<p>Shooting a short film is a sprint. Shooting a feature is a marathon you finance yourself. The skills do not transfer one-to-one. Most filmmakers we know who attempted a feature off the back of a successful short either never finished it or finished something they're embarrassed by. We're at the planning stage of our own first feature. Here's what we've learned from a year of pre-production about why this leap is harder than it looks — and how we're trying to do it without becoming another cautionary tale.</p>
<h2>The math is brutally different</h2>
<p>A 15-minute short, well-made, takes our team about 6-8 weeks of total work (pre-production, shoot, post). Total budget for our shorts has been ₦150K-₦600K.</p>
<p>A 90-minute feature is not 6 times longer. Not even close. Industry rule of thumb: a feature is roughly <strong>20-30 times</strong> the work of a comparable-quality short. Shoot days go from 3 to 22+. Crew goes from 4 to 30+. Budget goes from ₦300K to ₦40-80M for indie features at our scale. Post-production goes from 6 weeks to 6 months minimum.</p>
<p>The math difference is not the camera. It's the producing.</p>
<h2>The skill nobody warned us about: producing</h2>
<p>On our shorts, the director (also one of the founders) handled scheduling, budgeting, contracts, location agreements, and crew calls. This is sustainable for 5-day shoots. It is not sustainable for 22-day shoots.</p>
<p>For a feature, you need a separate producer who is not the director. Their job is to keep the train on the tracks while the director makes creative decisions. The producer manages: cash flow, contracts, location releases, talent agreements, insurance, transport, catering, accommodations for cast/crew on location days, day-by-day scheduling, dailies management, post-production timeline, festival strategy, distribution outreach.</p>
<p>This is a full-time job. We hired one in March 2026 — Tola — specifically to run our feature pre-production. The hire was the most important production decision we've made.</p>
<h2>Financing — the truth</h2>
<p>Our shorts were self-financed. The feature cannot be. Even if we had ₦40M sitting around (we don't), spending it all on one film would be catastrophic risk concentration. Indie features get financed through some combination of:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Equity investors</strong> (people who give you money in exchange for a share of revenue). Most common for first features. We're raising via this route — see the <a href="/investor-relations">investor relations page</a>.</li>
<li><strong>Grants</strong> (Hot Docs, IDFA, Sundance Documentary Fund — most are for documentaries; few for African narrative features).</li>
<li><strong>Pre-sales</strong> (selling distribution rights for specific territories before you've made the film). Hard for a first-time feature director.</li>
<li><strong>Co-productions</strong> (teaming up with a studio in another country who brings money in exchange for shared rights). 2024 South Africa-Nigeria treaty made this realistic.</li>
<li><strong>Streamer commissions</strong> (rare in 2026 after the streaming pullback).</li>
</ul>
<p>Most indie features end up with 3-5 of these stacked. It's a fundraising job, not a creative one. We've now spent more hours on financial modelling than on script revisions in 2026. That ratio will continue.</p>
<h2>The script is everything (and ours has been through 14 drafts)</h2>
<p>Short films can survive a thin script if the visuals are striking. Features cannot. 90 minutes of weak structure will lose the audience by minute 30, and there's no recovering.</p>
<p>Our feature script started in late 2024. As of May 2026, it's on draft 14. We've worked with two outside readers (paid script consultants) and rewritten substantial sections after both their notes. We expect another 3-4 drafts before we lock for production.</p>
<p>What this taught us: the script is the cheapest thing to fix. Every problem you don't solve in the script becomes 10× more expensive on set, 100× more expensive in post.</p>
<h2>The team grows in stages</h2>
<p>We've been adding one specialist per month for the last six months:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Producer</strong> (Tola — March 2026)</li>
<li><strong>Casting director</strong> (April 2026, contractor)</li>
<li><strong>Cinematographer attachment</strong> (May 2026 — DP signed on for the project)</li>
<li>Production designer + costume designer (planned for July)</li>
<li>Composer attachment (planned for August)</li>
</ul>
<p>None of these are "hired" in the salary sense. They're contracted with deferred or partial pay against the financing close. This is standard for indie features but it took us months to learn how to structure these contracts properly.</p>
<h2>The timeline (if everything goes well)</h2>
<ul>
<li><strong>Q3 2026:</strong> Close financing</li>
<li><strong>Q4 2026:</strong> Final pre-production. Cast, crew, locations locked.</li>
<li><strong>Q1-Q2 2027:</strong> Principal photography (22 shoot days, Abuja + 2 location trips)</li>
<li><strong>Q3-Q4 2027:</strong> Post-production (offline edit, color, sound, music)</li>
<li><strong>Q1 2028:</strong> Festival circuit submissions</li>
<li><strong>Q2-Q3 2028:</strong> Festival run, hopefully includes a major</li>
<li><strong>Q4 2028:</strong> Distribution release</li>
</ul>
<p>That's 30+ months from "we have funding" to "audience can watch this." Coming from a short-films background where the cycle is 2-3 months, this timeline is psychologically difficult to accept.</p>
<h2>What we'd tell a filmmaker thinking about their first feature</h2>
<ol>
<li><strong>Make 5 shorts before you start a feature.</strong> Each one teaches you something a feature can't afford for you to learn the first time.</li>
<li><strong>Find a producer who isn't you.</strong> Even if it's a film school friend with no credits. Anyone who can take logistics off your plate.</li>
<li><strong>Work the script for 12+ months before you raise money.</strong> Your draft 1 is not what investors see. Your draft 14 is.</li>
<li><strong>Build the financing model before the budget.</strong> "How will we get the money" matters more than "how will we spend it."</li>
<li><strong>Don't quit your day job in year one.</strong> The runway between "starting a feature" and "feature paying you" is at least 24 months. Plan for it.</li>
</ol>
<h2>Why we're doing it anyway</h2>
<p>Because we've shot eleven shorts and we're starting to repeat ourselves. The constraints of the short form — 15 minutes, single location, small cast — have become the wrong constraints for what we want to say next. The story we're working on now needs 90 minutes to land. So we're going to spend three years making it.</p>
<p>If you want to follow the feature production progress, subscribe to <a href="/blog">the journal</a>. Investor inquiries: <a href="/investor-relations">investor relations page</a>.</p>
