Last night, I got to spend an evening at the BFI surrounded by dozens of amateur film-makers, all buzzing with excitement at making the shortlist for the 2010 Virgin Media Shorts Awards. In an auditorium packed with 450 cast, crew, journalists and judges, we got to see the 12 finalist entries all desperate to find out who would be crowed the 2010 champion.
The awards were hosted by Danny Wallace who did a wonderful job at keeping the audience entertained in between all of the 12 short movies that were shown on the giant screen in the BFI to rapturous applause. The 12 shorts were picked out of a massive 1600 entries by the judges of the competition which included Actress, Thandie Newton, Directors, Duncan Jones and Mike Newell, Film Critic James King, Executive Director of Digital Entertainment at Virgin Media, Cindy Rose, the Senior Production Executive at the UK Film Council, Chris Collins and finally, the VIP Judge, Ebun Soyinka who won a competition to be on the judging panel.
All of the finalists had fantastic stories to tell and it was amazing and inspiring to see how they did such a great job in a maximum of two minutes and twenty seconds!
My personal favourites were:
Probably directed by Kate Anderson – Synopsis: Mike didn’t know how his life would turn out. He just didn’t expect to end up… here.
Sign Language directed by Oscar Sharpe – Synopsis: Meet Ben – he holds a sign for a living, and he loves his job more than almost anything. But today is his last day.
The Gathering directed by James Cooper – Synopsis: A postman with a very important message to deliver, attempts to organise a mass gathering. But what has he got to say, and will anyone show up?
Audiobook directed by James Spinney – Synopsis: Notoriously short-tempered film actor Chris Ford is preparing to record the audiobook version of his autobiography, leaving young sound engineer Stuart Taylor struggling with uncomfortable frequencies
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Onto the winners! The judges must have had a torrid time trying to pick one out of the awesome bunch of twelve finalists. The one they didn’t have to worry about was the ‘People’s Choice Award’ which was voted for by over 10 000 people on the Virgin Media Shorts website. The winner of the people’s award and £2000 of filming equipment goes to:
Bus Baby directed by Gino Evans and Jason Wingard – Synopsis: Britain has the largest teen pregnancy rate in Europe. Bus baby tackles the issues facing teenage mothers head on and asks some difficult questions. It is hard hitting yet humorous film.
The overall winner who takes the grand prize of £30 000 to invest in their next project is (my favourite from the evening too)…….
Sign Language directed by Oscar Sharpe – Synopsis: Meet Ben – he holds a sign for a living, and he loves his job more than almost anything. But today is his last day.
I was rather pleased when Sign Language was called out. It was an awesome story that pulled me in from the minute it began and I have to admit I may have shed a tear or two at the ending. Loved it and this made for a very special end to a wonderful night.
Congrats to everyone involved in this wonderful project and roll on 2011! Check out all of the finalists on the Virgin Media Shorts website here.
