For years, I have complained about the inability of any awards show to properly choose the best films of the year. I have attributed this failure to an inexplicable unwillingness on the part of awards-granting bodies to ask me what I think, and then do exactly what I say. I am pleased to announce that, this year, one such body actually is asking me what I think, although they still persist in asking their other members as well. In other words, I am now a voting member of BAFTA–the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and Sciences. And now that I’m doing it myself, I have stopped thinking of awards show voters as “those fools”, and started thinking of them as “those poor bastards.” This voting thing is hard–much harder than any awards voting I’ve done.
As a member of the Writers’ Guild of America–the union for TV and film writers–I’ve voted for the Writers Guild of America Awards before, but that was just for two categories: Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay. As a BAFTA member, in the first round of nominations, I can cast 12 votes in each of 18 categories, from “Best Film” to “Best Makeup and Hair.” That’s 216 votes to cast.
I must choose those 216 nominees from a dizzying array of possibilities. Despite its title, the British Academy doesn’t require that the films it recognizes be British–only that they’ve been commercially released in the UK by the end of the year (or been screened to BAFTA members by the end of the year, with a planned commercial release in early 2005.)This year, some 400 films qualified to be considered for a BAFTA award. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume that each of those movies had 20 contributions that might reasonably be considered for an award–one director, one screenplay, one male lead, one female lead, a couple of supporting actors, etc. That makes 8000 contributions that a BAFTA voter is expected to judge.
With 400 eligible movies over the course of a year, one would need to watch more than one movie a day to have seen them all. I’m one of the more movie-hungry people I know, and as of today–the date my first-round ballot is due–I have seen about 80 feature length films in the past year, or roughly one feature every 4.5 days. And, of course, a good chunk of that movie-watching time was spent watching classics; I think it’s fair to say that Abel Gance’s 1927 silent film “Napoleon” has probably missed its chance to qualify for a BAFTA award.
It’s great fun, of course, but it’s time consuming work, and if you take it seriously–as I do, and as I believe my fellow BAFTA members do–it’s even a little bit stressful.
Fortunately, movie studios are eager to help me catch up on any films I might have missed. Starting in October, London becomes host to a brain-spinning array of invitation-only screenings. In a single week in November, for example, my BAFTA membership card would have admitted me to free screenings of Finding Neverland, Friday Night Lights, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Motorcycle Diaries, The Terminal, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Garden State, Sideways, Collateral, Ladder 49, The Incredibles, The Sea Inside, Troy, Hero, and The Passion of the Christ. Sometimes these screenings are just screenings; other times, they are followed by discussions with the filmmaker. In the past two months, I’ve seen Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis discuss The Polar Express; Kevin Spacy talk about Beyond The Sea; Alfonso Cuaron speak about Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; and Martin Scorcese, Cate Blanchett, and Leonardo di Caprio discuss The Aviator.
On top of that, my BAFTA card will admit me to any regular showing of an eligible movie at participating theatres throughout London. If this were a film festival, it would be one of the largest in the world, second only to the similar awards-season orgy now taking place in the US for Oscar votes. The fact that it is free, and unannounced to the public, only makes it all the more delicious.
Just in case I missed out on screenings, the studios are there to help me out by do my judging at home. Here’s a photo of the items that have arrived in my mailbox over the past two months:
Let’s take a tour through this swag, shall we? The bulk of the table is covered with DVDs–30 in total, although two of them are for the same movie; I received on copy of “Before Sunset” for my consideration as a WGA member, and another as a member of BAFTA. In some cases–as with Spiderman 2–the studio seems to have just sent me a copy of the commercially-available DVD. In other cases, I’ve received a specially made “For Your Consideration” disc, complete with digital watermarking to make sure I don’t sell it on eBay. (The level of paranoia some studios display over the undoubtedly minuscule risk that a BAFTA member is going to sell his copy of the latest Richard Linklater film to a Chinese video piracy ring is worthy of a separate post.)
On the right hand side of the photo, you’ll see a few soundtrack CDs. (Nonetheless, I plan to abstain from the “Best Soundtrack” category, along with “Best Sound” and “Best Hair and Makeup,” on the grounds that I am not remotely qualified to judge them. I’m not yet sure if I’ll weigh in on “Best Special Effects.”)
Most of these DVDs and CDs are packaged in simple jewelcases, but on the far left, you’ll see part of a rather elaborate Shrek 2 box, containing a DVD, a CD of the soundtrack, and a copy of the script.
In the rear, you’ll see the most useless of the promotional items–glossy folders featuring stills from a film, and occasionally laudatory quotes from reviewers. I suppose these might be helpful in reminding a voter about the existence of a film that was released earlier in the year, but in practice, most of these glossy brochures are for films that have received copious screenings, and have been sent out on DVD as well.
Still, if you contemplate the sheer volume of movies that are available for me to consider, whether on DVD or in screenings, you can begin to understand some seemingly puzzling aspects of award-voter psychology. For example, I’ve never understood why getting a Golden Globe nomination or winning the Boston Film Critics award improves a film’s chance of winning a BAFTA or an Oscar. Surely anybody who is passionate enough about film to join one of these organizations must be capable of making up his own mind. But faced with far more films than one human can consume, I’ve taken to eagerly reading every Best of 2004 list I can find. If I have to choose from among half a dozen screenings on a given night, I’m going to go see the film I think I’m most likely to be impressed by, and I’m going to take critical consensus into account. Of course, once I’ve seen a film, I’ll make up my own mind about it; but other people’s opinions might well get me to see the film in the first place.
UPDATE: Aaaargh. After all that, at 6:15 today, I realized that I had missed the voting deadlne by 15 minutes. There is no good reason for this–there wasn’t any emergency, and my Internet connection was working fine. I am just the most absent-minded human being on the planet, and it drives me crazy. And because voting submission is entirely electronic, there is no human arbiter I can appeal to in order to get my vote in. I realize that this is a horribly trivial thing to feel upset over, but I am genuinely frustrated and disappointed with myself.
Given all the critical attention the film has received, Paul Giamatti will be able to get a well-deserved acting nomination without my help–but will other BAFTA voters notice Peter Peter Saarsgard’s wonderful supporting role in Garden State? Will they be willing to recognize the perfection of Brad Bird’s script and direction for The Incredibles, even though it’s an animated film? Am I the only person who noticed that, by throwing herself into a ridiculously-written role with absolute glee, Angelia Jolie managed to give a brilliant performance in the otherwise-worthless Alexander? None of these people know me, but I feel as though I’ve personally let them down.
I think I have officially lost all right to complain about awards nominations.
I’d never realised there were so many BAFTA-eligible films- isn’t there some sort of higher-level committee who decides which films can be nominated? Can all BAFTA members vote? Despite your protests, it still seems very glamorous to a mere outsider like myself who wanders past the BAFTA buildings every now and again. Having said that, if you ever need help deciding what to do with all the free stuff you get sent, feel free to contact me… 😉
I’m right there with you, only having spent most of last year reeling from fatherhood my film count was, er, minimal. (It also meant I couldn’t go to most of the screenings.) I ended up skimming the DVDs to work out what merited a proper view, so perhaps I’m the target market for all this tat.
If it’s any consolation, by missing the deadline I think that means you lose voting rights for next year automatically.
(Rather draconian I thought!)
Plugged in your Cinea DVD player yet?
You got your Cinea? I never got one (which I’m not too upset about–it seems like rather a white elephant.)
Fortunately, it turns out that, as long as I vote in the second and third rounds, I can remain a voting citizen of BAFTA. When the second round voting opened today, I cast my votes within about half an hour, just to prevent a repeat of my first-round forgetfulness.
Phew.
The Cinea’s still looking at me ominously. Did nobody tell them that everyone these days is doing silver, and the black monolith look in *sooooo* ’95!
I can see why it exists – distribution of rushes under very controlled circumstances, for example – but having read into it in detail I’d need a seperate player for every organisation I got material from. It doesn’t know about *me*, only the voting bloc the studios have issued stuff for…
Big blog post over the weekend. If I can be arsed.
Hi, cool site.
I have my Cinea plugged in and I love it! It has HDMI output and progressive scan! The first one didn’t work though – this is a replacement.
But I have a slight screeners issue – I have a feeling my postman is a thief… I have often ordered DVDs and they have not arrived. Well now several of my screeners didn’t arrive. I managed to get replacement copies of SHAUN OF THE DEAD and SHREK, but they’ve sent two copies of HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS – neither of which reached me and I see above you have THE AVIATOR soundtrack and IN GOOD COMPANY which totally didn’t arrive through my door…
So, if these DVDs are encoded with my name or BAFTA number and my postie sticks them on Kazaa — where does that leave me? Ejected from BAFTA?
Every BAFTA member I know has had to have either a replacement Cinea DVD machine or a software update or, usually both!
One BAFTA member sent an email to Cinea saying he had a problem with his machine and he accidentally hit “send to all”. I replied to him to tell him that his email might not have gone to Cinea and that he was not alone in his misery. He said he had an inbox full of emails from other BAFTA members also saying that their machines were so much junk.
One common problem has been that the image, although filling the screen was off-centre. This was either on the PAL setting alone or in both PAL and NTSC. This has necessitated a software update delivered on CD. We were first promised this in “a few weeks” a year ago. They have just arrived.
Other miscellaneous faults include dead displays and random crackles when playing CDs. I’m not sure where the “high end” idea comes from. If it wasn’t for the watermarks (don’t you just love being treated like a crook?) we’d have been better off buying a £30 player from Tesco.
After all this it looks like Disney might be the only reason that we have to give this thing house room. Nobody else can be bothered to watermark their screeners.
Po-faced as ever, Cinea have also made the players single region – even though people in the film industry have perfectly legitimate business reasons for viewing DVDs from other regions. Indeed, Warner Brothers have already sent 2 Region 1 discs this year to BAFTA members which can’t be played on the Cinea machines!
On the whole, I regret the passing of the VHS screeners. You could watch them on anything and once watched, they provided a useful source of blank tapes.