BMT Product Manager, David Lortal, reflects on the work behind re-creating the interface for BAFTA View.
Background
BAFTA View is a VOD service, exclusively used by BAFTA members, to review film content entered into the BAFTA Awards. Before the EE BAFTA Film Awards 2020, distributors sent DVD screeners directly to members, which had a net cost of up to £50k per film. We had a challenge – DVDs were fast becoming obsolete and we wanted to level the playing field for film-makers with smaller budgets.
BAFTA had been hosting and streaming television entries for over 10 years for BAFTA’s annual Television Awards, however, the security requirements needed by the studios for pre-release content had been a sticking point for BAFTA hosting feature films. This issue was solved in 2019, when Screener Hub, an API integration platform, was built by BAFTA Media Technology. Screener Hub is middleware which enables studios to host films on the platform of their choice, whether their own or a third party – as long as it has been integrated via API). This ensures their security requirements are covered and that studios and distributors retain ownership of their assets. The film is then streamed to pre-authenticated BAFTA members from within BAFTA’s software architecture.
Screener Hub was an instant success, as it addressed the concerns of the studios and enabled access for members to entries online all in one place. Before this, members had been emailed links and passwords within hundreds of emails throughout the season.
Against a backdrop of limited cinema screenings in 2020, due to Covid-19, the service provided a solid base for members to watch film entries. With Screener Hub, the biggest missing piece of the puzzle was a sophisticated VOD front end where all the video content and entry metadata could be listed together to replace the existing viewing workflows.
During the development of Screener Hub, the decision was made to build a new front end for Film Awards viewing and was named BAFTA View. UI Centric, an external design agency, were commissioned to design a front end VOD platform, which would look modern, represent BAFTA and be flexible enough to support the complex workflows required by the awards judging process. Our task was to turn the designs into a successful platform for Film Awards viewing due to open in September 2021.
The Process
The complexities of delivering such a project are significant. We had some beautiful and feature-heavy designs, which were great, but they didn’t always consider the technical challenge of importing the huge amounts of metadata and digital assets now collected in BAFTA Nucleus – the awards management system also built and managed by BAFTA Media Technology – which needed displaying on the BAFTA View front end.
Commercial VODs can control their voice, BAFTA needs to display what the entrant has supplied. Taking this into consideration, our first challenge was to see how the designs translated into reality. Did they match awards processes? Could we display data in the format stipulated in the designs? For stakeholders and members, it is very easy to request a feature; the designers can consider the User Interface and create beautiful designs for that feature. It’s a different question to deliver this in code.
To illustrate the complexity of integrated systems, we’ve included a system diagram. The relationship between each of these systems had an effect on the final implementation of BAFTA View.
Our approach was to deliver a clean site with a basic level of features to start with. We wanted to conduct in-depth user research after the site had been used for a whole awards season. Our previous experience had shown that once users access the site their requests change. And this proved to be the case.
Development
The challenge was to build a fully responsive, fully accessible mobile-, TV- and desktop-friendly web application, which would adapt depending on the number of awards, categories and entries available to view at any one time. And one that would be adopted by BAFTA members.
The Result
We are immensely proud of BAFTA View and the huge amount of technical work carried out by our then small team on a short timeframe. Feedback, which was largely positive, with 98% of members using BAFTA View by viewing for the EE Film Awards 2022, highlighted areas of improvement. We have responded each year with further iterations, delivering improvements year on year. For viewing for the EE Film Awards 2023 (which begins in October 2022), we also delivered an app version supported on 4K Fire TV Sticks.
By 2023, most of BAFTA’s Awards will use BAFTA View, including Games, Television and Television Craft.
BMT (BAFTA Media Technology) is the software research and development arm of BAFTA (The British Academy of Film and Television Arts).