Championing African Stories Through Animation with Ferdy Adimefe

Speaker A: 00:00:07

You're welcome to the Naija Filmmaker, a podcast about Nigerian filmmakers, their films and how it can build a diverse and functional industry. I'm your host, Sele Got. On this episode, my guest is Ferdy Adimefe. He's a producer, creator and educator.

He is the founder of the Magic Carpet Studios. We talk about the making of his animation, the Passport of Mallam Ilia, his storytelling process and African consciousness.

If you're a new listener, you're welcome and I hope you enjoy. Hi, Ferdy. You're welcome to the Naija Filmmaker.

Speaker B: 00:00:46

Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.

Speaker A: 00:00:48

You're welcome. All right, so can you introduce yourself in your words?

Speaker B: 00:00:53

Okay. My name is Ferdy Adimefe. I'm a producer, creator, and also an educator. I'm also the founder and the CEO of Magic Carpet Studios.

It's an innovation storytelling company based here in Lagos. Also in London and in the US we are focused on creating African stories and exporting them using the medium of animation and game.

But of course, we are hoping to explore other new medium and tools as we grow.

Speaker A: 00:01:29

Right. It's nice to have you.

Speaker B: 00:01:30

Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: 00:01:31

Okay. All right, so tell us where your journey into filmmaking animation started from.

Speaker B: 00:01:40

So a few things came together at the time. I had started an agency called Imaginarium and we were focused on creating creative technology, innovation and branding.

We're working with some of the big companies in Lagos at the time. But something was always challenging. People wanted something new, and I was also bored. I also wanted to do something immersive.

And I decided we're going to create an animation department in the office because the animation department was going to help us to expand into the market. And that was exactly how we started the animation department.

At the time, my co founder, Chekubi Okonkwo, was the first animator who came to join us in the studio. And we started to explore opportunities. We created a couple of experimental shots. One of these experimental shots was called Ego Oyibo.

And it was a story of a young lady who was trying to get a bright price in dollars. And that went viral. Paul saw it and carried it, and it was history.

So people started to reach out, wanted to create animation, but I didn't just create it. I remember again that growing up, I had read a lot of African literature. And I always felt if I needed to do anything fame, I would pick a novel.

And so we sat back in the office and started to explore the idea of a novel we could tell and make into a film. And the Passport of Mallam Ilia was picked up. And so we started to track the family.

At this time, the studio was pretty much a department right in an agency. So we went looking for the family, found the publishing firm, located the family, and then got the rights. And we released the trailer.

People loved it. We also became commercial after that. And then we decided that the studio was good enough to come out from just the agency and become a standalone.

And I then overlapped both as the CEO of the agency and the CEO of the studio, you know, doing a couple of other things. We decided we wanted to create it in such a way that we could tell our own stories and create our own IPs. Also.

We could also create, apart from our IPs, we could also create, for the most part, and outsourcing arm that could help us also generate funds. And we also carry that. And we launched the training arm at the time we tried to hire, we couldn't find a lot of people.

And then we launched the training school. So the training school over the last few years have successfully contributed some of the African best talent in animation.

And we've continued to scale both as a studio for our own IPs, outsourcing and training arm.

Speaker A: 00:04:37

Okay, that's impressive. You know, so you talk about tracking down the family and getting the rights and you talked about it so briefly.

Was that how easy it was to sort all that out?

Speaker B: 00:04:52

No, it wasn't actually the first time we got the rights, we got it for about four years or five years. It was just. It was right option, that's what it was. And we wanted to use it to explore the market.

And so we started to the project and we started to raise funds, but unfortunately we couldn't quite raise the the fund we wanted to raise. So when we went back to extend and increase the ip, a lot of people had also shown up at the family door now requesting to buy that.

And it was very tough for us because most of those people were willing to pay more. But I think we were very, very lucky with Laura. Laura was the author's, the late author's daughter who had the book was wheeled to.

Laura was very compassionate and she felt like, oh, you guys have been on this thing way longer. And she said, you know what, I love that you guys started before anything anyone even thought about this, so I would stick with you guys.

And the family chose to work with us.

But it was challenging for us even in raising the money, meeting up the payment timeline and resuming the production now with a full rights option that would allow for us to exploit the ip, even as an audiobook, even as a stage play, even as a live action. So we have it all. We think that we want to drop the film. Within the next six to 12 months, the film will be out. Yeah.

And it's really been a very, very a job and a studio that, a project that grew us as a studio, grew me as a director, somehow altered my perception as a creative entrepreneur because I had to learn the business side, I had to learn the numbers side. I just wasn't going to be talking about stories. I had to learn negotiation, how to learn fundraising. And. Yeah.

So that, that project did set us really well to becoming the studio today that we are becoming.

Speaker A: 00:06:56

Yeah. That's nice.

So, you know, the agency you started and the same agency that Magic Carpets was birthed out of, you guys kind of stand at the intersection of technology, you know, culture and storytelling. Like, for you guys, what's your approach to storytelling?

We know that like, you know, the world is ready for African stories and they are eager for well told stories. But for you guys, how do you approach stories and what has kind of informed your process?

Speaker B: 00:07:33

So I think our first, our first story, oftentimes it comes from research. Sometimes we have an idea and then we will dive deep into research to find out what does this entail.

Our research process can be very detailed and thorough.

And after the research process, we then have a series of workshops, we have writers room, and many times we would invite a diverse group of people that would come to the writers room and we will spend time trying to flesh out the idea, probe it, interrogate it, investigate it, turn it upside down and figure out where it goes from there. So once we get through that incubation process, we get the writing team to now start to develop a script.

So we always come from research and then we come into what I call that incubation process of meeting of the minds. Because we all have. I mean, there's no one way to be a Nigerian.

So if I'm developing a story that wants to talk about the Nigerian reality, I want to have a diverse enough people, gender, tribe, people who grew up in the cosmopolitan part of Nigeria, someone who grew up in the rural area and trying to get that in. But also with respect to story, I stumbled on Joseph Campbell's story framework of a Thousand Faces.

So for most part, when we come into developing that story, we try to explore his archetypal way of, of approaching character development and the story constructs. Yeah. And I think that somehow most of the stories we've worked on that we had to create. We kept that as our framework for developing that.

Speaker A: 00:09:18

f this journey. And I know in: 2021

Speaker B: 00:09:41

Yeah. So, you know, I think we went everywhere trying to raise money, but I quickly figured out that that was not the way to go about it.

One Anesthesi was our first international exposure. He helped us to verify something that the European market was very, very interested in. A high quality 2D animated African project. We had a problem.

They were not sure we could complete it.

They were worried that the quality was, the stakes were high and they didn't think that Africa had the budget, the funding and even the capacity to execute that project. And they were right. At the time we didn't have a large enough team in the studio.

We had not been able to raise up to 20% of the budget we wanted to raise. But in the French market, the NSC market was heavily structured for co production.

So when you go to the, to Europe, most of the times they are looking for studios that have sort of like 50% of the funding and they are coming on board to co produce with you. And many times they will apply in their own market and their government to get the balance of that funding.

That's something that I also felt I figured out. We didn't have, we were not set up for it. In fact, the entire delegation from Nigeria did not have 50% to back any IP they wanted to produce.

They were looking for 100% outside financing from Europe and it wasn't going to come. European market wasn't just structured that way.

So I knew that what I had to do was to come back, try and see if I could raise a bit more money before we go back again for that project. But that was not the only elephant in the room. They also felt that we needed to have sort of like an incentive with taxation.

So in Europe they have very robust tax system. They have the tax rebates that can allow for you to even get within 25 to 40% of your cost of production, giving back to you as taxes.

So many people gravitate to UK companies, European companies, partly because in the European company with the taxes you're well off, right? A place like Canary island, you could get as much as 40% tax rebates. The African community and the African market did not have those policies.

They were still pretty much not very well formed.

So it meant that even if we could attract them, we could, even if we had a better or low cost of production because they had a tax incentive, that advantage may completely be eroded. So we wanted to now sort of crowdfund. We structured our funding around understanding the peculiarities of the African markets.

We also had to raise the money through. There were some private placements through targeted investors that we felt loved movies.

We had to now explore a portion of the fund through WE Funder.

We opened the we Funder account at the time and successfully we're able to get the ground running and so far we've been able to at least on a level of commitment, meet our financial goals. And yeah, that's where we are.

Speaker A: 00:12:56

And congrats on, you know, coming this far in the journey.

Speaker B: 00:13:00

Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker A: 00:13:03

You know, you, you advocate for sustainable growth in the African creative industries or you how, how do you see the general landscape and what do you think about like a way forward for the creative industries in Africa?

Speaker B: 00:13:17

I think we're living in one of the most interesting times. 1 the world is already discovering that the potential of the African markets is huge. There is an explosion of talent now.

A lot of young people are popping up, there are a lot of studio ideas, there are people, freelancers who are really scaling up and scaling up. So in a sense the industry is already showing the readiness for world class projects. However, there are aspects of the space that is in short supply.

I think that the hostile spirit of the Nigerian talent is way more ahead than the environment can, can enable.

So when it comes to the government side, we are looking at a need to set up more robust policies that can allow for the talent and the studios operating in Nigeria to attract high ticket jobs competitively with other region like the Asian markets. We're also looking at distribution. Distribution remains a big challenge right now. Many creators now are now looking at YouTube even as a studio.

We're exploring a YouTube strategy within the next three months. But it wasn't our game at first because if animation, animation takes time to produce YouTube requires weekly content.

The strategy is consistency, micro content over a long period of time. We had structured our studio to be able to do more commercial, high ticket commercial jobs. Right.

And I think those are the areas that I kind of figured we are lacking. The policies need to be there, the taxes have to be there. The environment in itself requires patient capital.

And I think for you to create a film, as a filmmaker you want to fund your film. And I think funding a movie became very challenging in the last 18 months.

I think once the Amazon and Netflix announced that they were going to exit the African market from the level of funding, production, not necessarily the licensing, that story went really against creators and filmmakers. Investors were not very sure they would get their money back because for the longest time Amazon and Netflix felt like a two horse race.

So that also impacted on how we could assess capital.

But again, the capital structure in the African space seems to be more favorable for startups than for studios because a lot of the VC firms have structured their funding around safe agreements and around the ability of the scalability of the product or the startup. For studio. It's not that cut. I mean, it's very dynamic and different.

For you to get funding, you need to get distribution deals and then it's a chicken and an egg because a lot of distributors want to be able to see your movie before they give you either a pre sale agreement or an offtaker agreement or even any agreement at all. So that's actually what is really, really challenging.

We will need a lot more capital that is designed to support filmmakers from development to post production. And we would also need the government to structure in such a way that can allow for investors to invest in films.

We'll also need distributors that understand the lay of the land and will be able to work with filmmakers to get their movies distributed across other markets and at least help them to track and retrieve their investments. I mean, those are the areas I would bet on for growth.

Speaker A: 00:17:01

Okay, all right, so let's, let's take a detour at this point. Can you tell us three random facts about yourself?

Speaker B: 00:17:11

Three random facts about myself. So I'm a father of three, three boys. I always wanted ladies, right? I felt great to have a girl. I also, I'm a low key, disenfranchised Mayu fan.

The way I would like to put it. I became a Mayu fan many years ago. And you know, these days I have a love hate relationship with the club. And also I'm very big on spirituality.

I'm also very big on, on Africa consciousness.

I fundamentally believe that Africans need to do better in centering ourselves in our consciousness as a people, in taking pride in our cosmology and in helping to tell our history and our stories with the honor and dignity that they deserve not apologizing or pontificating for them.

Speaker A: 00:18:17

Okay, very interesting. Let's talk about your last point. Can you tell us a bit more about, you know, how, you know, how Africans can, I guess, centre ourselves?

Speaker B: 00:18:32

So the way that I think about it, every continent or America today became an Imposing empire on the back of Hollywood. As a growing young boy, I watched a lot of American movies. I saw the level of innovation, technology. I saw heroism. I saw the values of America.

And America colonized the world through entertainment. And we cannot deny, if you look at literally almost every other part of the world, there's American presence.

And I think that they owe it to their storytellers and their creators. Africa has a lot to give. Africa is about the richest continent in the world.

But yet today, a lot of the stories of Africa is still one of corruption, poverty. We are sitting on thousands of mythology, stories of wars and warriors, legends, literature, stories that have only remained in the libraries.

We have huge stories that have been locked up in our museums. And maybe some end up in gallery. But these are not just supposed to be locked up in the museum. They are meant to be cultural IPs.

So what it means to bring Africa into the 21st century is to go back into our archive, is to take our stories, is to design them into features and series that can rival Game of Thrones, that can show us the pantheons of our legends as superheroes, that can retell our stories not just through from a decolonized mind. And many times I always would tell people that whenever I wanted to approach an African story.

What we always ask ourselves is, what if Africa was never colonized? What type of stories should we tell or should we be telling?

And you would realize once you get to that level of consciousness, you open yourself into possibilities of a world that exists but has never been told. Many creators tend to center their story around their colonial history.

ident military interregum the: 1960

d then go all the way down to: 1914

But that's not all there is. Before it was ever called Niger area or Nigeria, there were empires, there were cities, there were stories.

And you go all the way to Kemet, you go all the way to Ashanti, you go all the way to Timbuktu or the ancient Oyo empire or Zauzau in today what is the modern day Kaduna. You uncover heroes, you uncover warriors, you uncover great mythology.

And I think that for us, to be an African creator is to know your history and to take pride in sharing your authentic voice with the rest of the world without having to dilute it so that you could compensate for the lack of just for being who we are. We are the wonder that the world is waiting to see. And I can bet you we are already seeing the trends.

Recently, Disney released Iwaju, and this year HBO released the Yanu. An interesting thing is these are African names and African stories, but they were not created from here. Right.

So I still want to see that they are not just sounding like Africa, but they carry the African soul. They carry the African texture, the African art, the African voices.

So it's one thing to get the African voices to voice it, but it's also one thing to get the African voices to voice it and the African creators to bring it to life. It takes a whole new level of authenticity.

Speaker A: 00:23:10

Yeah, definitely. I think somewhere on the Internet, magic carpet is described as a talent engine.

What approach do you, as the founder, take in nurturing and building your creative team?

Speaker B: 00:23:25

So I think I like to tell them that don't just limit yourself to a label as an animator and illustrator.

So if you're a magic carpet, we want to shape you first as a storyteller, because fundamentally, that's what you are when you create from the technical lens of a software is one thing, but once you create from the soul through the software is another thing, completely different.

So we have lots of culturization sessions where we spend time to imbibe the fundamental cosmology of an African creator and what it means to tell stories. How do you approach it from the voice? It is not just separate parts. The all parts have to come together to be greater than the whole.

So we try to and we try to educate people as a storyteller, but also as a team player. Because at the end of the day, what will make the soup taste great is that the different ingredients all come together to make the magic. Right.

And I think that's something that I truly, truly appreciate in the talents we train. We now have a school, we mentor.

I mean, it's getting challenging sometimes with the schedule, but I like to try and see how to make out time to be able to spend time with some of the people who work with us and just to get a sense of their worldview. We do story together. We have days where we do team bonding.

So that it's not just about the work, but it's about the fulfillment of your soul by what you do here.

Speaker A: 00:25:11

Okay, so let's bring it home to Nigeria. What are some of the challenges you've encountered being at the forefront of the Animation race in Nigeria.

Speaker B: 00:25:23

So I think one of the. One of the things I mentioned earlier that I can tell you we've experienced and everyone is experiencing is capital.

I mean, I did mention you would need a lot of patient capital for animation. It takes time to produce. The second thing that I think we've also experienced is you also need patient talents.

And in our culture here, sometimes when someone is getting good, they just want to go and hustle. They're not looking to get a job or build a dream.

So you would always find that as well, because the mindset has been programmed for scarcity and survival. Our ability to work as a team, closely as a team. In Africa, it's a little bit challenging.

Africans, even in Nigeria, here, collaboration can take us farther. But more often than not, people want to just exist in silos.

But I've been doing the best we can to make Magic Carpet into a platform that can power creators, and not just a studio that produces film, but we also want to be able to see that we are championing creators to be part of what we do.

Speaker A: 00:26:36

All right, another segue. What would you say is that one bit of media, whether film, animation, that you absolutely love, your favorite.

Speaker B: 00:26:49

So it cuts across for me, I think that I truly, truly, deeply Enjoy the Lion King 2d, the first version. I think that for me, it was. I love the way that both the music and. And the characters were brought to life.

I also love the redemptive nature of the story that in the end, no matter how lost you are, you will always come home. And maybe one of the reasons why that made a very strong impression on me was the fact that it was very. It was rooted in the African sound.

I also enjoy a lot of the Swahili tone that was in it. I did enjoy the Prince of Egypt, also. Matrix. I enjoyed Matrix a lot. I think for me, Matrix was a movie that was almost transcendent.

It did give me what could potentially be the fundamental understanding of the nature of reality. And I think Soul was also a movie that I enjoyed because it was about exploring existential questions. Who are we? Where are we going from here?

Our dreams and aspirations? So I think those are the movies that I can easily think of at this moment that have made a very strong impression.

I mean, now there are times I might remember another one that I can't remember now, and I'm like, oh, I should have said that. But at least these ones are currently what came to mind.

Speaker A: 00:28:26

Okay, all right. I'm sure, like, there are times that have been tough in this journey.

And I'd like to know what inspires you to keep, you know, marching forward and, you know, continuing the journey.

Speaker B: 00:28:46

So I think I'm a. I'm a man of faith. And one of the things I value in my faith is that I'm committed to human flourishing. I'm not just on Earth to make money.

I'm not just on Earth to make ends meet. I'm on Earth to be the means through which Earth can flourish, humans can flourish. And that propels me also, because I'm a dreamer.

I'm also someone who is very big on visionary impacts. How do we create spaces?

How do we create projects that can truly, truly heal the world's imagination of Africa and heal the world's concept of separation? I think we are in a time that is calling for deep healing.

We're in a very fragmented world where people are polarized across tribal lines, ethnic rights, racial lines, gender lines. There are lots of movements and ideology that is pulling the world in different directions.

I personally feel we owe it to ourselves to tell stories that unite and heal.

And one of the things I recognize as my contribution is storytelling are stories that collectively elevate the human race and stories that cultivate, that encourage our flourishing, our collective human flourishing and human healing.

Speaker A: 00:30:13

Okay, so for you, how do you define success for yourself?

Speaker B: 00:30:21

So success for me is actually people. It's people. How have I been able to make the people who believe in what we are building happy?

And how about how have I been able to create a space where people that are part of my ecosystem have tried? So we're doing things together. So my idea of success is the collective. It's in every one of us coming together to truly, truly benefit.

So some of the guys that have started this studio with me have always been with me, and many times I take deep fulfillment in knowing that we've all grown our dreams. We've seen this. It was a dream, and now it's a reality. So that gives me joy in seeing that they're happy as much as I am.

I also define success from my kids.

I want to know that I create things that can shape them as well, and they can be able to see the world and see the world through that as much as possible.

Speaker A: 00:31:33

Okay, let's talk a bit about collaboration. I mean, something that, you know, in this, your journey has helped, you know, shape the work and the company that you're building.

One thing that doesn't happen as much in the Nigerian creative industries, collaboration. Most times you see production companies just. Yeah. Being singular in Terms of bringing a project to life for you, what makes collaboration work?

How do people keep it alive and encourage it?

Speaker B: 00:32:14

So I think collaboration is something that has helped us to scale. We've collaborated locally and internationally.

In fact, we have some major projects on our table that we are collaborating on and that we're looking to collaborate with in all of these projects. I would say, I would say, first of all, think of it as a relationship and it's a long term relationship. So it's not just about transaction.

One of the ways I approach relationship is to first of all genuinely know the person, get to know them, hang out with them, do coffee, right. And let's just get to know people. And once I know their heartbeats, I know that there's going to be a way we can align.

I also have to always think, win, win. I think that there's enough to go around. Like they always say, there's enough for everybody's need, but not enough, not enough for everybody's greed.

When we think about my win doesn't have to be your loss and your loss doesn't have to be my win. But we create a world where we can both win.

We can both shape the idea, we can both co create, we can both honor, respect our diversity, but also find ways to make that work. We are going to make the world a much better place.

So it's for me, most times when I get to meet people, I don't think they know that I'm looking to collaborate with them. It might take a year or two or three and I bring up the idea.

But I'm very, I'm someone who is very committed to knowing people, meeting people and doing life with people. So collaboration has never been in short supply. It's always been the way that I.

Is the way that I, I show up in the world and I get around in the world.

Speaker A: 00:33:59

Nice. For Magic Carpet, what are some other projects you guys are working on?

Speaker B: 00:34:04

So we have a. A series which is called the Legends of Bulan. This series is actually inspired by African mythology.

We have a musical project that we're also working on on our IP. It's going to be a 3D animated musical project that we're working on.

Apart from the Mid the IG Ways, which is our series that is coming out this month on the MTN streaming platform. So you can get to watch it there.

So yeah, those are a few of the projects that are pretty much at the level of pre production and also discussing with potential funders for it.

Speaker A: 00:34:50

Okay. Can you mention how people can Kind of keep up with the work you do, whether it's with the animation school or the agency or magic carpets.

How can people keep up with updates?

Speaker B: 00:35:04

Yeah, so I think if you check Magic Carpet Studios on Instagram, on Facebook, on YouTube, we are there. We have a vibrant and active community. So you can always catch us up there as Freddie. My account is Freddie@Dmefe across all social media platform.

For whatever reason, I'm very good on LinkedIn, uninstalled Instagram, and at least I try to respond to as many messages on DMs on both LinkedIn and Instagram as I can. So those are two places I can be reached on any day, anytime.

Speaker A: 00:35:41

Okay, one final word for every young African creative. What do you think they should figure out at the beginning of their journey in order to kind of go the whole way?

Speaker B: 00:35:53

I think for me it is really resilience. I would say believe in your dreams, your dreams are valid. I would say don't get discouraged.

To become the kind of person that would bet a dream that the world would honor would always require that you are tested and that every test grow your soul and you grow deeper, you grow larger, you become even more so. I would say don't give up on your dreams. Stick it out. Find a way to collaborate with people.

And once you do, you realize that the best capital is not always money, but people.

Speaker A: 00:36:33

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you, Ferdy, for coming on the podcast and sharing your insights with us.

Speaker B: 00:36:42

Thank you, sir, for having.

Speaker A: 00:36:46

We have come to the end of this episode. Remember to rate and review the podcast. You can also follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Xelekwafilm and the podcast at NigelFilm Pod.

You can now support the podcast by clicking on the link in the show notes. See you on the next episode. Have a good one.