The Sunday News
LATE last year, I think it was end of November or beginning of December, over 30 independent film and television producers, writers and directors sat quietly in a Bulawayo hotel conference room, patiently waiting to be addressed by Audel Dzinoreva, an executive from Zambezi Magic.
I can still smell the freshness of the room that evening. The room smelt of excitement and future opportunities for content producers in the city. Almost an hour late the executive arrived accompanied by two local producers who duly explained the reason for the late arrival. They had actually taken the executive on a tour of Bulawayo and some content producers’ premises or places of work.
There we sat, listening to the young executive as he told us why he was in Bulawayo. In brief he was in the city looking for content for Zambezi Magic, a channel on DStv. We sat quietly as he went on to spell what kind of content the channel was looking for. In simple terms he was looking for Bulawayo stories, for stories that could resonate with the whole of Africa. We all understood his language. Quality content that resonated with Africa. I am so sure that a lot of us in that room that evening started dreaming big. I remember going home and starting to watch Channel 260 on DStv just to see what type of programming the channel had and where my ideas could fit in.
I also remember making some serious noise on social media about the new opportunities that Zambezi Magic was going to bring to Bulawayo. One or two independent producers from Harare, who had met the same executive months before us tried to warn me. They told me Harare producers had been assembled and told the same thing but five months later no one had received any kind of response from Zambezi Magic. Well, I didn’t want to believe them. As independent producers we had been crying about lack of opportunities for commissioning or selling our content and there was Zambezi Magic coming to us and promising to change everything and make our dreams come true.
So after that meeting many of us pitched various ideas to the executive — drama series, talk shows, game shows, and reality shows.
He liked some, and as expected dismissed some. When he left he asked producers to work on pilots and submit them to Zambezi Magic as soon as possible. End of January was given as deadline for submissions. Many of us went on the Zambezi Magic website and submitted programme concepts; we turned our houses upside down and made pilots, several pilots that were also submitted to the channel. Five months later there is still no response from them. No rejections and not even a “thank you for submitting your pilot or concept”.
I know I am not the only one who feels taken for a ride. Everyone who invested in their ideas and made the effort to submit a concept, especially a pilot deserved a response. Any producer worth their salt knows that concepts can rejected — but total silence spells lack of respect for local producers. A rejection is far much better than just being ignored. Making a television pilot in an economy like ours is no child’s play. It is like drawing water from a rock, but we did just that only to be ignored.
Making a pilot cost time, it costs effort. A producer has to invest in resources, personnel, and other things to produce a pilot.
The least that Dzinoreva and his team in South Africa could have done was simply sending either acknowledgement or rejection letters. Once one gets a regret letter they know they have to move on, try another idea or move on to commissioning station or channel.
