Radiant Light Studios’ young creative director, Benjamin Efe has crafted a new language and merged several concepts in the film The Underworld.
The Underworld, a historical film, is set in the ancient forests of Delphi, the heartbeat of the Kada-Wada Kingdom far beyond the human realm, where humanity is lost. It’ll take a chosen one from the human world to restore the kingdom. His name is Victor.
In crafting this new world beyond human imagination, Efe had to create a new language – Kadawada. The language is then repeated by characters to enforce its reality. English language is used for a wider audience understanding as quite a lot of the film is based on movements – fighting and hunting scenes.
Said Efe: “The first thing I did while writing the story is to create words and give them meaning. For instance, ‘Mogamaga’ which means ‘dead or alive’; ‘Galiza’, which means Seer; ‘Tamatuka’ represents ‘the sun’, among others. Then, I also created a name for the actors as Zitafa, Nagaza, Sojafa etc. All of these I ensure that if there is a place we use ‘no’ which in Kadawada language means ‘zata’ I ensure it is repeated and pronounced same way with every other person that uses it. We use English but the pronunciation is different, such as ‘woman’ is pronounced ‘wuman’.”
The Underworld also merges several concepts and ancient culture to create a kingdom that feels grounded in reality. “The film features a combination of African and western ideology. From Africa, I borrowed some ancient ways of life, adapting their hunting techniques, games and communal way of living; African folklore (storytelling).”
For the western concept, he deployed the Marxist theory with a bit of Structuralism. “With the fight scenes we adopted the western culture; but actors speak Kadawada even in the fight scenes, and the costumes reflects no particular tradition.”
Four months into preparation for filming in September 11, the N2 million budgeted project has auditioned and is training cast members in the hunting, fighting, movements and ancient ways of living. Unique characters in the film include the midwives, a set of women, who are the custodians of the women kingdom; the male warriors, seen in the training clips practicing a synchronized movement and falls, and a chosen one, who transits from the human world (the city scenes) to the underworld otherworld (forest scenes). Likewise, there’s a creature role that requires the film co-opting of artist and Zee Arts Fellow Favour Chioma to design and craft a masking for it. In all, the film’s choice of cast is largely unknown. Efe accounts for this by the fact that roles were cast based on actor’s ability to depict a character.
“We didn’t want to use a known face because how many of them will give us what we want to achieve. We want to break away from the usual kind of epic films, and create something unique and I know no known face can offer that,” said Efe.
But as pre-production progresses the budget gradually increases. The studio drafted partnerships with costume designers, make-up artistes, and receives sponsorship from team members and fans of the production.
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