My Life In Nollywood: Biyi Toluwalase

Every week, The Culture Custodian grants you an all-access backstage pass into the lives of Nollywood rock stars. You get to learn about their fascinating backgrounds, the behind-the-scenes stories, and more. This episode features film editor and post-production supervisor, Biyi Toluwalase.

Few minutes into a conversation with Biyi Toluwalase, a casual assessment of his personality tells that he is not a man of many words of vacuous intent. He adorns a pair of glasses, is soft-spoken, and often drifts into naturally modest laughter at either any attempt to heighten his milestones or engage him on a colourful note in the virtual session. But this young man, a walking piece of cinematic wisdom, has a painstaking back-and-forth backroom responsibility of collecting, dressing and pruning raw footage mostly to the director’s satisfaction. The visual destiny of a film partly lies in his hands.

As a child, Toluwalase craved a place in filmmaking even before he figured out what he exactly wanted and got his parents to cave in. He channeled his taciturnity towards reading, and took out his artistic reflexes on the stories he wrote. He was brought up in Ketu-Ijanikin, a settlement in the Otto-Awori Local Council Development Area of Ojo Local Government Area, and attended the popular Federal Government College Lagos, Ijanikin in the region. He then proceeded to study Theatre Arts at Obafemi Awolowo University and graduated in 2014. Life after university, however, led him towards film editing where he currently pitches his tent.

Toluwalase’s film choices appear to be driven by an affection for quirky excellence. When asked about his all-time top three Nollywood films by production quality, he mentions Breath of Life, a fruit of showstopping aesthetic ambition; The Figurine, Kunle Afolayan’s epoch-making brainchild; and—racking his brain for a minute to recall, in his words, “this Fred Amata movie on slave trade”—The Amazing Grace. For role models, he looks up to Wes Anderson, an American director and auteur, and Jade Osiberu, one of Nollywood’s finest contemporary filmmakers. Osiberu is the producer and director of Gangs of Lagos, on which Toluwalase worked as editor, and Christmas In Lagos, on which he did a bit of offline editing, working alongside the film’s main editor Martini Akande. Other notable works of his are Strangers, The Wildflower, Sista, Passport, Brotherhood, The Kujus Again, Hotel Labamba, and Makemation, an AI-themed coming-of-age drama, on which he served as online editor and post-production supervisor, that is currently showing in domestic cinemas.

This interview with Biyi Toluwalase has been edited for clarity.

What inspired you to pursue a career in film editing?

By the time I was done with NYSC and was trying to break into the industry, I decided to learn editing, and soon started getting editing jobs through friends. It became so consistent that at a point it just made sense to focus full-time on it. My first Nollywood gig came in late 2018. As of then, some of my friends were already working with Biodun Stephen as editors. Her production team were on a couple of projects and needed extra hands to join them in the editing unit. They had tried other people, but it wasn’t working. So, my friends introduced me to her. After the first project, it became a regular work relationship.

Tell me about your family background and childhood experiences.

I was born in a middle-class family in Ketu-Ijanikin, Lagos, and grew up as a really shy kid. For me, my options were somewhat limited to things that required me not to be seen. But I was quite inquisitive and naturally gravitated towards writing. I remember, as a kid, reading novels and trying my hands on writing stuff that nobody ever saw. I expressed my intentions of going into filmmaking really early in life to my parents, but they probably thought I was just being a child. It was while I was about entering SS1 and joining Arts class that they knew I was serious all along. Luckily for me, my parents didn’t push back much even though they tried to advise me against it. So, I still had their support, not fully, and from there it was just easy to leverage that and put myself right.

What is the average time frame for editing a Nollywood feature-length film?

The first cut usually comes out within three to four weeks. Afterwards, the timeline is dependent on varying factors: how fast the reviews come; how quick you get to the final cut; how fast you are able to conclude the VFX, colour, sounds, etc. For the entire duration, depending on the project, you can take between three months to a year. There’s also the fact that a dissatisfied director can come back at any time to tweak this or that in the work. The only thing that we editors have precise control over is how early the first cut comes out.

How do you work with directors and producers to achieve their vision?

I work with directors, not producers, because they own the vision. For each director it’s a different process. But then, one of the important things is that, for as much as possible, I try to have good relationships with the director because I think making a relationship a bit personal and less about work helps the creative process so you become comfortable with each other. So, for me, it is important to understand how each director likes to work. Some directors prefer sitting down with you to work together. Others may give you space to just do your thing and step in when they need to. For some, they will be like “when you are done, we’ll have a bit of review, then we move on”.

What editing softwares do you use, and why?

I started with Adobe Premiere Pro, which is what the majority of editors use here because it’s the industry standard. But I ultimately switched to DaVinci Resolve. That’s because as beloved as Premiere Pro is, back then, it was a very bulky software. Several times, in the middle of work, my projects would just crash or freeze. There were days when I would spend like two hours at my desk trying to fix something. When I found out about DaVinci Resolve, it just made sense to switch. With the people I was working with then, I could not afford to be having these issues.

How do you handle colour grading?

For me, I don’t colour grade professionally. One thing—which is a personal standard—is that before I edit I do a colour conversion. For that one it’s easy. It’s just a plugin and would convert the colour to, of course, not what the final colour would look like but something that is a bit pleasant to the eye, compared to just looking at the raw footage without any colour.

Do global streaming platforms like Amazon Prime and Netflix require certain editing standards from filmmakers?

No, they don’t. When we are working on projects for Netflix or Amazon, there are two things involved: budget and expertise. For instance, for Amazon, if it is a project that is well funded, it means that as a producer you are hiring the best of the best. But for YouTube films, the budgets are usually on a shoestring. For instance, a YouTube producer recently reached out to me and asked how much I charge. When I told her, she exclaimed and said my charge was almost all of her film’s budget. Ultimately, such a producer will look for someone that can work under budget and—not to blow my own horn—the person most likely will not be able to deliver the quality that I would.

Have you received negative feedback on your edits? Tell me about the experience and how you managed it.

Of course, I don’t think anyone who has worked for the length of years I have, would not have experienced such. When people make negative comments, it first affects one’s ego. Over the years, I have learnt that a lot of times, it is not as bad as they make it seem. Then, if you come to me and complain about an edit being bad, that is not a specific feedback. So I ask them what in particular the issues they have with the edits are. You will be surprised that after taking it to a specific level, the person complaining probably gives you like four or five notes on things to change. And that’s normal because there’s almost no way that I would edit a film for the first time and get everything that the filmmaker initially wanted. For example, I worked on a project one or two years ago where the director complained about my work being bad. When I took it to a specific level, I found out that there were two shots that they had spent a lot of time filming. When I saw it in the ending stage, it had issues, and I opted for an alternative edit choice that didn’t rely on those shots. So, when she saw my work, she insisted on really having those shots. Together we went through the shots, which, by the way, were just two scenes, and found a way to infuse them in the final work. I have learnt not to take negative feedback too close to the heart.

Can you talk about current trends in film editing and how you stay in touch with them?

Editing for film is not like editing for social media where things are changing so fast in trends. Instead, it’s more like we have a very core style. Editing in film is determined by the type of genre you are working on. When it comes to action films, for instance, which is adrenaline-driven, you understand that the editing has to be fast. In emotional drama, you understand that the pacing and rhythm has to be slow. Things don’t really change like that with regards to film editing. Where most of the trends come from are probably cinematography because they have a lot to experiment with.

What are your hobbies like?

I am a home buddy. I don’t really engage in sports or have hobbies.

Can you let us in on any forthcoming works of yours?

I have two projects that I’m about finishing. One is a drama series by Ramsey Nouah. It should be coming out soon, as we are just tying a few loose ends. The second is a high school drama.