Production Categories
The FOCAL International Awards celebrate three areas – Production, Restoration & Preservation, and People.
All our production categories celebrate the very best use of footage within the production, programme or project.
To enter a project or title into this category please use the FOCAL Awards entry platform – entry.focalintawards.org
You can read more about how to entry, criteria and qualifying period in Entry Criteria & Guidelines
All Submission Forms and supporting visual material must be submitted to the FOCAL Awards entry platform – no later than 28th February 2024.
If you have any queries please contact [email protected]
Awards 2023 Winner: Fire of Love
Advertising or Branded Content
Exemplary advertising or branded content campaigns across any platform that make essential and intelligent use of archival footage to tell the story of the product.
Arts & Entertainment Production
Encompasses documentaries, docudramas or fiction that feature arts and cultural subjects or effective and humorous use of footage in a comedy sketch series, quiz show or list style format. For example, productions might be on literature, visual arts, the history of film and television or they might be biographies of artists, writers and entertainers.
Cinematic Feature
Feature documentaries or films which are cinematic in ambition and scope but not necessarily limited to traditional cinema releases. They may be feature documentaries that rely on archival footage to drive the narrative or feature fiction that uses archival footage astutely to clarify or enhance the storytelling in an essential way.
Factual & Natural World Production
Includes documentaries or docudramas that deal with current affairs or topical issues, people, events or phenomena. The Factual genre covers a wide array of subjects such as the economy, politics, the environment or natural world, science & technology, natural disasters, climate breakdown, and human-interest stories. Submissions can include feature length productions and series.
History Feature
For single feature-length productions – of 60-minute duration or longer – such as documentaries or docudramas that deal with historical events, people or issues.
History Production
A History production of a single episode (up to a maximum of 60 minutes) or a multiple-part series which includes documentaries or docudramas dealing with historical issues, events or people.
Innovative Platforms
Innovative category celebrates the very best use of archive outside the traditional broadcast or cinema sphere. Eligible projects may including visual arts, exhibitions, live events, digital platforms or the use of archive on another kind of innovative platform in which new audiences are engaging with archive.
Music Production
Productions eligible for this category include documentaries, docudramas or fiction films featuring, for example, the history of music or biographies of musicians, singers, composers.
Short Film
Any film of 30 minutes or less in which footage is integral to the storytelling, whether documentary, fiction of any genre of filmmaking.
Sports Productions
Productions for any media platform, which use footage of any sports, are eligible for this award. Productions can include documentaries; docudramas, shorts, trailers, adverts and so may also be eligible for the advertising or short film category.