Voline Ogutu: How I won Sh11m in Netflix competition
Film producer and scriptwriter Voline Ogutu believes the concept idea that won her Sh11 million on the Netflix competition wasn’t as good as others.
Nonetheless, she attributes her win to a hack she figured out going into the competition that saw her emerge among the top six winners of the African Folktales Reimagined competition out of over 2000 applicants who entered the competition.
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“As always, anytime I am developing a film, for me it starts with an idea. I had an idea of what short film I wanted to come up with just like everybody else. But to ensure my chances, I watched a lot of Netflix films to see and understand what they are doing in Africa, the kind of scripts they look for, then I aligned my ideas to that. I wanted a dilemma of my story to be on Netflix because I realized they were major on that,” Ogutu explained.
The trick worked as different production houses and film streaming services have different preferences whenever it comes to film production.
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Her concept Anyango & the Ogre received a seed funding of 75,000 dollars (Sh9.8 million) to develop the idea into a film while she pocketed a further 25,000 dollars (Sh3.3 million) for the conception.
The short film premiered on Thursday during the 6th Kalasha International Film and TV Market. Ogutu has written a number of notable films and TV series such as Njoro wa Uba and Country Queen just to mention a few.
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