5 Questions with Kalu Oji ("Blackwood")
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
I first got interested in filmmaking around 14 years old. My mum had let me use her handicam, so one day myself and a friend decided we'd make a short. It was just the two of us and it was a beautiful mess - the acting, the plot, everything... but creating it was such a rewarding experience. After that I would sink my teeth into editing, downloading footage from online and chopping together these little edits to music I'd made. Having always been interested in storytelling, realising the power in these two outlets got me infatuated with film. After that it was just rinse n repeat.
2) What was the initial idea for this project and how did it evolve from there?
I think the very first idea for this project was to make this quasi-doco style film about a Nigerian family in Australia. It was my grad film for uni and our resources were relatively limited. I think I realised pretty early on that with the amount of characters and specificity of the details I'd written into that story, that it was going to be quite a feat to make it happen in the time frame we had. So I decided to widen the focus. One of the main inspirations for creating Blackwood was the misrepresentation in the Australian media of what it means to be African-Australian. Blackwood is a response to that.
3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And the easiest part?
The biggest challenge was probably the casting process. Casting for African-Australian actors, the pool that you'll find on casting websites and through casting agents is going to be relatively small, and may not tick the boxes you need - age, etc... We definitely got lucky in the end, as Faro and Dalitso ended up being perfect for the film. The easiest part was probably the edit itself. I did love the shoot, spending four days away with an amazing team, but there are a lot of moving parts to balance. Because we'd storyboarded pretty specifically and planned thoroughly, getting to the edit was a matter of laying down the sequence and then playing around with it to bring the best out.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
I recently watched Enter The Dragon for the first time. Way overdue, I know... But I hadn't felt that inspired coming out of a film in the longest time. So much style, so much charisma in the storytelling, and so captivating to watch Bruce Lee be a badass.
5) What’s next for you?
Time shall tell, but I recently finished the first draft of the feature I've been developing. I intend on fleshing that out further, and when I land back in Aus getting started on a proof of concept short for it.
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kaluoj.com | @kaluoj