A Malawian musician based in the United Kingdom says he has waited more than a year for a music video he paid a Lilongwe videographer to produce, sparking a public dispute over money, missing footage and failed promises.
Angelo Ricardo Melvin, popularly known as Angelo One3, has accused Seany Films of failing to deliver the finished video despite receiving payments from him and his collaborator, Tawanda. The disagreement has now spilled onto TikTok and Instagram, with the artist demanding accountability and a public apology.
The two sides disagree sharply on how much money changed hands. Speaking to Malawi24 by telephone from the United Kingdom, where he settled after leaving Malawi in 2004, Angelo One3 said he personally paid Seany Films K360,000, while his collaborator on the song, Malawi-based musician Tawanda, paid a further K430,000, bringing the total handed directly to the videographer to K790,000.
He says a separate £1,000 (approximately K2.3 million) figure he had cited publicly refers to the total project cost, not the sum paid to Seany Films.
That figure covered a week’s Airbnb accommodation for Tawanda, food, transport, and paying the model a second time after the scheduled shoot failed to take place.
Seany Films insists he was paid only about K500,000, leaving K290,000 in dispute between what the artist says he paid and what the videographer says he received.
The videographer’s brief, the artist said, was a narrow one: to film only Tawanda’s part in Malawi and then edit that footage together with material the artist had already shot and sent from the UK. The commission was given in October last year.
What followed, according to the artist, was twelve months of delay, broken commitments and repeated excuses.
“A promise is a debt,” the artist told Malawi24, invoking an old proverb, “and after a whole year, I was tired of waiting for that debt to be paid.”
The first crack appeared in December, when, according to Seany Films, his editing setup was stolen.
Screenshots of the WhatsApp conversations provided to Malawi24 show the videographer apologising on 11 December 2025: “My editing setup got stolen last week the day that I was supposed to submit your video.”
He noted, however, that the thieves did not get away with the hard drive on which the project was stored, a detail that has since become a point of contention between the two sides.
In January, Seany Films asked the artist to resend the files needed for editing. In February, he apologised again, this time for poor communication.
Across the WhatsApp exchanges seen by Malawi24, the artist appears to be the one initiating contact and asking for progress, while the videographer’s responses are sparse.
Each time he was pressed for an update, Seany Films blamed the theft, saying the break-in had forced him to rely on other people’s machines.
When six months passed without a finished product, Angelo One3 says he began to suspect he was being played in “a game of hide and seek.”
Asked why he took the matter to social media rather than resolving it privately, the artistsaid Seany Films had at times been unresponsive and that a year had already elapsed.
He is now demanding that the videographer take public accountability for the failed delivery and issue a formal apology to him and to Tawanda.
“I gave him every chance,” the artist said. “It was only when the silence dragged on that I decided people needed to see what was happening. What I want now is simple: accountability, and an apology.”
When Malawi24 reached out to Seany Films, he declined to comment directly, referring the publication to his manager.
The manager initially gave only his first name, Blessings, and refused to provide his surname. When Malawi24 insisted, he eventually identified himself as Blessings Chikwiri.
Chikwiri said the work had been done and the hard drive sent to the artist.
He accused Angelo One3 of giving the public the wrong figure of £1,000 and said the artist should have used proper communication instead of airing the dispute on social media, arguing that the public accusations have painted Seany Films as a fraudster.
“He’s not a fraudster,” Chikwiri said. “He did the work. The hard drive was posted. If there’s a problem with the delivery, that’s not the same as stealing someone’s money.”
The artist concedes that a hard drive was eventually handed over through Seany Films’ brother, who passed it to a contact for collection, but says it failed to work when he tried to access the files on it.
He suspects the drive was already faulty before it was handed over, and points to what he says was Seany Films’ subsequent suggestion that the artist should reshoot the video himself.
“How is that right or even fair?” the artist said.
He says he offered to return the faulty hard drive so Seany Films could retrieve the footage himself, but received no response.
More than a year on from the original commission, he says he has nothing to show for the money he says was paid, and still no acknowledgement of fault.
The dispute, which began as a straightforward editing commission between an artist in the UK and a videographer in Malawi, now hinges on three unanswered questions: how much was actually paid, whether the hard drive was delivered in working order with the finished files, and whether the work was ever truly completed.
Until those questions are answered, the war of words and the screenshots are likely to keep circulating online.
