Just this past week, the entire country was hit with the news of the tragic death of one of our popular actors Junior Pope, who died along with other film crew in a boating accident during a shooting for a movie. It was an insane period as at first we were told that he was dead, then we learned that he survived, and later on told that he truly was dead.
I can’t imagine what his wife would have gone through during that period. It must have been really hard for her considering he was the one thing everyone was talking about. All of them who perished in the accident were young people who had so much potential and so much to offer. One mishap and just like that, they were no more.
The main issue here is negligence. I guess this is one thing the movie industries of other countries will have over us. We need to take better care of our actors and our crew. Actors are so important that if a major cast member gets injured whether on set or elsewhere, the production could be halted for even up to a year if needed. They’re the face of the movie and people will spend money to see them, so if they can’t deliver pushing on with the project might be inadvisable.
That’s why we should take proper care of our actors, this is why they use stunt doubles. They hire people who can professionally do the stunts that our actors can’t do. For something as simple as running down the stairs, you’ll be shocked to learn that some actors employ doubles to do them. Because if as a lead in the movie, whether you like it or not, you getting hurt will endanger the jobs of every other person working on that movie.
But then, what happened with Junior Pope wasn’t on-set and had nothing to do with stunts. They were on their way from shooting when the accident happened. However, most of them were traveling without life jackets. Traveling without a life jacket on such a trip is like driving your car without seatbelts. It might look harmless and you could believe that nothing would go wrong. But really, all that is needed is one mishap. Just one accident.
It was the duty of the producers of the movie to provide adequate transport and adequate safety equipment for the cast and crew. And that included a good boat with an experienced driver, they should have also had enough life jackets because accidents are no respecter of skill and experience. It can come for anyone at all. Personally, I don’t know if there were life jackets or not, so many speculations are still flying about. However, I do know that the majority of them on the boat didn’t wear jackets and that’s what made the accident so fatal.
But then, I feel I should also add that the cast and crew had the right to demand better. Who knows, maybe if they had insisted on traveling with life jackets, the story may have ended on a different note. Well, what’s done is done.
The aftermath of the accident is also something that needs to be talked about. It’s sad to think that the actor could have been saved if only someone knew basic CPR. The conduct of the people who had pulled him out of the water was just sad, they could really have done better. Everything about how it was handled, the way the news was delivered, and everything else that followed. It’s just sad.
We need to do better as a people, we need to do better as the Movie Industry. They’re in a perfect position to make sure that people are properly sensitized on issues like this. Personally, I believe I can conduct CPR if needed, simply because I’ve watched it being done in countless movies. It’s also in movies where you’re always shown to call the cops the moment there’s an emergency, to the point that everyone in the world knows the emergency number of the USA. In movies, drivers don’t start their cars without their seatbelts, and they make sure their passengers wear them unless it’s part of the storyline.
Even in Korean drama, they make a lot of content addressing major issues and highlighting realistic ways in which such matters should be handled. This is the kind of content that Nollywood needs in their movies. We need to see more characters giving CPR, we need to see more people performing first aid on screen. We need a lot of sensitization. We don’t need love and move and the love of money and all that…
Yeah, a good movie can have all that, but it will make a great movie if major issues about life are addressed there. So that when you watch them, you’ll learn something new.
I hope this tragic event will be an eye-opener for Nollywood. I heard that the top brass are already making policies to ensure that catastrophes like these never happen again. I’m all for a prosperous movie industry, but I want it to be safe for both actors and crew. Because if we’re not going to live to see the movies we die for, what’s the point?
