“Embracing” the new trend of video-filmmaking in Tanzania: Who are the audience?

“Embracing” the new trend of video – filmmaking in Tanzania: Who are the audience? The connotation of the first word in the title of this article as you may have noticed, is used for one good reason, to suggest a deeper meaning to what we: the patrons or potential customers, of these commercially tailored video – films produced under the currently occurring trend of commercial video – filmmaking, simply do “we embrace” thus we consume whatever it is (good or bad) probably with enough good reasons, one of them may be, (echoing Richard Ndunguru: UDSM/FPA) “we need something of our caliber to entertain us”

At the emergence of this new trend of commercial video-filmmaking, several factors were seen as highly contributive, but one of them that we cant ignore is that these video – films have found their potential audience, and if we are to give these practitioners sticks and carrots (as Mrs. Eda Sanga, our UDSM Media Manager would always suggest the use of those two words as a substitute to criticisms and compliments) then it is this one aspect that they deserve carrots, meaning compliments. But the question that I keep asking my self is “who are these audiences?” Is that you? If is you what is it that you find compelling about these films?

It’s highly a business cliché that the failure and a success of any business is highly a matter of whether or not the business has customers, audience so to speak. To put my point in a nutshell, I take the continue tendency of producing the “half baked”, “Copy cats” you name them, in an immediacy, journalistic manner to be rendered as such by the so called potential audience of these video – films.

Whether we know it already or we should, there is something about the attitudes of these potential customers that needs to be studied if you compare their response and the kind of criticisms that has been posed to the same video – films, I insist, same video – films.

I take this page not to be comprised of any such sorts of criticism but a page that ought to make an analysis and bring forth the understanding from both sides of the coin. I highly recommend your feedback to improve not only this paper but our understanding of why and what is going on in our context as far as arts and popular cultures are concerned and to a greater extent affects our lives in a certain way.

To conclude my discussion I give my general comment on why, whether we are the ones embracing it or not, this new trend of video – filmmaking with whatever characteristics it displays, will continue and grow to refute the criticism we pose, because different group of audiences, undergo different experiences while watching the same video – film. What these audience experiences as pleasure is one major factor that sees them buying or renting these films. On the one hand they develop a demand which is not to be seen as a trivial to the culture of producing films in large quantity, but rather largely a rendering factor to a trend of commercial video-filmmaking in Tanzania

This article will continue next month with the same objective of analyzing who are the audiences of these commercial tailored video – films as part of understanding the factors that shapes this new trend and whether the trend is necessarily the breakthrough towards the remarkable film industry in Tanzania or not. Let’s look through it, let’s bring in and share our perspectives of it.