The Ultimate Wrap Party

We’ve all woken up with sore heads this morning after a fabulous night at BFI Southbank, throwing shapes on the dancefloor and raising our glasses to this year’s terrific shortlist. As our 12 finalists waited nervously to hear who’d scoop the first place trophy, host Danny Wallace kept everybody smiling and was joined by previous Shorts winners Oscar Sharp and Luke Snellin who each gave the crowd a sneak peak of what we can expect to see from them in the next year.

But the real stars of the night were the winners of the Grand Prize, the People’s Choice Award (as voted by you) and the new TiVo® Award. So ladies and gentlemen, we give you your winners of Virgin Media Shorts 2011:

Grand Prize: 2:20 directed by Jason Wingard

People’s Choice Award: InaniMate directed by Micheal O’Donogue, Soulla Josephides and Ying Hui Tan

TiVo® Award: Coasting directed by Federico Forcolini

Congratulations to Jason Wingard, who received the top prize gong from acting legend John Hurt (1984, The Elephant Man) for his mini thriller about a man living on borrowed time. No stranger to the Virgin Media Shorts stage, Jason found himself in the shortlist for the second time this year, after winning the 2010 People’s Choice Award for his film Bus Baby, which he co-directed with Gino Evans. Jason was delighted to have made it all the way this time around and now goes away with £30,000 of funding which he’ll use, working hand in hand with the BFI, to make his next film. We’re obviously big fans of his last two efforts, so we really can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

Although our judging panel loved 2:20, it was a different film that went down a storm with our voters this year. You chose the adorable animated short InaniMate, about an alien searching for love, as your People’s Choice Award winner, so thank you to everyone who voted and a huge congratulations to Micheal O’Donogue, Soulla Josephides and Ying Hui Tan for creating such a hugely popular piece. We hope they’ll make good use of their prize - £2,000 of brand new film equipment – and go on to do wonderful things. And who knows, maybe we’ll see them in the shortlist again next year!

Finally, there was a new addition to the award stand this year. We introduced the TiVo® Award, as voted for by Virgin Media customers through their TiVo® box. Congratulations to Federico Forcolini whose comedy short starring Doreen Mantle (One Foot in the Grave) received the lion’s share of the votes and who now walks away with a shiny trophy and the knowledge that everyone at home loved his film.

We hope the shortlisted film makers have enjoyed the Shorts experience as much as we have – all 12 final films looked stunning on the big screen and will continue to dazzle cinema audiences for the coming year.

Thanks to everybody who got involved this year, whether you voted for your favourite short or entered yourself – you’ve all helped to make this year’s competition the biggest and best yet. We hope to see you all again next year.

And if you haven’t already, go watch this year’s shortlist and see what you’ve been missing!