Tosin Igho: “There’s Actually a Mathematical Way to Filmmaking.”

In a captivating conversation with The Nollywood Reporter, acclaimed filmmaker Tosin Igho opens up about his artistic journey, entrepreneurship, and the delicate balance between cultural authenticity and global appeal.

 

From his father’s legacy to his latest international production, “Suspension,” Igho shares insights that resonate with both cinephiles and aspiring filmmakers. Explore the dynamic world of Nollywood through the lens of this visionary director.

 

TNR: When did you come back from South Africa?

Tosin Igho: The day before yesterday.

 

Wow, yesterday you were in another production. Were you directing?

No, I’m the producer of this one. This is for DSTV. It’s a series that’s already airing. It’s called “Dust.”

 

How’s walking in your father’s shoes like?

Well, we didn’t see him a lot when we were growing up because he was always working.

 

He told us about one day when he came back home and saw one of you fiddling with his cameras. Could that be you?

I used to take his cameras and record myself singing when I was younger.

 

Was that curiosity or rascality?

I wanted to record myself and mime to Will Smith or Michael Jackson back then. It wasn’t just me. My brother and I fiddled with his equipment when he went out.

 

From that young age, were you already dreaming of filmmaking?

I didn’t start from filmmaking. I started making music videos. I made music videos for Mo Hit, when Don Jazzy and D’Banj were still together, Faze, Sammy Okposo, DJ Jimmy Jatt, Davido. This was at the beginning of their careers.

 

“Suspicion,” your latest film, started as a short film. Did you make it when you were in film school or before?

That was in 2008. Right after graduating from film school, I made the short film. Then it garnered some following. That was how I got funding for the film, “Seven.” The one that had RMD and Efua Ewara.

 

“Seven” made quite an impression.

It got seven nominations at the seventh AMVC award and won two awards.

 

After that, I did a number of TV shows including a telenovela called “Venge.” And now we’re doing another telenovela called “Dust.”

 

When did you shoot Suspicion?

“Suspicion” was actually shot in September 2022, but what happened was Amazon saw the film earlier on and picked it up and made it an original, which then became a situation where we went back into some creativity structures, re-editing, and then we did some reshooting this January. So the film’s coming out later this year. Amazon slowed down the process.

 

We’re finalizing the next film to shoot early next year, to go back to making one film every year.

 

The story I’m working on now, I’m actually consulting my dad for the first time. We’re working on the concept together. I’m used to making action films. This time, I’m going to make an emotional story and that’s his forté.

 

So we’re going to have a father and son bombing us.

Yes. In the next film, which should come out in 2025.

 

Your dad, Peter Igho is president of Urhobo Leadership Forum. Do you have an idea how much ground he covers per week on that assignment and the nuances of leading his people?

The last time I spoke to him, I think they were quite active, they are building the Urhobo nation, and I’ll be very happy about that. But we’ll see how to work with the situation.

 

Let’s speak about the regulatory landscape of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) versus the very contested territory in which you are working.

I would probably have ended up working at NTA. We just wanted to make content, but there was nowhere to take it. Cinemas, as business, did not exist until, I think, between 2005 and 2007. My peers didn’t really have where to take film projects to.

So a lot of us started with music videos, because that was the industry that was beginning to boom. Yes, sometimes we would make a film for YouTube. It was not profitable, but we just did it because we wanted to.

 

When I did the special short film, we just put it out because we wanted to make films. By 2019, it became profitable to  make a film.

 

Was “Seven” a box office success?

It basically went straight to Netflix. It was number one on Netflix for almost three weeks or so.

 

You won two awards and, on that night in 2020, your father also won an award.

Yes, my father won an award too. “Seven” came out in 2019. The short film I made in 2008 helped a lot because it was the same reason I started working for DSTV. When Femi Odugbemi saw the short film, he hired me as a director. So that short film opened a lot of doors.

 

Femi Odugbemi says people like you are probably going to define how Nollywood is seen in the future. How does that make you feel?

I’ll just try my best to fill those shoes, working hard to make sure. But I appreciate that somebody like Uncle Femi thinks that way about the work I’m doing, which is wonderful. It’s about the work at the end of the day.

 

I’d like to go back to “Seven,” there’s a curious coincidence about featuring Sadiq Daba.

I was glad to work with him before he passed on.

 

That’s the second to the last movie he did, and your father gave him his first national exposure. Was that planned?

No, it was not planned.

 

It’s not the first time I’ve asked him. I think he just recovered from being ill then. So, it was tough, but he came through and helped me. It was a wonderful thing to see him and Richard Mofe-Damijo on my set.

 

At the end of the shoot, he said I’m lucky that he no longer drinks or smokes because, if not was back in the day, the amount of drink and smoke I would have bought for him would have been much.

 

There was a day when we finished the scene early, and we had a long conversation. It was wonderful to just have him in… I mean, I have that memory that I worked with him before he passed on.

 

Did father and son talk about that?

No, we didn’t. Sadiq Daba told him that Tosin has called him to come and be in his film and, the day of shooting, my dad came, and they took some pictures.

 

 

Your grandfather said to your father, ‘You may not make a lot of money from this, but your name will open doors.’ Would you say that’s prophetic?

Yes, of course.

 

There are many places that I have gone to with my short film, and they are impressed. However, when they find out that I am Peter Igho’s son, it’s like an additional boost:  “Oh, this is actually Baba’s son that helped us.”

 

And, so, it intrigues, and it helps the door open wider. If it would be open before… “oh, just scatter the door and let this boy in.”

I think that has helped me in some places. Therefore, in terms of getting me to do something or giving me a job, it removes hesitation.

 

Apart from Seven, you did “EVE,” right?

Yes, I did. It was produced by Uncle Femi and that was because he saw my short film, “The Suspicious Guy.”

 

Shall we say you started out as a cinematographer and paved a path upwards?

I actually started out as an editor. I edited “Seven” myself.

 

You won a prize for editing.

Yes, yes. I edited “Seven.” I edited “Suspicion” myself as well.

 

I thought you worked in Studio A and there were editors there.

No, we did the picture edits, but they did the sound, color grading, visual effects, final mixing and everything else. However,  Amazon works with sound editors, color grading, visual effects. Everything is being done.

 

Your brother is into what?

Animation and visual effects, that’s my older brother. With “Suspicion,” he did the full storyboard of the film for me. He will be doing the full storyboard for this new film. I spend time with him storyboarding scenes.

 

 

You pay him to do it or is he doing it pro bono?

I paid him handsomely.

 

I will ask him, “handsomely,” you’re saying now.

Don’t say handsomely, but we paid sha.

 

So there’s a lot of in-housing going on right here in Igho Film. What’s the difference between Igho Film and Remote Control?

When I started, we had a company called Igho Film, and I made music videos for Mo Hits, Samuel Okposo, Faze, Vector. I did music videos for a while, for many people.

 

You did a lot of camera inputs. Do you still handle the camera?

Yes, for Seven, I handled the camera a hundred percent.

 

So you did graphics and camera work for “Seven”?

I did edits and camera work for “Seven.”  For “Suspicion,” I partially handled the camera in most of the scenes.

 

I started off as an editor, then I moved into cinematography, and got trained in cinematography as well, properly. I started my first year in film school as an editor and then, I moved to cinematography for my second year. I finally  graduated as a director. My logic was, I’m  coming back to Nigeria, and I need to know more than just one thing.

 

When I was in Abuja, my father was always surprised. I would shoot; I would go and edit; I would do the sounds, and he was like, in his own day, he had to travel to the UK, and I was just doing it in my room now.  This was surprising to him.

 

In their own time, the software was not available, and it was mostly hardware. They cut the film with scissors. When I was in film school, in our first year, they forced us to learn how to edit like that. If you made a mistake, it’s going to cost money. So we had to be very careful.

 

I appreciate the freedom we have now because you can just press ‘undo,’ and the thing has gone.

 

Let’s cut from the technical to the content. How do you approach storytelling to resonate with your global audience while maintaining that Nigerian essence?

There’s actually a mathematical way to filmmaking using the known structures and plot that have been built for years … looked over and over in the Western world.

 

In my university, they had a structure that was built which focuses on what the plot is, and character motivations. Because the Western world has made so many films over so many years, they’ve come up with a guideline to approach a good story. As a result, the idea is to take our own story and apply some of these guidelines to it. It will still hold the things that they see as good stories right into our own stories.

 

When you watch some of our films, they just tell stories, but I feel when you apply what works with our own originality, then it now plays across. For instance, “Seven” is about a character who has seven days to achieve something. His main goal is just to get out of Ajegunle, but the situation is that he grows as a character to stay and help the people because, at first, he’s a selfish young boy who just wants to get his own way.

 

However, by the end of the film, he’s ready to risk his life to save Richard Mofe-Damijo’s character because the selfish character initially encountered has grown. Through this evolution, I have applied those guidelines to character development by asking questions: What does the character want? What stands between him, and what does he become at the end?

 

You’re doing these lectures on Instagram. Is it giving back to society or part of your proposed film school?

Education is also something that I’m thinking about. I’ve enjoyed passing knowledge to others, but I wish I had as much time as I once had to keep doing a lot more, but I don’t have as much time now.

 

Every time I make a film, I always tend to take note of whatever works. This is knowledge that I’m just gathering for when I go into education; I can hand the body of knowledge over, and I pass it on to others. Something that Nigeria is missing is that professional touch, we need more.

 

Illustrate, please.

There are many people that can tell amazing stories, but if you don’t know that you don’t know something, you will not know that you don’t know it.

 

For instance, if a cinematographer in Asaba is shooting films, he doesn’t think that he  needs to learn more because he’s been shooting, and it’s been working. Therefore, because he’s not aware that he needs to learn a lot more, he doesn’t really see the need to develop his craft further because he’s already working in the industry. There are many people like that.

 

Consequently,  I feel like people need to know exactly how far they should take their craft to change the industry. See how far the music industry has gone. I feel that Nollywood is next, possibly to be as big internationally as Nigerian music, even bigger, because film also incorporates music.

 

Even if it’s not in my generation – I hope it’s – it may be part of what we have contributed.

 

Talking about music, our soundtracks have not been wonderful.

Yeah, because it’s the idea of not thinking of how important the music is. Some people know the importance, but it’s also difficult to get the people who make the music to come and sit down and make music for our films.

 

We had someone do that for “Suspicion.”

 

 

Oh, who is that? Your dad commissioned Bongos Ikwe. Is it somebody like Bongos Ikwe?

It’s somebody in my own generation.

 

You don’t want to let out his name?

He’s a musician. His name is Theophilus Magege. He spent over two months scoring the film.

 

Wow, that’s new.

I can’t wait to see how people react to it, but I honestly believe it’s a good effort, and we put our best foot forward.

 

How would you rate yourself as a cameraman, as a cinematographer?

I would rate myself very high, but you know, we don’t necessarily have the tools or the finances we have in the rest of the world.

 

In “Suspicion,” what camera did you shoot with if I may ask?

We shot with three different cameras.

 

There’s a particular camera that I went to test and compared, and we just loved the way it looked. It’s a Blackmagic 12K, but we did a number of tests with a number of cameras.

 

We tried the RED; we tried the Sony, and we tried this camera. We just loved the way this one looks: How the footage just looked, with the light, and how soft it was, and I fell in love with it. As a result, we went along with that. It looks different.

 

 

What kind of lenses? The Blackmagic lenses?

No, no, no. We’re using Carl Zeiss lenses.

 

Wow. They’re very high-end lenses. Very sweet. I’m looking forward to it.

Carl Zeiss, yes … with some Cook lenses, which gave us the best.

 

So how do you balance the business of making films  with your artistic vision? I mean, business and creativity.

What I’ve learned in my experience is that, honestly, you cannot exactly mix both. You cannot handle both at the same time.

 

If I’m on set directing a film, I do the producing for that day the day before. And then we don’t shoot on the weekend, we can spend more time doing the business side of it, and I can be there.

 

In essence, if I’m going to produce a shoot that I’m directing, I’ll reduce the amount of pages on the script that we shoot in a day, so I can have more time to sit with the production team. If I’m not going to be a part of the production team, then we can do more work.