We recently caught up with one of the amazing screenwriters who have been the brain behind most series on TV like Super story and most recently Africa Magic’s new TV drama series “HUSH” Ebele Enebeli who doubles as a producer at the Homevida awards organized workshop for writers and directors at the Pan Atlantic School of Media and Communications in which she was one of the facilitators at the workshop. She shares her journey into writing and what a typical lifestyle of a writer is like.
Did you have an agent and/or manager BEFORE selling your script? If not, how did you put the script out there?
Well, I was one of the lucky few I guess though I did have a background in theatre from OAU, plus I have a diploma in film school. I had a friend who was in TV who knew my background and had seen some of the scripts I had written so he helped put me through and gave a good word out there that got me out, so every time I was on holiday I did some writings to progress my career.
Ebele Enebeli at Homevida Script Work
When writing your scripts, do you take into account market trends or do you just write what should be in the market?
When as a writer you get inspiration from everywhere, you get ideas every day in which you as a writer would decide which to write. One thing a writer should know is that there are universal themes, themes that are no matter what they don’t go out of vogue; themes like love, betrayals and cheats. Then you have to sit down and think of how to tell these themes in a way it suits the audience like love between brothers even though they are not real brothers, betrayals, trust and so on; this determines where your story centers. If you have universal themes like that then you would always be in line or in tone with the market and audience because every individual understands love, trust and betrayal.
What does a typical day look like for you? When working of course.
(Laughs)That’s a very funny thing because I think am one of the laziest persons ever literally because am not only a writer, am also a producer. When am not writing am supervising a project on set though sometimes I don’t necessary want to work. But If am writing then it now depends on do I have meetings with my EP, do I have meetings with my producer, do I have meetings with any other person that is involved in the story or project; then do I send emails like maybe you have done the treatment and you want your producer to get to see what you have written so he or she can input the changes and send it back. So it all depends on what am doing at the moment because I can’t really pick out what a typical day is like for me because I do more than one jobs, I joggle. Sometimes I have screenwriting workshops. It all depends on what the program is like for me, it’s really unpredictable.
Will you continue to write in the genre that you sold in or do you see yourself branching out to other genres?
Well, first of all I think I write better drama. I feel comedy is hardest theme to write. I don’t really like comedy that is a flat rate, I prefer witty comedy. I feel it takes more work to do comedy that is not flat rate and I am working towards that because in this industry you have to keep working and learning if not somebody else might take your spot, I mean you become redundant. So right now drama, right now freelance, more action.
How much time do you spend watching new movies versus older or classic movies and what do you think are the downsides of predominantly watching one or the other on your writing?
That’s my social life. I watch a lot of movies, that’s me.
HUSH is one of your most recent movie scripts or project; can you tell us about it?
One of, like I told you I joggle. Well, for HUSH you will have to go online to know more about it. Go to twitter, instagram ‘AMHUSH’ then you can easily find out more about it.
Okay, so tell us how the writing deadline was like; was it on a tight schedule?
There was no rush, you had to deliver it and there was no oh, you have to take your time. If it was a one day deadline then you had to finish it in that one day, every project has a deadline for it; and you must deliver it because this is like your reputation and your reputation is at stake here.
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Article by Chiazor Daniel
Writer
