After seeing on camera Angelina Jolie clearly not impressed with Tinie Tempah's opening Performance, the nominations began first with the best of British films: Rush, The Selfish Giant, Philomena, Gravity, Mandela and Saving Mr Banks. Gravity bagged a solid win in this category. Was it the unique nature of their idea I wonder?
The awards then passed onto best animated film. Frozen, Monsters University, Despicable Me 2. A close one, but I wan't surprised by Frozen in the sense of how popular it was. Apparently there were thousands of storyboards they had to draw and re-draw, showing exactly how painstaking the animation process is.
Steve Coogan's comment on Stephen's ability to 'elevate the show' as he took over the reins that he always thought of him as an Elevator was hilariously Alan Partridge. He presented the award for most outstanding Debut, which included nominations for Kelly and Victor by director/writer Kieran Evans (strong sense of place and sensitive handling of complex characters), Paul Wright (Director/Writer) and Polly Stokes (Producer)'s For Those in Peril (Polly theatre background bringing a strong sense of narrative to the film), writer Kelly Marcel's Saving Mr Banks, Writer/Director Scott Graham's Shell (complex, moving and mature film-making), and writers Colin Carberry and Glenn Patterson's Good Vibrations (writers described as having wit and energy). For this category the strong sense of location and sensitive complex character handling did the trick, and Kelly and Victor won out.
The awards then went as follows:
Best adapted screenplay: Philomena (Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope)
Best Animation Short: Sleeping with the Fishes (James Walker, Sarah Woolner, Yousif Al-Khalifa)
Best British Short: Room 8 (James W. Griffiths, Sophie Venner)
Best Original Music and Film: Gravity (Steven Price)
Best Original Screenplay: American Hustle (Eric Warren Singer, David O. Russell)
Best Documentary: The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
So what can upcoming Filmmakers, Writers and Directors take from this year's Baftas?
Well, the fact that it's always an open door. In terms of genre, you couldn't get a more wide ranging set of winners, from the High Concept action of Gravity to horrifying realism of The Act of Killing or the light family comedy of Frozen. Perhaps we could learn from Evan's strong sense of place and complex characters, Stoke's Theatre background as a route to narrative, or would Carberry and Patterson's wit and energy help us more? The one unifying truth of all these films, however, are their engaging stories.
