Dene Films celebrated a tremendous night at the Royal Television Society Awards at the Sage Gateshead on Saturday night – picking up FOUR awards and receiving nominations for two others. Dene’s achievements was the largest haul of RTS awards and nominations in its history.
Dene’s viral commercial for Durham County Cricket Club - which featured a rocket-powered cricket ball frantically pinballing around North East landmarks – scooped the award for Best Commercial / Promotion. Dene Producer Nicky Scott was there to collect the award. The RTS judges said of the viral "(it) showed real creativity on a limited budget, and we were unanimous in making it the winner." Director Mark Lediard said of the win: "I had great fun making this last year, and I’m delighted to receive this award. I still have the ball we used - it's a bit scuffed though!"
Elsewhere, Dene’s nerve-shredding short film horror drama Ghost Street, which is soon to launch its reign of terror into schools nationally, picked up the prestigious award for Best Drama / Entertainment. The Award was collected by the film’s Writer/Producer Chris Chapman and its Director Steven Boyle. “This win is a real coup for our film, and is testament to the hard work and dedication of the whole team that worked on it”, said Chapman. The RTS Judges commented that: “Ghost Street... had outstanding performances from the young cast — helped by incredible make-up from Michael Birtley. This winning entry was very well crafted — extremely effective for its target audience — and a great short drama in its own right.”
Steven Boyle went on to win the Craft Award (Vision and Sound) for his portfolio as a Director – which featured Ghost Street, as well as his commercials for Derbyshire Leicestershire and Rutland Air Ambulance and Red Driving School. The RTS Judges said of Steven: "We agreed that the skill needed to bring all aspects of a production together showed true professional excellence." This was Steven’s third win in this category and seventh RTS award in total, and he commented "I’m extremely pleased to receive this award – the films were a pleasure to make and this is just the icing on the cake."
Ghost Street's Producer/Writer Chris Chapman also took to the stage to collect the Best Newcomer award (including the Andrea Wonfor trophy) in his role as Producer-Director-Writer. This was for a portfolio featuring the One North East film The World Changed, the Doctor Who documentary Who Peter and the buttock-clenchingly painful viral Taking a Dive. The judges of this award commented that Chris’s portfolio was "Breathtaking for the quality of skills on show".
Dene also received two additional nominations – one for Chris Chapman’s film Taking a Dive in the Best Online Production category, and for Steve Salam’s Uganda-set documentary Firmenich: Sustainable Vanilla picked up a nod for Best Factual (Non-Broadcast).