Behind the scenes of the Big Brother Naija House

When I received the call and eventual e-mail that I would be hosted to an overnight stay in the recently constructed Big Brother Naija House, I was excited. The idea, according to the organisers, was to give the chosen media representatives a hands-on experience of the House and activities such that we would, ultimately, understand the initiative, and eventually realise what the actual housemates go through.

On getting to Lagos last weekend, I was introduced to 18 other ‘housemates’, some from Nigeria and others invited from other African countries. We were then transported to the venue and shown round the premises; from the production rooms, server rooms, audio recording rooms, among others. Then came the big announcement, our phones and every other electrical gadget would be taken from us before we could be ushered into the Big Brother House premises.

The House was built from scratch! As we were taken on a quick tour of the house, we were told that there were multiple teams working day and night shifts for five months on the House. In fact, it is the first purpose-built facility in Africa, housing all the zones in one complex. Previous facilities had the house, studio for the live shows, production and post-production units all in separate buildings and sometimes in different locations.

• BBNaija 2019 opens on Sunday

The architecture of the entire House is breathtaking. As we were taken to the various rooms, we were awed by the artistic designs, interior décor, choice of paintings and the sheer exquisite ambience of the place. The kitchen was well stocked and the beds proved to give each housemate a good night’s sleep.

However, this new and improved BBNaija House, which measures about 1800 square metres with an additional 250 square metres for support building services such as the sickbay, laundry and artiste lounges, was designed and built to be bigger and better than any of the Big Brother Africa or Mzansi houses.

The house has 7x hand-held cameras and 32 que ball cameras that would capture every activity in and outside the House. At the back end, the technical and operational crew are making use of high-tech equipment which include full digital audio and video mixers, Vsm IP base and 4K cameras with optical fibre transmission, the first of its kind in Africa to achieve high image quality.

The arena for the Friday night games also received a major upgrade by up to 270 square metres. Also, the live eviction show venue is about plus 300 square metres the size of the previous House. In the main House, the Head of House room is en suite. Previous HoH rooms didn’t have a separate toilet and bathroom. Again, all furniture and appliances in use in the house were locally procured.

After the tour, we, now ‘test’ Housemateswere given personal microphones and ushered into the House to continue our stay. As we left on Sunday morning in high spirits, we could only give kudos to MultiChoice, the organisers of the event, for braving the odds and investing massively to create a platform as Big Brother to promote entertainment in Nigeria.