I’ve just returned from the Kinsale Sharks and I’m utterly exhausted. I was due to fly home at seven in the morning, so I did what any other dumbass fucktard would do – I stayed up all night drinking until it was time to leave. And now I’m paying the price.
But before I slip into a narcoleptic slumber, I wanted to share a story from the awards. The story of the WTF?! category.
It initially came into existence when I was creating the digital categories for the awards. In my experience, it’s the work that doesn’t fit neatly into any category that’s the interesting stuff. And, having been penalised in other awards shows for not fitting into a box, I wanted to give breakthrough work a chance to be recognised. (If I’m to tell the truth here, I wasn’t actually expecting this award category to be accepted by the Sharks committee. I was at least expecting it to be renamed! So hats off to them for running with my original potty-mouthed title.)
Then last week while judging the awards (with the loveliest jury ever) we realised that everything that had been entered into the WTF?! category actually belonged elsewhere. And when we put the entries where they belonged, we were left with an empty category. And it was a category that we didn’t want to lose.
So we put our heads together and it was Trevor who came up with the idea of turning it into a jury’s award for the most ‘out there’ piece of work of the whole festival. And with that as our new definition, there was only one thing we could award it to: the campaign for Arabic movies.
This was the first campaign we saw on our first day of judging; five lengthy, subtitled pieces of craziness. We sat together not quite knowing what to make of it, slightly concerned that the next three days would be full of work just as perplexing. It made us laugh, it made us cock our heads at a confused angle and it most definitely made us say “what the fuck?!”
This was a worthy winner.
I think it’s pretty safe to say this has become the judges’ favourites category. And one that we hope lots of people will aim for next year. I for one would much prefer to see stuff that confuses me with a totally original approach than a finely-crafted ad that could have fallen out of Luerzer’s Archive any time in the last 15 years.
So, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the 2010 Kinsale Sharks ‘What The Fuck?!’ Winner.
Enjoy!
