How I made my dream come true

Award-winning filmmaker Nathan Magoola has always had a passion for movies. His involvement in industry dates back to his university days where he run a successful video rental business and most recently as a producer of a popular local TV series. 
He has produced movies and series such as Divizionz, Felistas Fable, Reflection, Walk with Me and Prestige, among others. For more than a decade, Magoola pursued a dream of making quality and profitable movies.  However, he learned along the way that a lot goes into making such a dream come true. 

“Movie making requires funding, training and connections. Good ideas alone cannot help drive one’s career. You need skill and experience to know which story ideas are suitable for turning into films. You will also need either good relationships or money to turn the idea into a film,” he says.  To help his career along, Magoola invested in reading. 

“I am the kind of person who reads a lot. I know that knowledge is power. So I have always been equipped with a lot of information about various things and subjects, which has helped me in getting training and funding opportunities, plus giving me access to invaluable networks and mentorship. This has helped me leapfrog ahead of colleagues with far longer lists of credits,” he says. 

Starting out
The filmmaker’s career began at St. Paul College in Minnesota at a community TV station called St. Paul Neighbourhood Network where he received basic and free training.  “The station trained people how to use cameras, switchers and editing among others. Once you were certified, you could come and check out equipment to produce noncommercial content of relevance to your community. 

Eventually one of the producers at the station took an interest in me and hired me as her cameraman for $75 (Shs266,000) a day. This was when that seed planted a few years earlier started to sprout,” says Magoola.  
In 2009, Magoola returned to Uganda determined to begin his career as a film maker but after a while he realised he would not be able to survive on the money he made as a filmmaker.  
“It is a long and difficult journey to succeed as a filmmaker and it is only passion that keeps you going despite the numerous obstacles and challenges you will encounter along the way,” he shares.

To make ends meet, Magoola found work in advertising writing commercials for companies such as Zain (which became Airtel), UHMG, UTL, UCC, Stanbic, Sadolin Paints, NSSF and Centenary Bank among others. 
“I was making a decent living by Ugandan standards and could afford to take my children to some of the best schools around but I was not fulfilled. I knew that was a trap and if I did not make a drastic decision to leave it behind, I would find myself at 60 years old and still doing that,” he says.

The breakthrough
To keep his dream alive, Magoola started doing films on the side and in 2015 he joined Fenon Entertainment. 
“I anticipated that I would work there for one year and within that time things would have worked out on the film side of things and I would move on. That was not to be. I only left Fenon in January 2020 shortly before the lockdown and started writing what is now Prestige the TV series on Pearl Magic Prime. This series is a culmination of 12 years of trying to do something that would not only fulfill my passion but make profit as well.  With this experience I have confirmed that passion, determination and perseverance will eventually take you places,” he notes.
 
Magoola says his limited resources to fund his projects prolonged the journey unnecessarily.  “I believe the reason it has taken me this long to get here is because I never really had money left over from paying bills to invest in kick starting my ideas. So many times creative people have brilliant ideas in their minds that they really cannot articulate to the people who could invest in them. But they would stand a better chance if they could turn these ideas into something tangible that other people can easily understand,” Magoola says.

Challenges
This, he says is a problem that affects many wannabe film makers. “There is a business side to filmmaking that many producers are not conversant with which is keeping them from making it. A lot of my colleagues cannot put together a presentation that they can pitch to corporate entities. I have personally invested a lot of money in my own professional development over the last dozen years and the results are beginning to show. My family has been deprived of a lot of things which I could not provide because I was doing numerous trainings in Europe. So now I am at a point where I can sit in the same room with say Netflix officials and we would speak the same language because there is not a single film related document that I do not know how to put together,” the film maker says.

He hopes more industry players start accessing such training for professional development because the industry grows when many in it are succeeding.  The industry, he reckons has inexhaustible opportunities for all.  
“The emergence and competition by various local stations, pay TVs, and streaming platforms such as Showmax and Netflix creates a demand for content and this means employment opportunities for people in different roles in film. 

The obstacle for many filmmakers has been finding is financing. For example, recently the Uganda Communication Commission (UCC) came up with the Audiovisual Content Support Programme where they will give creators of feature films, documentaries, short films, TV series and animation money for production. The European Union just granted British Council and Heva Fund from Nairobi about €6m for audiovisual support in the East African region. So it seems like a very good time to be a prepared filmmaker,” Magoola points out.