Navigating Nollywood Filmmaking in Covid-19 Pandemic through New Technology

Abstract

Despite the challenges posed to film production by the lockdown during the pandemic and post-pandemic period, some filmmakers still explored new technological media to express their creative ideas about the situation in which the nation and world were enmeshed. With the need for continuity editing in the construction of visual narratives, it appears that the psychological effect of a narrative is dependent on the mode in which it is constructed to represent the ideologies to be construed. This paper examines the communicative potentials of shots in Obi Emelonye's Heart 2 Heart (2020) shot within the Pandemic era with the use of phones, coordinated and collated with the zoom communication application before editing. It highlights the aggressive psychological and emotional impact of the pandemic as x-rayed in the narrative anchoring on Kipendoff's and Urajav, Begum & Pavadai’s cognitive semiotic theories to explain the communicative impact of the film narrative and technical possibilities in this 21st century brought together through film. It is hoped that the paper would provoke film scholars and filmmakers to explore new ideas in film and the need for more study on cognitive semiotics.