by Thinus Ferreira
What was supposed to be a toned-down, frills and fault-free, very basic and simply done video-streamed winners announcement on Wednesday evening for 2020's 14th South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTAs) turned into a 6-hour delayed farcical fiasco marred by unexplained technical problems that forced the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) on Friday to apologise for having been "unable to deliver a show to the standards we had hoped for".
In the absence of a televised auditorium-filled awards show because of the sudden Covid-19 pandemic that also reached South Africa, the NFVF that was forced to scupper its planned 27 and 28 March awards show that would have moved back from Sun City to Johannesburg this year, opted for a toned-down, online announcement approach.
But Wednesday night, that too imploded.
After years of struggling to mount an award show to showcase the best of South African film and television that every year panned by the industry itself and is marred by technical mistakes, empty seats, often the opening of wrong envelopes and other errors, the NFVF decided to forego the usual sprinkle of glitz and glam this year for an online video stream read-out of winners.
While insiders thought that the simplified live-stream with reality star Dineo Ranaka announcing winners names would help the NFVF to deliver a better winners' event with less production bells and whistles behind-the-scenes to take care of, the opposite happened Wednesday night. Almost everything that could go wrong did with the 14th Saftas online winners announcement.
Originally announced for 17:00, the starting time was suddenly pushed to 20:00 - after which several hours went by without any live stream starting and nothing but silence from the NFVF's PR division as well as the Instinctif PR agency as to what happened and whether the stream event would still be taking place.
As print publications started to fret whether to pull winners' lists from early editions after embargoed winners were already issued to the media during Wednesday afternoon in case Dineo's living room ceremony didn't go out, the NFVF in a late night advisory told the media at 22:46 that the announcement play-out would still go ahead and would start before 23:00 on Wednesday night.
At 22:53 it did.
"We are aware of the technical issues that limited our ability to stream the Saftas14 broadcast at the times communicated to the public," the NFVF told the media and apologised for the 6-hour delay.
"Our film and television industry, who, without a doubt work tirelessly to provide us with the best on-screen entertainment deserve to be honoured in the best way possible for amazing work they do. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused to the film and television industry, the media and our film and television supporters."
The 2020 SAFTAs late playout was marred by multiple mistakes, bad camerawork, some clips playing out as a black screen with sound only, shoddy editing and bad sound, interspersed with Dineo Ranaka doing comedy skits and doing Zoom interviews with some winners.
Rumours were floated that possibly the NFVF decided to delay the playout for the government's latest Covid-19 press conference that took place on Wednesday night but that is untrue. Only technical problems prevented the 2020Saftas video from playing out, and which disappeared from YouTube immediately after and was nowhere to be found by Friday morning.
Insiders who spoke on condition of anonymity explained that the NFVF and production struggled with the same, one technical issue for hours: to get the pre-recorded video package properly linked to play in concurrent streams over all of the platforms.
"The NFVF used a service provider who was doing it through a software suite so that all of the platforms like YouTube and Twitter could stream it at the same time. And it didn't work. The production literally just used one camera," explained an insider.
Dineo Ranaka's presentations and skits were all pre-recorded and added. "Everything Dineo wore was her own clothes. Her make-up was done by herself. Her hair was herself. Basically she did everything at home."
On Friday morning the NFVF apologised again and said that "last night the SAFTAs endeavoured to host the 14th annual awards ceremony on social media in response to the uncertainty around the duration of the current nationwide lockdown".
"In trying to use technology to celebrate our industry, we faced unforeseen technical difficulties that severely hampered the streaming of the show. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to deliver a show to the standards we had hoped for and for that we sincerely apologise."
"We would like to send a final word of apology to our nominees, winners, stakeholders, our friends in media, as well as the general public that, despite the delay stayed up with us last night to celebrate South Africa's film and television talent".
Multiple insiders who work in South African film and TV industry and who said they don't want to be named since it might affect future work and SAFTA nominations, told TVwithThinus that the NFVF's 2020 SAFTAs streamcast was disappointing and terribly done. All of them used the word "embarrassing".
They said that the 2020 SAFTAs playout and lack of communication on Wednesday night when nominees tuned in and waited for hours to hear who won only to give up and go to sleep reflected poorly on the incredible work being done by the local industry which needs to be celebrated and supported now more than ever.
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