The Confessions Of Clarence Peters
The Confessions Of Clarence Peters
On a rainy day in the Lagos city capital, Clarence Peters speaks about his latest Nollywood project, Afrobeats and TG Omori
"There is a tendency for me to have imposter syndrome," says Clarence Peters during his interview with The Naija Way.
The famed music video director and filmmaker with more than 10,000 hours in his profession doesn't bask in past glory. Even with five Headies to his name, he is more concerned with what's next. "I am just trying to focus on what I am doing," he says as he speaks about his tunnel vision.
The man has literally done it all. He has shot videos for all contemporary Nigerian artists in the pantheon of Afrobeats greats - Burna Boy, Wizkid, Davido, 2face Idibia, Psquare, D’banj, Tiwa Savage, Olamide and thousands more.
What’s next for Clarence Peters is a series called 'Inside Life' written boldly on his whiteboard.
In a nondescript building in Omole Estate, Ikeja, which doubles as his office, Clarence Peters plays parts of 'Inside Life' for me. Directed by him, it's a brutal take on the unpredictability of being Nigerian.
"When we leave our homes, we don't know what can happen. You can find yourself rich within that day, or they kidnap you, or you have an encounter with the police. It started with this premise," explains Clarence Peter.
'Inside Life' is a belly-of-the-beast tale of characters as they intertwine in an underbelly world of money, power and greed made possible by the collapse of Nigeria's middle class.
The series is dark and gritty, with a strong dose of realism. "I know that I am dark. I know why I am dark. I know my influences. Filmmaking is an outlet for me. It is the only way I can truly express myself," confesses Clarence.
Honestly, this is a surprising revelation from a man who has directed over 3,000 music videos. To surprise you even further, Clarence didn't consider music video direction as a career, "looking at music videos objectively as something I would do; it didn't look feasible," he tells me.
His big plan was to go into the movie business, but Nollywood wasn't ready. Clarence Peter candidly says, "the next revolution meant for Nollywood was moving into cinema. I had done similar work before, but the way the cinema (not the new cinema that we have) was being structured did not work for me at all. The politics in it was too much. I didn't have any faith in the players. Granted, I didn't have enough information, and to be honest, I didn't want any at my age."
Clarence Peters decided to move to the next best thing until the Nigerian film industry was ready. "When I started to look at the terrain and strategise in the space, I decided to do it for a couple of years." It being music videos. "(I would) build a team, and build a visual vocabulary that is mine, build a structure to create my content on my terms and not rely on anybody giving me money," he explains on his plan.
A couple of years turned into a long time, a pretty long time, but by 2014 Clarence Peters decided to answer his true calling. "I had been away from this thing too long, and I was starting to have a little bit of wear and tear. I am more myself when I am in narrative work than when I am doing music videos. I am a different type of animal there," he confesses.
In 2014, Clarence directed HEX, a short horror film (surprise, surprise). It got screened and premiered at the 5th Africa International Film Festival in 2015 and won the Best Short Film category. HEX is eerie, and dark and goes to corners that conventional Nollywood is afraid of.
The general public did not get to see the short film until 2021 when it became available on his YouTube channel. Spliced into four parts, HEX is about how a night of fun; turns macabre. The short film shows a strong trait of Clarence Peters as a filmmaker - his ability to spot talent.
Here is the lineup of actors in his short film - Ayoola Ayoola, Kunle Remi, Nancy Isime, Liquorose and Scarlet Gomez. In 2014, this cast was on the fringes of Nollywood, and it is not a stretch to say most casting directors did not have these actors on speed dial. Today, they are some of the most in-demand actors. For Liquorose, she was the runner-up of season 6 of Big Brother Naija.
Clarence Peters does not believe he has an eye for picking talent. "God picks the people. It shocks me. When I look at my cast list on set, I am usually amazed at the talent at my disposal."
He, however, does not deny that he knows how to bring out the best in actors. "Actors will say to a certain extent that I bring out a part of them, especially new actors, which they can hold. It's world creation. I like to create colourful characters," he states.
When Clarence casts actors, he goes left by choosing video vixens or dancers like Liquorose, who is one-third of GGB, a dance group. Scarlet Gomez also comes from a music video background and gives a strong performance in HEX.
In his latest work, Inside Life, vixens/dancers play some of the most dramatic characters. The rawness of their acting skills blends with the edginess of his cinematic universe.
His cinematic eye also spots the untapped potential in some of Nollywood’s biggest names. "When I did the short film for Falz, I specifically asked for Osas (Ighodaro) because I had been seeing her in films, and I just said to myself, 'she has a lot more.'” This year Osas won the Best Actress category at AMVCA for her role in the reboot of the Nollywood classic ‘Rattle Snake’.
“When we had a reading, we didn't go through scripts. We had a conversation. The three of us were talking, and I was able to break down back stories and a lot of things. And it allowed them to pull from experiences they had."
In the short film/music video ‘Kneel Down’ featuring heartthrob singer Chike, Osas plays a woman locked in a deadly love triangle. In the 12-minute clip, Osas gives one of her best performances as a leading lady.
To cap it all, Clarence Peters' foundation as an assistant director and continuity person on Everyday People, an early 2000s TV series about middle-class families in suburbian Nigeria, helped him learn how to collaborate with actors. He worked on over 80 episodes. And this was before he went to film school.
After film school, Clarence Peters went into the music video business. He became a part of The Alliance Film Company with DJ Tee and others. The all-star ensemble shot a few videos including ‘Move Your Body’ by D’banj featuring Wande Coal and made a splash. It did not last long, unfortunately.
Clarence Peters took the template of The Alliance Film Company and perfected it. "I took it and expanded the hell out of it...this system created jobs- stylists, dancers, vixens, make-up artists, VFX artists etc," he claims.
Apart from the setup, Clarence Peters was fucking prolific. He worked harder than a mule on a farm. Music video production was a laborious and time-consuming affair during the post-production aspect. Artists would have to wait months to get their videos.
Clarence Peters hastened this process. With him, artists got their videos within days. Sometimes, the first cuts of videos were available in the first 24 hours.
And as the Nigerian music industry opened up with Afrobeats leading the cultural and music revolution, more artists flocked to his nondescript office in Omole to get him to shoot and deliver rapido.
His success was unprecedented in that it bordered on a monopoly. And like Madonna, Oprah, Adele, and Beyonce, he was known by his first name, a tag that underlined the mastery of his talent.
During his domination, Clarence was more than the name that appeared at the beginning or end of a music video. It was a co-sign, proof of funds and declaration of serious intent by an artist that he is not fucking around.
His work ethic and structure helped create and nurture an ecosystem that created jobs and fed families.
Everything, however, comes at a price. With his high demand and his level of output came burnout.
"I had bills to pay. I should have stopped. I should have stopped at some point. I put myself under a lot of pressure in trying to please people. We all have our weaknesses," he admits.
Clarence Peters did not hit the brakes. "I didn't take the time to look at what I had achieved. I just kept on moving. I also didn't take the chance to look at the entire sphere of the entertainment industry to weigh what my options would be like and give myself milestones and timelines to take certain risks. I should have stopped," he says again.
He also lets out another secret. "I also did a lot of work that I didn't like. I made mistakes, and I learnt from them."
With filmmaking, you kind of sense Clarence Peters feels rejuvenated. "Filmmaking is cathartic and therapeutic. You can find closure as a director," he shares. During this interview, he shares his opinions on directing, acting and Nollywood.
"For me, a director directs what's not on the page or the script. Anyone can take the script and tell the actors to say their lines. A director is paid to see the things that are not on the page," says Clarence Peters on directing.
When it comes to how hard it is to be an actor, he says, "Have you ever asked yourself why they pay actors? An actor has to feel things you don't want to feel. An actor has to have conversations that some people don't want to have because it will bring out a part of them. So you pay them, but what happens when their minds are fucked up? They have to go and see a psychiatrist. That's why you pay the actor."
Our discussion moves to Nollywood, where Clarence gets very insightful. "Remember 14 years ago when it wasn't cool to associate with Nollywood films? Directors back then would say, 'I'm not trying to shoot my film like all these dead Nollywood films.' Because of that perception, we threw away what the home videos guys built. Now we are coming back to say the Nollywood classics were better. We were part of the reasons why it died with our criticisms.
"That's the same thing that happened during the height of the Nollywood home video era. Remember, we had a strong television culture, and Nollywood took the baton from that. People don't remember this, but there was a complex back then. People in early Nollywood movies were perceived as razz and local, and the elite did Theatre.
"The Nollywood guys kept doing what they were doing, and they also said that these guys judge us. So screw what they are doing. Nollywood kept on growing and making more money. And the people from Theatre were hungry. They weren't working. Eventually, some of them came to Nollywood. But many things were disregarded in this process - like our ethics from television, the standard we had in the 80s dropped because Nollywood disregarded them. We dropped that."
Clarence Peters doesn't want to do away with Nigeria's rich film history. In one of the episodes of 'Inside Life,' he casts Nollywood veteran Zack Orji of the home video era and Chioma Omeruah (ChiGul) of New Nollywood fame (‘Chief Daddy', 'The Ghost and the Tout' and 'Omo Ghetto - The Saga.')
On the surface, the episode, spoken entirely in Igbo, reads like a reboot of the evil stepmother trope used excessively in Nigerian home videos. However, as the story unfolds, we go deeper and deeper into the labyrinth created by Clarence Peters. The series blends the storytelling techniques of the home video era with the production standards of Nigeria’s glorious cinema period before they were abandoned.
The entire series has the texture and stylings of an art-house project tweaked to have a mainstream impact. And while 'dark' projects are nothing new to Nollywood, you sort of feel that 'Inside Life' is a different animal because it is helmed (dare I say) by an auteur.
Will Clarence Peters be as disruptive in Nollywood as he was in the music industry? "I am not trying to disrupt things in a bad or disrupt things in a good way," he says.
He however believes that not only Nollywood, but Nigeria, is on the cusp of a cultural reset. "I am sure if you go to June 12, 1993, twenty years before then would be ‘73. The Civil War had just finished - reset. What's next year - 2023, which is thirty years from 1993. What's about to happen next year? It's not just any other election - this is the election for the soul of the country. So you know another reset is going to happen," he explains candidly.
Call it a reset or disruption, Clarence has a theory. "The boys that can disrupt are on the music video side. They may not have the tenacity or stamina right now because it is a lot of work, but they know how to communicate with the urban market. It's a conversion for me. It's to take all the eyeballs in Afrobeats and convert them to Nollywood. We already have the numbers. It's just being able to get our acts together," he offers.
The boys he refers to are the music video directors in the game today. And if there is a title for 'King of Boys', it will have to go to none other than TG Omori.
The celebrity director, with his big sets, and bigger budgets is numero uno. TG Omori is self-aware, walks with the aura of a mysterious artist, dresses with enough drip to drown a goat, has massive Gen-Z appeal and tweets motivational nuggets. Many call him "the new Clarence Peters."
With most things on Elon Musk's new shiny toy, Twitter, a toxic debate, engineered to downplay legacy in favour of recency bias, has been brewing.
I ask Clarence Peters what he thinks about TG Omori. He leans in for importance and says, "It's probably the first time I am saying this - I am extremely happy for TG (Omori). He has expanded on a system that I was part of creating."
For Clarence Peters, TG Omori's success cements his legacy. "TG Omori is the one who stepped up. There's a business side to it and a legacy side as well. TG taking the torch (or someone taking the torch) is how my legacy within that space holds. He is cementing my legacy."
Clarence won't fall for the bait by the fandom or rather, the ‘fan mob’ to create a rivalry. He shrugs it off when he says, "It is easy for you to let all the noise and the traffic in and not look at things objectively."
The son of legendary actress Clarion Chukwura and iconic Nigerian musician Sir Shina Peters is at the most objective stage of his life. This has been brought on by age, experience and mistakes.
He is at a point where he is willing to help the next generation. He also says Nollywood needs more unity than bashing, "We should stop promoting throwing the baby with the bath water. Let's support progression and development."
Towards the end of this interview, I ask Clarence Peters if his journey in life was pre-destined or an act of will.
"I will ask God when I get to heaven. I know it wasn't easy because of my parents and who they were. My mum wasn't wealthy. She wasn't rich. She did her best, and I am grateful for her best because her best is when she took a lot of sacrifices for me.
"My father went through his journey, and a fair share of mistakes, a lot of which I can relate to now. I couldn't when I was younger," he shares.
As he peels through the layers of himself, we get to the root of his imposter syndrome, "when you have to fight for every single thing that you've had, depending on your background, you compensate by being overconfident or having imposter syndrome."
A few weeks after my interview with Clarence Peters, in a neighbourhood restaurant, a new Afrobeats music video pops up on an old TV. The video is called 'Ashawo' by Fireboy DML, a leading member of the new wave of Nigerian pop music.
Someone in the establishment comments on who likely shot the video. "E be like say na, Clarence, shoot this one o," he guesses in Pidgin English. Towards the end of the video, the words 'Clarence Shot It' appears on the screen. First name famous.
The names might have changed, but Clarence is still in the game. Whether on Netflix, TVs or in movie theatres, one thing is for certain, Clarence Peters is coming to a screen near you.
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