with Filmmaking
Long before he began creating visual effects for Nollywood productions, Ossai was a boy who drew comics. Filmmaking was also part of his family history. His father ventured into several businesses and worked as a filmmaker at one point. But after secondary school, as his family’s financial circumstances declined, Ossai had to start fending for himself.
His elder brother was studying at Ladoke Akintola University and had friends who wanted to make 2D animated films. Because Ossai could draw, he joined them. The team, however, never raised enough money to complete a feature-length project. It was one of his earliest experiences with filmmaking.
“It's one thing watching a feature 2D animation and thinking it's something you can do, and then trying to actually execute it.”
Like many creatives, Ossai eventually entered the search for paid work. His interest in 3D animation had begun after watching Jurassic Park as a child. Years later, his brother introduced him to the software 3D Studio Max, inspiring him to learn the craft himself.
He spent nearly five years teaching himself, using the free internet connection at a cybercafé in Surulere.
Those early efforts led to work on television commercials, where he created graphics and visual effects for advertising agencies. His brother, Mex, a visual artist and video director, was directing music videos at the time. Few people were combining graphics and visual effects in the way they were, and a small community of collaborators gradually grew around their work.
Finding His Way into Nollywood
After gaining experience in visual effects and graphics, Ossai began learning to operate a camera and eventually directed his own web series, My Best Friend’s Wedding, serving as both director and cinematographer. Between 2006 and 2016, he expanded from VFX into other aspects of production.
“I wanted to tell my own stories. I wanted to make my own films.”
His breakthrough in feature films came through BB Sasore of Nemsia Studios, who wanted to incorporate visual effects into productions at a time when relatively few Nollywood films were doing so. Ossai and Gbenro Odugbemi, his longtime VFX collaborator, worked on Nemsia’s first feature, Banana Island Ghost. It was a new and distinctive experience for both of them.
His subsequent credits include Nemsia’s God Calling and Breath of Life, Kunle Afolayan’s A Naija Christmas and additional shots for Kemi Adetiba’s series To Kill a Monkey.
Why Visual Effects Need More Time and Money
Ossai describes visual effects as a discipline that relies as much on science as on art. To recreate something from the natural world convincingly, he explains, an artist must understand how it behaves and use the appropriate tools and techniques to reproduce it.
Doing this well requires time, dedication and preparation, resources that Nollywood productions often struggle to accommodate. Ossai says the preparation VFX requires can be as demanding as the production itself, while the returns have not always justified the expense for producers. As a result, artists sometimes absorb the costs through their own resources and additional unpaid time.
“So at the end of the day, the output depends on how much preparation you have and budget. Because when the execution is poor, the audience can only assume it's due to lazy work and you can’t explain to the audience the conditions that led to it. This is a challenge that persists till this day.”
For years, he says, two misconceptions have reinforced each other in Nollywood: that visual effects are both easy to execute and inexpensive.
“They think it's easy and they think it's cheap—after all, you’re just pushing buttons behind a computer.”
Ossai admits that he and his colleagues contributed to this perception early in their careers by accepting projects for very little money, partly because they needed opportunities to demonstrate their abilities.
“There was no other way to go about it and I’m grateful for every opportunity—good and bad—because they shaped our growth.”
One of the clearest demonstrations of what the craft could achieve came with the God Calling trailer. Its scene of a woman jumping from the Third Mainland Bridge went viral on Twitter, with many viewers believing the event was real before learning it had been created using visual effects.
“It's that kind of impact that we felt during the earlier stages of trying to prove that we could properly incorporate visual effects into production and that it had value to production besides just spectacle.”
Inside His VFX Process
Ossai’s process now begins with a visual reference from the producer. He then breaks down the script shot by shot, identifying what can be achieved practically and what needs to be created digitally.
He assigns tasks to vendors based on their strengths within the VFX community and supervises the work on set. He also records lighting, colour and camera information to help ensure that the digitally created elements match the footage during post-production.
“I start with a visual reference, asking myself what inspired this story.”
The State of Nollywood’s VFX Community
Ossai is careful not to claim that he was the first visual effects artist in Nollywood, even though some industry stakeholders describe him as a pioneer. He points to others who came before him, including Dimeji, who worked on Shanty Town, filmmaker Niyi Akinmolayan, and twins Taiwo and Kendi Badejo, who left Nigeria and the industry.
The community later shrank, but technological advances have made it easier for new artists to learn the craft. Ossai recalls working with computers equipped with just 8GB of RAM and copying web tutorials onto floppy disks, only to discover that the images had not been saved with the files.
Today, YouTube tutorials have helped bring a new wave of VFX artists into the industry over the past three to five years, a development he welcomes.
“There is a community. In terms of thriving, I'm not so sure. I would say it's struggling but generally VFX globally is actually struggling,” he says.
He believes advances in artificial intelligence could help narrow the skills gap between local and international VFX facilities, potentially expanding what Nigerian productions can achieve.
“I think it's going to be very exciting to see what Nollywood is going to be capable of doing due to the rapid development of AI that has managed to bridge the skills gap between our local and international VFX facilities.”
How Directing Changed His Approach
Moving into directing came with its own assumptions. Some people expect VFX artists to prioritise spectacle, and Ossai acknowledges that the perception can have some basis. Directing, however, taught him to place greater emphasis on storytelling and performance.
His technical background still gives him an advantage when attempting elaborate set pieces that directors with less experience in visual effects might avoid.
“But overall, I'll say it's a good addition to your basket of knowledge when it comes to directing. A lot of directors also have secondary knowledge like editing or music e.t.c., I'm just grateful that mine is visual effects.”
His decision to direct was also driven by a desire to understand the work of other people on a production. Working in VFX, he says, he sometimes assumed that other people were approaching their jobs incorrectly. Directing quickly challenged that attitude.
“I was promptly humbled very quickly because you get to appreciate the amount of work other people put into their crafts because it's easy to be an armchair critic without understanding what really goes into production, especially in Nigeria where it's very difficult.”
One of his biggest lessons has been the importance of clear communication. He recalls productions in which directors had a specific vision but struggled to communicate it, leaving crew members to interpret their intentions. Because creative decisions are subjective, he says, directors who cannot bring their teams along often end up frustrated.
“Communication is like the biggest asset you can have.”
What Comes Next?
Ossai says he remains open to working across genres rather than committing himself to one particular type of film. For him, the deciding factor is whether visual effects are necessary to tell a story convincingly.
“Is there a story so good that it requires visual effects to tell it the way it should be told? Then that's where you have me interested, because it's more about telling a very enjoyable, convincing story than anything else.”
He believes Nollywood already has its own visual language, even if audiences remain dissatisfied with some aspects of its execution. Rather than fundamentally changing that language, he sees visual effects as a way to expand the range of stories the industry can tell.
Artificial intelligence could also help reduce the cost of VFX and encourage producers to invest more in the craft, although he believes the quality of the work still needs to improve.
“I think it's going to be very exciting in the next five to six years to see what Nollywood is going to be capable of doing.”
For Ossai, the satisfaction has always come from solving problems the industry has not yet figured out how to tackle, particularly when a solution creates new possibilities for other filmmakers.
“The joy is in being able to solve problems.”
That outlook runs through his career, from teaching himself animation to working on major Nollywood productions and moving into directing. While he is uncertain about how the industry’s appetite for visual effects will develop, he knows he will continue pursuing stories that need them.
