‘Why I’m Opening a Film Academy’

Budding Entrepreneur and Nollywood producer, Tayo Sobola Sotayo, is in her early 30s and has added another feather to her enterprises with the establishment of a Film Academy for the less-privileged. Her new project, Sotee Film Academy will be launched in Lagos at an occasion she describes as a five-in-one event on December 30. She spoke with Mary Ekah about her coming event and more

Can you explain what this much talked about five-in-one event is all about?
It is a five-in-one event happening on December 30 at the Orientals Hotel, Victoria Island Lagos. My birthday is originally on the December 28 but I am going to push it till 30th of December when I will mark my birthday. Again, sometime last year it was the opening of Sotee Entertainment, the entertainment arm of my company and so we are marking its first anniversary on same say. Thirdly, we are going to hold the company’s end of the year party and also we are going to exhibit all the films that the Sottee has produced so far; and to cap it all, we are going to flag off the Sotee Film Academy, making it five events in all on one day.

How will you manage five events on one day?
Normally you have programme of event and all that, so the red carpet starts by 3pm and of course the event is going to last till about 11pm, so we have ample time to do all that are needed to be done on that day.

What informed the establishment of the Film Academy?
Every now and then we have people coming up to you saying they want to train on films and showcase their talents and all that. So the film academy is just an avenue to help train new talents and also help to put them in most of the movies that we are doing. You know that after having a good training, it will be easier to feature in movies where you showcase your talents. And also the academy will train physically challenged people who have talent in acting.

Who qualified to partake in your academy?
Anybody can be benefit from it because we can’t say we want just people that are graduates or literates because there are films that you want to do that you don’t need literates to act some parts. So everybody has a role to play and so my film academy is open to everyone that is interested in acting and making of films. I can train anybody to do any kind of thing depending on what I want to do. So there is no limitation to the kind of people that I want. I will admit different people with different qualification with different age grades and different kind of looks for different characters and other things.

You seem to be doing a lot of things at the same time, aside from acting. How do you cope?
I have a whole lot of staff that work for me here and everybody does his/her work and when it is time for me to go on location to film, I go and then come back.

How would you describe 2016?
2016 has been a very wonderful year and a year of new things for me because I have been able to do a whole lot of things. It has been a wonderful year for more and me seriously, I would say, it has been a wonderful year.

How many movies have you released?
I have released whole lots of movies this year. Some are out in the market; some are yet to be out but are out on the Internet. So we are going to exhibit all that we have produced for this year and they are like 12 in all. We are going to show all the movies and talk about them and all that. We would show every of our movie in bits on December 30.

What is your projection for 2017?
I want to help more people, I want to help raise more talents, I mean, I am focused, but I want to be more focused. I didn’t just believe that I would do half of what I have done this year, so now that I have understood how it runs, I want to do times three of what I did this year next year.