The Shiny Awards for emerging directors is in its second year. And it has made an amendment. In its diversity category, the awards has added, Videos by Men. Because in all the fervour to be as inclusive as possible, the obvious category was overlooked.
Videos by Men will become the fifth category, beside Videos by Women, by People of Colour, Videos by other Under-represented people and Audience Choice. Each category, except Audience Choice, has two sections – unsigned/freelance and recently signed.
“There are two reasons for this approach,” stated Caroline Bottomley, founder of Shiny.
“After much thought-provoking debate, we think quotas are the only real way to address inequality. After a lot of effort to encourage entries from under-represented groups, still over 2/3rds of our 300+ entries are from white men. We want to make sure Shiny holds up diverse role models to the next wave of director talent, so choosing winners according to diversity category is the way to go…”
It’s not as clear-cut as that though. Caroline continues “…many people we spoke to didn’t want to win ‘because I am black’ or ‘because I’m a woman’. We think it’s politically interesting to remove the category tag for winners, so at the Awards, we will just be announcing Unsigned Winners and Recently Signed Winners.
The other reason for Shiny’s diversity approach is also about level playing fields. “…If women, POC and disabled people have to live in categories, then it’s fair everyone has to live in a category, hence Videos by Men.
The Shiny Awards discovers and applauds exciting new directors for the commercial video industry. The jury panel is drawn from over 60 leading production companies, ad agencies, publishers and brands. The inaugural awards unveiled many brand new talents that have since been variously signed, commissioned or featured by companies such ads Academy Films, Tate Modern, Converse, Adidas, Nike, Las Bandas Be Brave, Getty and Farfetch
Entries are invited from unsigned and recently directors worldwide, final deadline is Sunday 3rd February. Enter here.
All are welcome to attend the Awards, held on Tuesday February 26, at The Mill in London. Tickets available here.
The Shiny Awards also publishes the Shiny List – a directory of emerging directorial talent, here.
