Their budgets are lower because wages in Africa are presumably lower, but, because Africans also earn less than other places, the ticket sales would also be presumably lower. I don't know if they make money, but presumably not. That said, if they can make a movie for $25,000 and put it on the market, I would be very interested in how they did it.
I bet they do make money, or at least some of them do, otherwise it wouldn't be such a big industry, at best it would just be a popular hobby!
How they make films and how they make money from them is not something which is easily or directly transferable, because making commercially successful films is in large part about meeting the expectations of the target audience. Nigeria, the Balkans/Eastern Europe, many parts of Asia and South America and most of Africa have very much lower expectations, for a couple of reasons:
1. Due to lower disposable incomes, prices have to be lower and therefore revenue is lower, investment has to be lower and the reproduction quality is lower. Local and National TV often has no specifications whatsoever and programs wouldn't get through even the first phase of ingest of North American and Northern European QC departments. Even brought in, high quality content from say North America or Britain has to pass through the hands of local broadcasters/cable operators who usually either don't have quality modern equipment and/or the expertise to use it correctly, so even then consumers don't get to experience the same level of quality which the original audiences experienced. The same is true of theatrical features. The economics usually dictate that cinemas have to be built, equipped and maintained more cheaply, so even when the latest Hollywood blockbuster is screened, audiences rarely, if ever, get to experience them in their full glory. Overall, expectations are therefore lower and often far lower.
2. Audiences are often prepared to take a further hit on quality if the content is more applicable to their culture. IE., they can relate more easily to the subject matter/characters.
Many/Most indietalk members are from North America and Britain, the two regions with arguably the highest audience expectations in the world. This is not to say of course that other countries don't sometimes produce equally high quality content or that North America and Britain don't ever produce garbage! In other words, a Nollywood film made for $25k is likely to be no better (and probably worse) than many $25k films made in say the US. However, the Nollywood $25k film may well be commercially viable whereas the same (or even a higher) quality $25k US film would not be.
G
