BAFTA Scotland 2013: Nominees Announced

The nominees for this year's Scottish BAFTA Awards were announced today by Alan de Pellette, Acting Director of BAFTA in Scotland, and broadcaster Edith Bowman, who will host the awards ceremony at Glasgow's Radisson Blu Hotel on 17 November. The shortlist reflects some of the great work being done in film and television in Scotland right now, with recognition for well-known faces such as actor Peter Mullan (nominated for his turn in The Fear), and relative newcomers like Iain De Caestecker (nominated for his role in Not Another Happy Ending).

Two films notable by their absence are Proclaimers musical Sunshine on Leith, and Jon S. Baird's Filth, based on the novel by Irvine Welsh, which features a bravura performance from James McAvoy. At the launch, de Pellette expressed his regret that these films were excluded, having fallen outside the remit of this year’s awards due to their recent release – but he dropped a fairly heavy hint that they might well feature in the 2014 awards.

The film nominated in most categories is director Paul Wright's strange and elegiac For Those In Peril, set in a remote Scottish fishing village. Star George McKay and Wright are both nominated for individual awards –Wright twice, for writing and directing – while the film is up for an award for Best Film.

One change to this year's awards criteria was to allow work by Scottish actors, actresses, directors and writers working on productions elsewhere in Britain to be nominated for a Scottish BAFTA. This is a first, and it cuts both ways – George McKay, the English-born star of For Those In Peril, is eligible because of his contribution to a Scottish production, while Scottish writer Bryan Elsley gets a nomination for his work on English production Skins.

We grabbed a quick chat with Alan de Pellette, BAFTA's current head honcho and a director and producer with twenty years experience in Scottish and UK film. He responded to a few of the points raised in our Film Editor's recent article on Scottish film. Read our interview, and the full list of this year's Scottish BAFTA nominees, below.

Why the change in the rules at BAFTA this year?
We have changed the rules for the four 'individual' categories – Best Writer, Best Director, Best Actor or Actress in a Film and Best Actor or Actress in a TV Series. In those four categories we have changed the rules so that each individual can be recognised, as a Scottish director, actor or writer, for work they have done in the whole of Britain, rather than just in Scotland.

The main reason for this is that Scottish practitioners who have been flying the flag and doing brilliant work, especially in network television, couldn't be recognised for that work in their own country by winning a BAFTA, and we wanted that to change. We wanted people who are still very proud to be Scottish, but who are – out of necessity sometimes – plying their trade elsewhere in Britain to be recognised at home, and this gives them that opportunity.

I think it paints a truer picture of what Scottish individuals are doing in the industry – and these categories are all about the work of individuals. We also think that if an individual who is a French actor or a German director has made a bona fide Scottish production, they should be eligible as well.

Do Scottish film-makers punch above their weight in the international market, and is this why our professionals are so in demand elsewhere? Or is this tendency for creatives to do high profile work abroad part of the 'brain drain' effect of having so much of the film and TV industry in the UK based in London?
That's always been the case – I worked in the industry for 20 years and I've sometimes had to go to London to do the best work, or the highest profile work, or just simply to get on. But that is changing; a lot of companies have been set up in the last five to ten years, and their purpose has been to make network television shows from Scotland. They've built up a portfolio, and are now doing really well, especially factual productions – we make as many factual series and documentaries for the whole world here as we make just for Scotland. That's an amazing thing.

Drama and comedy have been slower to get themselves out there, perhaps because we have always had this opportunity to make stuff for a Scottish audience. That's something that is changing slowly. I think more people can find work in the industry now, and actually more people are coming from elsewhere – from Manchester and London – to be based here, because they see it as a vibrant centre of activity where they can still work at a high level. We do punch above our weight, and that is partly reflected in the amount of Scottish actors you see in dramas made internationally.

Is this the year Scotland escaped the cliche that its films are nearly always 'social realist miserablism' about 'neds and nihilism'? Is 2013 the year Scotland embraced genre films?
That image of Scottish film is always a bit exaggerated. For me, the godfather of Scottish filmmaking is Bill Forsyth. He's the first great Scottish filmmaker who I can really identify with. His films are realistic in a lot of ways, and that was one of their charms – he set his films in real Scottish working class communities that everyone could identify with, but they were also very humorous; they were slices of life, coming-of-age stories. So I think people tend to focus inaccurately sometimes on this idea that it's all miserablism. There have always been other things.

At this point in time, there is a lot of press attention generally about film in Scotland – because there are a lot of issues being debated. It's also very rare that so many Scottish films are being released at the same time, and that's just a fluke of distribution as much as anything else. That includes a rom-com, and a feel-good musical, as well as more serious films. Filth is as dark as you can get, but it's very funny as well, if you've got the stomach for it.

Fundamentally, it's hard to get films made independently, even in America – never mind Britain, or Scotland as a smaller country. Producers nearly always want to do a bunch of different kinds of films – but if one thing you make becomes a hit, and you get the opportunity to expand on that, that's usually what you end up doing.

What about the funding disparities between Scotland and comparable regions like Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and Denmark? Denmark has £65 million invested in its film industry annually, with Northern Ireland investing £12 million. Should Scottish film-makers be content with the £4 million invested here?
BAFTA is here to celebrate and reward production – so if there are fewer productions, there's less for us to celebrate. Personally, I come from a film and TV background, and I'm a filmmaker as well as being part of BAFTA, I think it's about more than just money. Those statistics are true, and there is maybe some momentum that Scottish film had a wee while ago that has perhaps moved to other parts of the UK. Northern Ireland Screen is a very proactive organisation, and they've been successful in bringing people to work in that part of the country, as well as giving opportunities to communities to celebrate their local talent.

It's complicated, because money gets spent in other cultural ways – I don't think Scotland can be accused of falling short in that area. Personally, I think broadcasters could invest more in the industry. They do in Denmark – the figure that is often quoted for Denmark has more to it than meets the eye, because it's not just the government that contributes to the funding, it is also public service broadcasters. There is a history of higher taxation in Denmark – so more gets given to the state, and reinvested in culture. To be comparable to them, we would have to have a lot more taxation.

I think yes, we do need more public investment, for sure. Development is a real issue. But I think a lot of that has to come from broadcasters, as well as funding agencies. The independent system in America, which is the home of independent cinema, is struggling, and is finding new ways not just to get films made, but to get them seen. So I think there is a bigger issue – we need more entrepreneurial thinking, we need more strategic thinking about how we're going to make films, who we are making them for, and how we get them to see it.

Many filmmakers we spoke to this year were passionate about the idea of a Scottish soundstage being built. What are your views on this?
Having a soundstage in Scotland can only be a good thing. But I do think people are fixating on that as a kind of solution to the ills of an entire industry. I think that's just one part of it. The obvious example to cite is Northern Ireland, again – they've built a studio and it has attracted a lot of inward investment, and the knock-on effect of that is that there is more money in the economy, crews are getting work, and all the rest of it. But has that had a direct effect on more Northern Irish films getting out into the international market? Well, possibly, but it's not necessarily the case. They are two different things.

Having anything that enables more high-profile people to come here and spread their wealth and knowledge around would up the ante for everything we do – it could only be a good thing. There is too much argument about where it should be, rather than the question of whether we should have one. That's destructive, to me –it wastes a lot of time and money.

The people that are making Outlander – a massive American TV series – they have converted a bunch of disused factories in Cumbernauld for about £1 million or less into fully-functioning soundstages. It's right next to the motorway that leads you to the Highlands. That seems like a sensible project, rather than getting caught up in where a studio has to be.

Full list of BAFTA Scotland nominees: 2013

Actor/Actress (Film)

Iain De Caestecker (Not Another Happy Ending)

Martin Compston (The Wee Man)

George McKay (For Those in Peril)

Actor/Actress (Television)

Ford Kiernan (The Field of Blood: The Dead Hour)

Peter Mullan (The Fear)

Sharon Rooney (My Mad Fat Diary)

Animation

Hart’s Desire (Gavin C Robinson)

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (Ross Hogg)

Seams And Embers (Claire Lamond)

Children’s Programme

Comic Relief Does Glee Club: Live Final

My Story, RNLI

Nina And The Neurons Go Engineering

Comedy/Entertainment Programme

Bob Servant Independent

Limmy’s Show

Mrs Brown’s Boys

Current Affairs

Panorama: The Truth About Pills And Pregnancy

Road To Referendum

Sins Of Our Fathers

Director

Kenny Glenaan (Case Histories)

Emma Davie & Morag Mckinnon (I Am Breathing)

Paul Wright (For Those In Peril)

Factual Series

A Culture Show Special: Sincerely, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Making Faces

Operation Iceberg

Features/Factual Entertainment

Bank Of Dave - Fighting The Fat

Kirstie’s Fill Your House For Free

Victoria Wood's Nice Cup Of Tea

Feature Film

Fire In The Night

For Those In Peril

The Wee Man

Game

Coolson's Artisanal Chocolate Alphabet (Things Made Out Of Other Things)

Impossible Road (Pixels On Toast)

Mr Shingu’s Paper Zoo (Stormcloud Games Limited)

Single Documentary

I Am Breathing

Fire In The Night

The Murder Trial

Television Drama

Case Histories

The Crash

Murder

Writer

Bryan Elsley (Skins)

Robert Jones (Murder)

Paul Wright (For Those In Peril)