Soap opera... Jamaican style IN a country where films are expensive to produce, one cable company and two script-writers have undertaken a bold move to put on a locally-produced soap opera to be aired on that company's network. Soap operas can be expensive to produce even though they can be large income earners for the particular television station or film company producing the venture. However, the writers of the soap opera, Forbidden Affairs, are not perturbed by the cost of the venture. The soap, which is written by Garfield Reid and Marie Young, is scheduled to commence shooting during the summer and will be aired on Jamaica Amalgamated Cable Systems (JACS) later this year. "We have already written the script for the soap opera, but the filming hasn't started yet. We have a contract with JACS where we provide them with plays that we have written and so we decided that we would come up with a soap opera that was in Jamaican style," explained Marie Young, who has been working along with Garfield Reid for a number of years. The writers say that, unlike past Jamaican "Soaps", they are determined to keep the soap opera as true to life about Jamaica as possible. They scoff at the idea of adopting American or other non-Jamaican elements in their play as they think it is critical to keep the programme as Jamaican as possible. Both Marie and Garfield are motivated by the successes of Jamaican productions such as Third World Cop and Dancehall Queen which were fairly successful local flicks. They are determined to exploit a market that very few people have dared to tap into for various reasons. "Jamaican people love Jamaican stuff and we believe that there is a market here for local production. Jamaicans tend to like things that are familiar to them, things that they can relate to as happening around them," Reid added. Not only is the duo hoping that their efforts will reap the desired success, they want to expose the unknown talent for their programme. "People come to us everyday and ask us about the production. We have a lot of small actors who want to make their names so getting them to come on board is not a problem," said Young. The writers hope to depict various aspects of Jamaican life. To do this, they have decided to shoot the film in sections of Portmore and Kingston. In doing this, they hope they will be able to show various aspects of everyday life in Jamaica. In all of this, there is a cost attached and television production doesn't come cheap. "We will be working with the limited resources and equipment that we have to ensure the success of this programme. We are keeping it simple because we don't want to incur any big costs right now," explained Neville Johnstone of JACS. While not yet getting any major sponsors, the cable company has decided to operate within a shoestring budget. "We do not want to disclose the budget right now, but what we have done is to pay the writers and the actors one big sum of money for parts of the production. As the programme goes on, hopefully we can attract more sponsors and we will be able to spend more," he added.
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