The Canadian Screen Awards and Gala, originally scheduled March 23 to 29, will now take place in a new virtual format beginning this Monday, May 25 through Thursday, May 28 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
With 144 categories now being unveiled through eight, pre-taped shows, viewers can easily catch all of the action online through the Academy
website, as well as its
Facebook,
Twitter, and
YouTube channels. Viewers can also watch the fun unfold through a dedicated Canadian Screen Awards blog on
CTV.ca.
“Announcing the winners of the 2020 Canadian Screen Awards at this time just felt right,” says Canadian Academy Vice President of Programming and Awards Louis Calabro. Calabro provided some insight as to how the decision to take things online came to be, what viewers can expect for this year’s Awards, as well as industry trends in virtual awards shows for 2020.
Photo Credit: Agnieszka Dratwa
What goes into the making of a virtual award show and how was the concept decided?
The virtual show production process has a lot in common with live production – you are still engaging in writing sessions, V/O records, talking about direction, music, run-down, visual research for paks, etc. When we first realized that we would have to formally pivot to a virtual awards presentation, we had already been in lock-down for about four weeks. The virtual award shows we were seeing included low-production value and lots of self-recordings from people at home – a reality of our current situation.
Ultimately, we didn’t find the self-recorded tapes engaging enough for those people who would watch our shows. That feeling, along with the fact that we were sitting on hundreds of hours of stunning footage from our nominees, led to re-thinking the whole virtual show model.
I came up with the concept one night when thinking about how to make our online shows different yet engaging. I had been watching a lot of documentaries where filmmakers rely heavily on footage to tell their story, sometimes with the complete absence of any type of talking head/interview footage. We wanted to apply that format to our shows and instead of self-recorded videos we would record narration over the video footage. Once that direction was decided it was full steam ahead – we put together eight virtual presentations in four weeks!
How has the Academy had to pivot to accommodate our new 2020 reality?
During Canadian Screen Week, the Academy puts on five award presentations, a week-long conference, a fan event, and several member events. As the situation around COVID-19 worsened, we first made the difficult decision to cancel the extremely popular Family Fan Day, an event rooted in the rare opportunity to closely interact with the stars of our favourite Canadian television shows. We had hoped that we could continue on with our other in-person events, but it quickly became apparent that the safe and responsible decision was to cancel entirely. We formally made the decision to cancel all Canadian Screen Week events, including the Canadian Screen Awards Broadcast gala, about a week before they were set to be staged. As you can imagine, we were disappointed as a team having worked eight months on these events, even though it was clearly the right thing to do.
We worked hard over the next couple of weeks to think of ways to support not only our staff, but also the nominees, presenters and others involved in the show who would not be given their moment. We also didn’t lose sight of providing for our members, who would no longer have Academy events to attend, and would be without any events (and in many cases, jobs) for the foreseeable future.
We created resource lists for our members and implemented several new programming initiatives, including ScreenShare (like a book club, but for films and TV shows), and put together curated lists suggesting what nominated content people could watch while at home.
Once we took care of our members and staff, and while being sensitive to the circumstances unfolding around the world, we regrouped on the award presentations, and discussed the best way to take them online.
We also cancelled our five-day conference and our Prism Prize event celebrating the best in Canadian music videos; both these events will take place virtually in the month of June.
What can viewers expect by way of a virtual show format?
Lots of great content from our nominees! The online show affords us the ability to play out more clips from the nominated work and make that incredible content the centre of the presentations, something we may not have been able to do in the same way for our in-person events. You know when you watch a movie trailer and you think, “wow, I need to watch that movie?” We hope people will feel the same way about the nominees when watching our virtual shows.
We are featuring eight great personalities as narrators, one for each presentation. Having iconic voices like Lloyd Robertson and Herbie Kuhn; hilarious people like Eric McCormack and Emma Hunter; and fantastic talent like Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Kayla Lorette, Evany Rosen, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, and Théodore Pellerin involved will add a great dimension.
What are some 2020 industry virtual award show trends you’ve seen?
The majority of organizations that have moved their events online have tried to recreate the in-person experience virtually, which I think is difficult to achieve. When moving to a completely different format, you need to change your approach. For instance, instead of having someone on-screen open a winner envelope, we broke down the “envelope moment” to a pause where anticipation was building and created that moment with graphics, text and music.
Why is this virtual approach so important to Canadians right now?
If we can inspire Canadians through the nominated work that we celebrate, then I think we have done our job on more than one level. You cannot underestimate how important it is to be inspired, especially during difficult times. You can draw inspiration from anywhere in your life, whether it is your family, frontline workers, sports heroes, or great movies and TV shows. I heard someone say that watching television is a form of self-care and we should not feel bad about bingeing multiple episodes of whatever show we are obsessed with at the moment. We look forward to all the bingeing of Canadian content that will happen after people watch our shows.
The virtual awards, held in partnership with CBC and CTV and with the support of Telefilm Canada and the Canada Media Fund, are the first of their kind. Bell Media is proud to congratulate their TV and Film Production Partners on 229 Nominations. The full list of nominees is available on the Academy website.
@CTV_PR
@TheCdnAcademy
#CdnScreenAwards
