Hollywood Hitmaking, Township Style
The future of South Africa movie attendance is in safe hands – well, it is for the 43m South Africans who prefer to keep it affordable, anyway. Producer Sello ‘Chicco’ Twala has sold a million DVDs of his first three township comedies and estimates that 25m more pirated copies are being hawked on street corners. Now he’s teaming up with government and the private sector to develop his brand of ‘Jozi-wood’ flicks as a viable extension of today’s cinema business.
Advertisers are interested in placing spots ahead of the movies on his hi-res DVDs, Twala says, but corporate multiplex operators like Ster-Kinekor and open-channel broadcasters etv and the SABC are yet to stake production funds.
“No one in South Africa’s cinema or TV business has taken an interest so far in investing in my movies,” says Twala, whose success in the record industry has taught him to follow public taste when it comes to backing winners. “That’s why my company, Mzansi Films, has ploughed every cent we’ve made so far from our DVD sales into setting up our own infrastructure.”
Mzansi Films has a small release catalogue but already has its own DVD pressing plant, with a film studio, camera, sound and lighting equipment and an editing suite established in Midrand, between the large urban markets of Johannesburg and Pretoria.
The breakthrough release which got Twala’s DVD operation up ‘n running in 2008 hit all the buttons of contemporary township culture. The story, about a nerdy teenager winning the day against family abuse was titled My Shit Father And My Lotto Ticket. It sold 300 000 copies within six months and established its unknown star Mapuduthu
PEOPLE’S MOVIE STARS OUTDRAW ELECTION CANDIDATES
“We do promotional visits to townships like KwaMasha outside Durban and he pulls bigger crowds than any candidate running for election,” says Twala. “His fan following is at pop-star level, bigger than any soap star from TV. Yet this is his first film. I chose him and taught him how to work on camera and developed his character into a kid that every family can relate to – the clever young guy who outwits all the misfortune that comes at him and finally triumphs by doing the right thing.”
It’s a rags-to-riches formula that’s built fortunes in Hollywood and Bollywood from the era of Charlie Chaplin to last year’s Slumdog Millionaire.
Twala has been making his 80-minute homegrown comedies for under R500 000 (roughly equal to $70 000), workshopping the scripts with his mostly amateur casts from real-life situations that are topical gossip in the shebeen bars and corner shopping spazas.
OUTSELLING CELINE WITH TOWNSHIP POP
That’s where the buzz in generated. That’s where 46-year-old ‘Chicco’ Twala is the byword for entertainment for the majority of South Africa’s working class consumers. It’s where stars can be made outside the mainstream media on word of mouth.
One example was South Africa’s hottest-ever female pop star, Brenda Fassie, rose to fame during the worst of the anti-apartheid conflict. Slender, sexy and fearless, she defied all the racial and gender stereotypes with her songs and stage performances. She became the postergirl for the young, fast township generation in the highly-political 1980s decade by exposing women-abuse with hits like ‘(I’m Not Your) Weekend Special’.
Too controversial for State TV and most radio stations, Fassie launched her early success on the concert circuit. Her peak commercial phase began in 1986 when Chicco Twala became her record producer and targeted the broad family audience from their first collaboration, Too Late For Mama.
The empowerment of a vast new consumer society in 1994 under a democratic government brought a demand for the People’s own entertainment icons. The sales trajectory of Twala and Fassie’s hits rose from gold to multiples of platinum. They out-muscled all competition, even the box-office success of the movie Titanic. Twala’s anthemic ballad Vulindlele (Make Way) topped the SA pop charts in 1998 against the movie’s theme song, My Heart Must Go On – a townships v. suburbs showdown in which Ms Fassie’s 800 000 sales outsold Celine Dion 2-1.
OUTSELLING HOLLYWOOD WITH TOWNSHIP STORIES
Chicco Twala’s feel for the market is just as sharp today, with home entertainment’s rapid expansion from stereos to multi-media theatre systems.
“It’s important to understand what the people want in whatever entertainment you provide,” he says. “I don’t want to criticize the programming on TV channels with a majority black audience like SABC1 and etv but they are hopelessly out of step with their viewers when it comes to films.
“The endless crime and karate programs have no history or social values that resonate with today’s South Africans. I grew up with classics like Jamie Uys’s Dingaka and Simon Sabela’s Inyakanyaka. They were rooted in our own village legends of tribal leaders and family life. The comedies I make now are likewise filled with people and stories that everyone recognizes and relates to.”
Moruti wa Tsotsi (The Con-man Priest) was Twala’s first homegrown movie release. It starred veteran comic Senyaka and Brenda Fassie and steadily accumulated sales via word of mouth across the country. More importantly, as millions of township households were hooked into the national power grid, it fed the demand for entertainment on CD and DVD.
By 2006 when another township movie, the R30m ($5m) Tsotsi, won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, Chicco was already streets ahead of the game. By then his Moruti wa Tsotsi movie had sold 300 000 DVDs priced between R50-70 ($7-10), the average cost of a local music CD. Tsotsi’s take on the national cinema circuit was around half a million dollars.
The follow-up, Moruti wa Tsotsi 2, has sold the same numbers. “Seeing this as a business with unlimited potential,” says Twala, “my backers and I have kept production costs down by investing in our own facilities instead of renting them from film to film. Our biggest challenge is not to maintain the run of hit movies: we have six new scripts in pre-production. The only threat to our ongoing business development is film piracy.”
BEATING FILM PIRACY AT STREET LEVEL
The Mzansi Films brand is a target nowadays that’s hotter than the latest Hollywood blockbusters. Twala estimates there are at least 25m fake copies of his DVD movies in circulation.
On the upside, the consistent 300 000-plus sales of each release show that Mzansi Films has a core following. They prefer to buy the authentic product to use in their expensive DVD players, computers and home theatre systems. It’s a viable client base, but just a glimpse of the true Big Picture. Twala believes the South African DVD-movie market can sell a billion legitimate copies annually by 2014.
Hi-tech methods of controlling the piracy problem are expensive and depend on government and the cellphone companies becoming involved. Coding the film data on the disks, for example, to protect the Mzansi Films copyright, is one option. Making the films available for digital download is another. Taking the fight to the bootleggers on the streets also has merit; one tactic that Twala is discussing with private sector companies has a shock twist reminiscent of one of his movie plots.
“Our plan is to make our own pirated versions of popular films with the same cheap labels and covers and sell them at traffic lights and street corners,” he says. “But when you get home and pop your R20 rip-off into the slot all you get is a message that piracy is illegal. The rest of the disk is blank.”
It would be a wake-up to movie fans who take a chance, but the idea stems from brainstorming sessions at Mzansi Films about ways to replace lost revenue. “Several ad agencies are interested in putting commercials in front of our top-selling movies, just like they do it in the cinemas,” says Twala. “One of our biggest business assets is our distribution network, a model we’ve developed in every community countrywide.”
SELLING MOVIES, GRASSROOTS STYLE
The initial release of each movie places 10-15 copies with every township spaza shop and shebeen on the network. “We have at least 10 000 outlets,” says Twala, “which means we can test-market the launch of each film with around 150 000 sales. Our plant can press up to 25 000 DVDs a day so when the follow-up orders come in we can meet them very quickly.”
His township marketing system has practical advantages over the cinema trade. Spending R50-70 on a brand-new DVD is more economical than taking a taxi ride with a date to and from the cinema and the cost of the movie ticket and snacks.
Chicco used the same grassroots distribution network to sell his music releases on cassette tapes, vinyl records and then CDs back in the chaotic days of apartheid unrest. Today, he pitches it as an incentive for government to get behind his initiative.
“With so many people out of work, our distribution system creates jobs in the urban and rural areas,” says Twala. “We are now expanding it to bus and taxi ranks as well. If the black consumer doesn’t go to the movie houses, you bring the movies to them. Wherever the people are, that’s where we are on sale.”
NEXT FOR MARTIN LAWRENCE – BAD BOYS, SOWETO STYLE
Johannesburg’s budding movie mogul has a few more ideas he’s discussing with the Departments of Trade and Industry, and Arts and Culture. Exports are high on the agenda – primarily, the potential of South African township comedy in Nigeria’s booming ‘Nollywood’ market, which entirely comprises low-budget films on video and DVD.
He also has a plan to export South African movies worldwide by casting American co-stars – the biggest on the market.
“People rent Martin Lawrence DVDs because they know they’ll be laughing from the first scene,” says Twala. “I have a script that I’m now discussing with financial backers. I want to bring Martin Lawrence here to Soweto to star in it. He will play a guy who comes to South Africa and confronts all the problems that we live with day to day. It will make the Bad Boys hits seem very tame and it would launch our export drive with our first international release.”
The Five Rules To Win Back Your Love
A woman in love gives her all to making it work. It’s an adventure far beyond the fun of flirtation and the thrill of sexual play with someone new and exciting. Everything is possible – until the day it ends, without warning and without any explanation that makes sense.
The only way forward – whether the relationship gets back on track or not – is to stop blaming herself for what went wrong.
Leading relationship coaches with thousands of cases on file know that guilt is the first reaction of women struggling with a bad break-up. It’s a lifeline to hang onto – a desperate hope that by fixing the problem they will fix the relationship.
The quickest route to recovery is to forget taking the blame. It takes two people to build a worthwhile relationship but either one can destroy it.
Dump the emotional baggage and let the bruises heal while you focus once again on what you wanted from love.
FIVE GUIDELINES TO FINDING REAL LOVE
ã Get real. We live in a fiercely competitive society, and falling in love and securing a relationship is getting tougher on everyone involved.
ã Stay focused. Curves and six-packs are sexy but long-term love survives on strength. Building a life together takes place mostly outside the bedroom.
ã Forgive yourself first. Real life is not a Bachelor game show. Dating is fun and mostly useful experience for discovering what you don’t want in a long-term partnership.
ã Know what you are looking for. Settling for second best is like accepting box wine for champagne. He might not know it but you will. True love grows from a shared strength, not making allowances.
ã Miracles happen when you deserve them. Put away the tissues and ice-cream and listen more closely to your friends. They know you, you know them. When love hits the wall learn from their mistakes as well as your own. Don’t make the same mistakes twice.
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Shaping up for the $300 billion soccer industry
Professional soccer is the wealthiest sport on the planet. It’s the prime career choice billions of young athletes. Merging glamour with global viewership, its million-dollar top salaries come with the kind of marketing contracts that most movie stars dream about.
Yet 90% or more of the game’s elite came from humble backgrounds, combining their talent and ball skills to climb the ladder from promising teenagers to international brands.
Luck plays a big part, of course, but talent needs expert training to make the most of every opportunity.
Soccer is termed The People’s Game because it offers equal opportunity, regardless of connections and community, to play in the world’s finest leagues for a living.
And that’s some living. Viewership of soccer’s World Cup tournaments is double that of the Olympic Games. It’s a global marketing business with an annual turnover of $300 billion and icons whose fanatical support outshines the stars of Hollywood and the music charts.
COACHING TO WIN, NOT JUST TO DAZZLE
Every season on every continent, from school to club level, brings a network of coaches and scouts seeking fresh young talent they can turn into match winners.
What they’re looking for is effectiveness. The quality they prize above anything else is young footballers who combine training with teamwork to dominate the action on the field.
ã Effectiveness does not rely on skill and natural ability. It means controlling the play and getting results. It is the consistency that opens the way to playing at a higher level.
ã Speed and power makes players far more effective than individual skills. Flair and technique can be learned and adapted within the gameplay.
ã Performance can only be applied within the boundaries of physical fitness. The key to raising the level of skills is super-fitness, matching the desire to win with superior conditioning.
ã Physical conditioning is the engine that keeps performance at the same level in the closing stages of a game as in the first 20 minutes. That’s how the most successful coaches deliver consistent results.
FITNESS RATES ABOVE FANCY EQUIPMENT
Soccer is a physical game at every level. Athletic development requires a structured approach at any age to avoid injuries and increase speed and stamina.
Proper conditioning is the cutting edge in today’s competitive soccer industry. Coaches rate it more important the latest high-performance boots or a dozen videos revealing the secrets of Lionel Messi’s close control for Barcelona or Cristiano Ronaldo’s ballistic free kicks for Real Madrid.
THE TOTAL SOCCER FITNESS PROGRAM
There are no secrets about the right conditioning program. It will work for anyone. Total Soccer Fitness is designed as a People’s program for the People’s game, based on the same specialised training techniques used by the leading players and clubs in the soccer industry.
Its principles are effective at every level and age-group of soccer competition and the results prove themselves almost immediately.
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Cool on camera – get your own million-dollar Hollywood body
Visual impact means billion-dollar marketing clout. Soccer’s Cristiano Ronaldo and fashion supermodel Candice Swanepoel – their performance is shaped by designer workout techniques. (Images belong to the original photographers)
Muscle building is a precise science in today’s image-conscious media industry. Stars on screen and on magazine covers fine-tune their workouts to make an impact on camera, not on the heavies in the storyline.
These are the images prized by men and women. Sure, athletes too set the bar for sports performance. But while action images of icons like Cristiano Ronaldo and Ana Ivanovic make headlines, it’s candid shots of them stripped down at the beach that make them lifestyle role models.
VISUAL IMPACT MUSCLE BUILDING
There are no shortcuts to looking like Brad Pitt in Troy or Angelina Jolie in Salt. Each movie role is a marketing operation. They are selling a production costing upwards of $100 million or more on their Look as much as the action sequences.
That Presentation is what we all use when planning to make a big impression. We choose an image we know will turn heads and map out ways to achieve it. The A-list outfit and grooming are available if you have the right budget. A sleek, perfectly-sculpted physique generates the kind of attitude worth millions to Hollywood producers and magazine publishers. It powers the charismatic self-confidence essential to sell an image to the global audience.
LEANER IS HOTTER
Sheer bulking-up effectively sold a screen image in the era of Sly Stallone and Arnie Schwarzenegger. Today it’s Taylor Lautner in New Moon, Brad Pitt in Fight Club and Candice Swanepoel in Victoria’s Secret lingerie and swimwear that define the body ideal. They fine-tune their daily workouts on muscle definition, combining optimum visual impact with easy, confident moves on the camera.
LESS PAIN, MORE GAIN
Their A-list personal trainers are specialists in their field, creating diet and exercise routines tailored to their clients’ high profile work schedules.
* Taylor Lautner – based the look of New Moon’s red-hot werewolf Jake on lean and sculpted muscle mass. His trainer used 40% heavier weights than normal to define the muscle form
* Candice Swanepoel – a intensive, full-body workout twice daily to stay thin enough to fit designer clothing without losing the supermodel curves prized for the Victoria’s Secret ultra-sexy campaigns.
* Brad Pitt – shaped his workouts to shape his Look for Troy, then Fight Club. To play Achilles he worked on one muscle group each day and ate four high protein meals a day to add 10 pounds of lean muscle mass.
Fight Club required a slimmer, more agile build. He backed up his workouts with a weekly, intensive cardio program to burn any excess fat. This dropped his weight to 155 pounds and gave the classic ‘cut’ look
* Hugh Jackman – to play Wolverine, increased the tempo of his weight lifts, forcing the muscles to grow fast without bulking up. This kept them lean and ripped, matching the comic book character.
YOUR OWN HOLLYWOOD TRAINING PROGRAM
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