It is common knowledge that fight scenes in Nollywood movies leave a lot to be desired, but not Spotlyt’s The Castigator. The action scenes look as real as real can be, and compare favourably with a Jackie Chan fight scene.
The short film series directed by Spotlyt is acclaimed to contain the best fight scenes ever portrayed in a Nigerian film. The viral fight scene from episode 2 of the web series has got a lot of people talking on social media and other online platforms since it was uploaded on Twitter. The Twitter video is only about 4 days old and already has close to 600 thousand views, nearly 16 thousand retweets, and more than 32 thousand likes.
The first episode was released about 4 months ago on Youtube with a fight scene between the castigator (a sort of hero) and a tout who tries to steal a handbag from a lady who had gotten lost while trying to find a friend’s house. The second episode is a 6-minute clip that features an elaborate street fight near a construction site with Spotlyt as Castigator, and East God and Benny de’Psycho as the robbers.
The Castigator is a privately funded project in which Spotlyt has had to act, direct and edit. All the fight scenes were done by professional dancers who trained 3 hours daily for 3 weeks in order to perfect the routine. There were several injuries in the process, but the biggest issue for him was having to do all the work and still finance the project.
“The major challenge is having to do everything: play Castigator, director, editor and financer. Take, for instance, every time the camera guy doesn’t get a shot, we stop shooting and then I have to show him what angles to take, and then run back to the fight scene. The other major challenge is budget. It was personally funded. Now, imagine if it was a sponsored project.”
Ogegbo Omotola Suleiman aka Spotlyt is a radio presenter at Cool FM Kano where he hosts the ‘Night Café’ and the ‘Weekend Night Out’ which air on the station. He is also a dancer and singer, but perhaps has gotten more popular for his filmmaking skills. He does not consider his work a Nollywood film as he has never worked with or gotten input from Nollywood and therefore cannot be said to be technically part of the industry.
The idea for The Castigator was created by Spotlyt with contribution from co-host at Cool FM, Daisy Olowu. His work is no doubt very commendable but with sponsorship, we are sure to see a world-class production.
