2009-2010 RTS Craft and Design Winners announced

The Royal Television Society Craft & Design Awards 2009/2010 were presented on Wednesday at The Savoy, London. The event was hosted by Richard McCourt and Dominic Wood also known as Dick and Dom. Here are the winners.

Congratulations to my friends at Maverick – the New Media team (my old department) scooped up a Design and Craft Innovation Award. Very proud of you guys!

Photography – Drama

Gavin Finney Going Postal The Mob Film Company for Sky 1

“A perfect example of director and DOP in perfect harmony… with magical sequences that were technically extraordinary, as well as visually stunning.”

Nominees
Steve Lawes Sherlock Hartswood Films in co-production with Masterpiece for BBC One
Christopher Ross Misfits Clerkenwell Films for E4

Photography – Documentary/Factual & Non-Drama Productions

Charlie Hamilton James, Jamie McPherson & Simon Werry Natural World – Victoria Falls Halcyon Media for BBC Two

“Visually stunning with extraordinary shots from the most unbelievable angles. A familiar wonder of the world re- shown with colour, scope and daring, one of nature’s most magnificent scenes, magnificently shot.”

Nominees
Rod Clarke & Kevin Flay Life: Insects BBC Natural History Unit for BBC One
Jonathan Young Tropic of Cancer BBC Current Affairs for BBC

Sound – Drama

Billy Mahoney, Roger Dobson, Tony Gibson (Molinare) & Russell Jeffrey Misfits Clerkenwell Films for E4

“…the sound was innovative, pushing the boundaries in a highly creative way. The freshness and boldness of the soundtrack really made it stand out among high class competitors. In a word – brilliant.”

Nominees
Paul Hamblin, Peter Brill, Iain Eyre & Lee Walpole Cranford II
BBC Productions/WGBH Boston in association with Chestermead for BBC One

Stuart Hilliker, Lee Walpole, Iain Eyre & J J Le Roux Strike Back
Boom/Left Bank Pictures for Sky 1

Sound – Entertainment and Non Drama

John Rogerson & The Halo Sound Team Richard Hammond’s Invisible Worlds

Halo Post Production/BBC Productions for BBC One

“The Jury hailed the winning entry as an example of the very best in creative sound design. The winning team decided that no sound element should be used more than once, and although some might call this ‘utter madness’, it resulted in a glorious triumph.”

Nominees
Tim Owens & Graham Wild Life: Mammals BBC Natural History Unit for BBC One
Matt Skilton & Paul Paragon Murder on the Lake
Dragonfly Film and Television Productions for BBC Four

Effects – Digital

Mill TV Team Doctor Who ‘The Pandorica Opens’ EP12 Series 5

BBC Wales for BBC One

“The judges were impressed by some beautifully integrated effects and by green screen. ‘This is about as good as it gets on TV’ they said.”

Nominees
Paul Tuersley & The Visual Effects Team Big Babies BBC Productions for CBBC
Simon Thomas, Reuben Barkataki, Zoltan Benyo & Zoltan Szarvasi Going Postal The Mob Film Company for Sky 1

Effects – Special

Mark Holt Misfits Clerkenwell Films for E4

“The jury were impressed by great facial make-up, impressive car collapses, and lightning and meteor strikes which were well executed and choreographed.”

Nominees
The Mill, Merlin VFX Team The Last Dragon Lord, Ep13, Merlin Series 2
Shine Productions/BBC Wales for BBC

James Morgan, Chris Reynolds, Millennium FX & Nick Hopkin Mission 2110
BBC Scotland for CBBC, BBC One and BBC HD

Effects – Picture Enhancement

Kevin Horsewood Sherlock

Pepper/Hartswood Films in co-production with Masterpiece for BBC One

“A very well shot piece with a grade that really helped it on its way…”

Nominees
Ross Baker Outnumbered Series 3
Halo Post Productions/Hat Trick Productions for BBC One
Perry Gibbs Misfits: Series 1 Clerkenwell Films for E4

Make Up Design – Drama

Chrissie Baker Mo ITV Studios for Channel 4

“The Jury was deeply impressed with the care and subtlety the winner took to re-create the various stages of Mo Mowlem’s illness.”

Nominees
Neill Gorton & Janet Horsfield The Fattest Man in Britain ITV Studios for ITV1
Donald McInnes Worried About the Boy Red Production Company for BBC Two

Make Up Design – Entertainment and Non-Drama

Kristyan Mallett Facejacker (Series One) Hat Trick Productions for Channel 4

“The winner was a tour de force of make-up design which didn’t just assist the comedy but was essential to it.”

Nominees
Mike Stringer, Suzanne Bates & Mike H G Bates Stoneage Atlantis
Hybrid Enterprises/Wall to Wall and National Geographic for National Geographic Channel

Jane Walker Bellamy’s People of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland BBC Productions & Down The Line for BBC Two

Tape and Film Editing – Drama

Charlie Phillips Sherlock

Hartswood Films in co-production with Masterpiece for BBC One

“Innovative, constantly surprising and joyfully playful, the editing complemented the narrative, and offered fresh perspective and insight into the stories.”

Nominees
David Charap Dive ITV Studios for BBC Two
Phillip Kloss Five Days II BBC Productions for BBC One

Tape and Film Editing – Documentary/Factual

Caroline Richards & Julien Temple Requiem for Detroit

Films of Record for BBC Two

“Adventurous, fresh and innovative, the editing cut together the archive and contemporary footage to evoke the way in which the past and present collide.”

Nominees
Editing Team One Born Every Minute Episode 2
Dragonfly Film and Television for Channel 4
Brian Woods Jobless True Vision for BBC One

Tape and Film Editing – Entertainment and Situation Comedy

Mark Davies & Mark Everson Pete Versus Life Objective Productions for Channel 4

“The editing enabled this unique show to present itself as a sports programme. Sports style graphics and commentators were also edited together to gel into a new format.”

Nominees
Mark Davies & Mark Everson Peep Show (Series 6)
Objective Productions for Channel 4

Nigel Williams & Team Mongrels BBC Productions for BBC Three

Costume Design – Drama

Annie Symons Worried About The BoyRed Production Company for BBC Two

“The wit and intelligence with which our winner recreated the era gave the film a real period joy said the jury.”

Nominees
Lucinda Wright Enid Carnival Films for BBC Four
Joey Attawia An Englishman in New York Leopardrama for ITV1

Costume Design – Entertainment & Non Drama

Kayvan Novak Facejacker (Series One) Hat Trick Productions for Channel 4

“The costume design of this series had to pull off two tricky things at once. It had to signal to the audience the humour of the exaggerated characters while at the same time disguising the identity and intent of the hoaxer. An inch either way and the series would have failed.”

Nominees
Stephen Adnitt Dancing on Ice ITV Studios for ITV1
June Nevin Bellamy’s People of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland BBC Productions & Down The Line for BBC Two

Lighting and Multi Camera – Lighting for Multi Camera

Dave Davey Dancing on Ice ITV Studios for ITV1

“The winner and his team paint stunning pictures with light on the canvas that is the Dancing on Ice rink, and the style continues to evolve and develop with each new series. This year’s work showed a lighting director and team delivering at the very top of their game.”

Nominees
John Carberry EastEnders Live BBC Productions for BBC One
Martin Kempton Playhouse: Live -The Typist A Sky Arts Production for Sky Arts

Lighting and Multi Camera – Multi Camera Work

Clive Arnold & Duncan Unsworth EastEnders Live BBC Productions for BBC One

“A huge technical undertaking, realized and delivered brilliantly. 54 scenes – both interior and exterior – using 43 actors in a variety of dramatic situations including stunts, this live 25th anniversary episode was fine vintage EastEnders.”

Nominees
Camera Team One Born Every Minute Episode 4
Dragonfly Film and Television for Channel 4
Paul Kirrage Dancing on Ice ITV Studios for ITV1

Production Design – Drama

Jacqueline Abrahams Wallander II: The Fifth Woman

A Left Bank Pictures/Yellowbird/TKBC Production for the BBC co-produced with Degeto, WGBH Boston and Film I Skane for BBC One

“The design in the winning entry was wholly realistic down to the smallest of details, without distracting from the narrative of the piece. A richly satisfying piece of work…”

Nominees
Ricky Eyres, Lee Gordon, Ray McNeill & Monica Esztan Going Postal
The Mob Film Co for Sky 1
Edward Thomas Doctor Who ‘The Pandorica Opens’ BBC Wales for BBC One

Production Design – Entertainment and Non-Drama

Simon Rogers & Team Mongrels BBC Productions for BBC Three

“The winning team expertly accommodated the needs of its puppeteers whilst creating a clearly adult comic precinct for the show’s script.”

Nominees
Jo Sutherland IT Crowd talkbackTHAMES for Channel 4
James S Thompson, Lucy Fewell & Team Hounded BBC Productions for CBBC

Graphic Design – Titles

John McKenna, Richard Norley, Russell Mann & Paul McNamara World Cup 2010 Jump for ITV Sport for ITV

“The jury felt this sequence combined beautifully choreographed imagery with an evocative choice of music – dramatic storytelling with a real ‘tingle factor’.”

Nominees
Momoco Luther BBC Productions for BBC One
John Durrant, Jon Doe & Duncan Dix History of Now Burrell Durrant Hifle/BBC Bristol for BBC Two

Graphic Design – Programme Content Sequence

Jellyfish Pictures & Burrell Durrant Hifle Inside the Perfect Predator

BBC Natural History Unit for BBC One

“Seamlessly part of the narrative, this wonderful sequence took the programme to another level.”

Nominees
BBC News Graphics (Design) & Brainstorm/Idonix (Technology)
BBC Election Night BBC News for BBC One
John Durrant, Duncan Dix, Jon Doe & Mick Connaire History of Now Episode One Burrell Durrant Hifle/BBC Bristol for BBC Two

Graphic Design – Trails and Packaging

Louisa Fyans, Karen Potterton, Damon Collins & Marc Craste Winter Olympics Studio AKA/Red Bee Media/RCKR/Y&R for BBC Sport

“An outstanding winner, with a distinctive graphic style, which conjured up richness with a limited palette, and set the dramatic scene for the programme perfectly.”

Nominee
James Berridge, John Cryer & Simon Glover Heston’s Feasts 4Creative for Channel 4

Music – Original Score

John Lunn (Bucks Music Group) Going Postal The Mob Film Company for Sky 1

“Exceptional… The composer demonstrated a cleverness and guile working to an unbelievably tight budget to create this classy score that was packed with ideas and sounded fully high end. Brilliant!”

Nominees
David Arnold & Michael Price Sherlock Hartswood Films in co-production with Masterpiece for BBC One
Samuel Sim Emma BBC Productions/WGBH Boston for BBC One

Music – Original Title

David Arnold & Michael Price Sherlock Hartswood Films in co-production with Masterpiece for BBC One

“The Jury felt that the distinctive and stylish use of vocals coupled with a boldness in style would make you want to sit up and watch the show.”

Nominees
Edmund Butt (Bucks Music Group) Garrow’s Law Twenty Twenty Television for BBC One
Samuel Sim The Deep Tiger Aspect Scotland Productions for BBC One

Design & Craft Innovation

Maverick New Media Team

“The winning team’s work is an outstanding example of how TV and Online can successfully converge and produce innovative web content. The new media team’s work supports a range of shows including Embarrassing Bodies, How to Look Good Naked, The Real Hustle and Kirstie’s Homemade Home. Embarrassing Bodies Online has been a real success with the website generating 7.5m visits since its launch and 75 million page views and one million people took online checks for STIs via the website. The department also handles online programme support for more than twenty prime time Channel 4 shows including Grand Designs and Location, Location, Location and manage major Channel 4 sites including 4Homes and Film4.”

Lifetime Achievement Award

Eddie Mansell

“On Monday night there was another TV awards ceremony, maybe not quite as glitzy as this one, and certainly not with as elegantly attired attendees! It was the International Emmys in New York. British drama had a good night and the show that did best with two awards was the work of the recipient of our next award. That show was The Street, made, in one of those anomalies we can never get our head around, by ITV Studios for the BBC. The person who edited the key episodes of this Emmy winning series just happens to be the same person who edited The Jewel In The Crown, Maigret, Cracker, Band of Gold, Reckless, Hot Money, The Jury, Clocking Off, The Innocent, Cold Feet, Blue Murder, Henry VIII, Eleventh Hour, Vincent, Island at War and Mobile. Two things occur to you – how can one man have worked so consistently over so many years on so much remarkable drama? And secondly, how annoying if you happened to have trained to be a drama editor in Manchester and you found yourself working in a world with our winner in it. Except that, by repute, he is one of the nicest, unassuming men you could hope to meet. Even so, you’d think he’d have left something for someone else to do! We asked Sita Williams, Executive Producer of The Street and a good many of the other celebrated dramas he has cut and asked her why she was so fond of working with him. She said this in New York, the morning after the night before: ‘To have the winner as your editor is to know that your film will be even better than you hoped. The film will show actors giving outstanding performances – even when sometimes they have not! He will find the best takes and help craft the performance. The judgements and decisions he makes in the cutting room make him the editor everyone wants for their film. I have worked with him for over 30 years and he is simply the best, and its right that this Award goes to such a supreme craftsman and artist.’”

Judges’ Award

Coronation Street Production Team

“Like old soldiers at the Cenotaph, the number of people who were actually there and actually saw the very first episode of Coronation Street burst onto our screens on the 10th of December 1960 dwindles every year. But somehow everyone feels we were there at that momentous event in UK TV history. That’s not just because there have been so many archive programmes about the early days of Coronation Street. It’s also because the show is essentially the same as it was then with warmth and humour, character before story, controlling women and feckless men. In Coronation Street Tony Warren uncovered the DNA of the long running soap opera, a pattern everyone has followed ever since. 200 people regularly work behind the scenes on Corrie delivering the show to air five times a week. A small army – but rather than being just guardians of some holy flame everyone who works on the show helps fuel the fire, from the first AD to the editors, from the electricians to the make up artists, from the wardrobe department to the props buyers. Each person in the Corrie production team puts a bit of themselves into the show.. 200 people pore over it and make sure it’s true to its original blue print. And they’ve done that for 50 years. Through fire and wind, explosions and car crashes, trams coming off their tracks and actors off their lines, and through the sternest test of all – that omnipresent Manchester rain that drizzles down the bit between your anorak hood and your scarf. 7500 episodes later and Coronation Street is still in rude health. That’s not the work of one man, great though Tony Warren’s creation was. It’s the work of a genuine TV family, a family who have consistently put all their heart and all their energy into the longest running drama in the world.”

Say Hello

Glad to be working with Maverick and Fierce as well as Rewired PR on Say Hello – the public participatory programme of Hello Digital.

Some of the planned activities are Film Dash – a 48-hour film challenge organised by Chris Unitt; My First Email; News Dash; Kahani and Urban Legends. For more information, please visit the Hello Digital website as well as the HD and Say Hello blogs.

There are also plans for a series of roadshows in the next few months in the run up to the 2010 Hello Digital conference. The next few months truly looks exciting on the digital front here in the Midlands.

British Dance Edition

One of my projects is working with DanceXchange as their Marketing and New Media Officer for the upcoming International Dance Festival Birmingham 2010. But I’ve also been working on British Dance Edition – a four-day industry focussed festival showcasing the best in British dance. I’ve been asked to produce Multiplatform Dance: What and Where is Dance in a Digital World? chaired by Maverick’s Director of Digital Media Jonnie Turpie MBE. It was quite a task finding the right balance of speakers for this debate, but in the end, we had a strong panel, which consisted of:

• Janet Archer – Director of Dance Strategy, Arts Council England
• Ian Myatt – Executive Product Manager, BBC Future Media and Technology
• Chris Unitt – MD, Meshed Media
• Nick Lockey – Development Producer, Maverick

Two nights before the debate, I was at the opening reception of BDE. Minister of State for Culture, Media and Sport Margaret Hodge MP was there, who delivered a fantastic speech. She said that Birmingham has a fantastic cultural infrastructure and nationally, we have achieved so much arts and cultural-wise, that we should continue to champion their causes especially during the recession.

BDE showed how alive dance is in this country and it was just such a pleasure to be working and meeting so many talented people.

Rustling Brands

Another RTS event I’m proud of is Rustling Brands. Being able to get the calibre of speakers we had on the day felt like quite a good achievement. Dorothy Hobson, RTS Mids Vice Chair and Chair of Events, wrote a great article about it. Great to have seen that Rustling Brands got coverage in Television Magazine.

In a difficult economic climate, producers and broadcasters are keen to explore new means of funding programmes. So, RTS Midlands Centre attracted a sell-out audience of more than 100 to its one-day conference on advertiser-funded programming (AFP), held jointly with Screen West Midlands and Business Link West Midlands.

The consensus of the first panel discussion seemed to be that AFP was about the successful liaison of a brand, a programme idea and the right programme maker and broadcaster; the resulting programme should enhance the reputation of the brand by its association with the programme and vice versa.

Not surprising then, that 90 per cent of AFP ideas do not make it to television, revealed Ben Kerr, content director at Drum PHD.

His fellow panellists were: Zoe Fuller, head of planning at Thikbox; Katherine Marlow, content partnership planner at ITV; Jo Rosenfelder, commercial affairs director at Maverick TV; and Drew Wilkins, account manager at digital agency Fish in a Bottle. THe sessions was chaired by digital strategist Rachel Modecai.

A second panel, chaired by David Bausola of Ag8, looked at Routes to Market. The panel comprised: Dan’l Hewitt, head of digital content at Bebo; Luke Hyams, writer/director, Dubplate Drama; and Graham Sergeant from Codemasters. The discussion covered games and online drama as well as more traditional formats.

In a difficult economic climate, producers and broadcasters are keen to explore new means of funding programmes. So, RTS Midlands Centre attracted a sell-out audience of more than 100 to its one-day conference on advertiser-funded programming (AFP), held jointly with Screen West Midlands and Business Link West Midlands.

The consensus of the first panel discussion seemed to be that AFP was about the successful liaison of a brand, a programme idea and the right programme maker and broadcaster; the resulting programme should enhance the reputation of the brand by its association with the programme and vice versa.

Not surprising then, that 90 per cent of AFP ideas do not make it to television, revealed Ben Kerr, content director at Drum PHD.

His fellow panellists were: Zoe Fuller, head of planning at Thikbox; Katherine Marlow, content partnership planner at ITV; Jo Rosenfelder, commercial affairs director at Maverick TV; and Drew Wilkins, account manager at digital agency Fish in a Bottle. THe sessions was chaired by digital strategist Rachel Modecai.

A second panel, chaired by David Bausola of Ag8, looked at Routes to Market. The panel comprised: Dan’l Hewitt, head of digital content at Bebo; Luke Hyams, writer/director, Dubplate Drama; and Graham Sergeant from Codemasters. The discussion covered games and online drama as well as more traditional formats.

An AFP event is something that I have researched for about two years now and so it was great to finally have seen it happen through this conference. With thanks to Screen WM and Business Link WM for making it possible.