Popular Yoruba movie makeup and special effects guru Hakeem Onilogbo popularly known as Hakeem Effect has revealed how his special effects work sometimes gives him sleepless nights. In the interview with Saturday beats, Hakeem said;“Sometimes, after I have built a body prosthetic, and I wake up in the middle of the night to do something, I usually forget I was the one that built the body, so I get scared a little bit. When such occurrences take place, I just calm myself down.”
Interestingly, my children are already used to my works, so even sometimes, when they see a real incident similar to some of my effects, they call my attention to it. I always tell them that every scary thing they see on the road is not a special effect. Nothing can scare my children; they are used to seeing blood and horrible things because I create some of my effects at home.“ When I was a child, I had it in mind that I would be a great actor; I never knew I would go into special effects at all. I ventured into the movie industry 12 years ago and I started as an actor. But I can’t act again; I can only go into movie production. However, man proposes, but God disposes. 
“Interestingly, I learnt this art in dreams; I didn’t have any form of training to acquire this skill. I started improving the skill as time went on. I was 28 years old when I used to have the dreams; I always tell people that they shouldn’t try to compete with anyone in life.“I used to paint as a child, my parents are very proud of me. I am the only one (out of my parents’ children) that didn’t have the opportunity to attend a university, but despite that, everything still turned out well. “Every job has its own challenges; most of my jobs that impress people are the jobs I have experimented with on my own before using them for movies. I experiment a lot. My most memorable effect would be transforming some people into President Muhammadu Buhari and Nelson Mandela. I’ll never forget these works because it is not easy to replicate someone.” Photo Credit: Getty
