Gambling on Great Ideas at LIA Las Vegas
Judging Online Film, TV & Cinema at the London International Awards (LIA) in Las Vegas felt a bit like gambling. You study the table, weigh the odds, trust your instincts and decide which ideas are worth betting on. Sometimes you back a winner. Other times you're left wondering what on earth everyone was thinking.
There was no shortage of work fishing for a reaction. Films that were designed to make people gag, mums in tears, celebrities having a go at acting, and enough ad clichés to cover every emotional tug you can think of. But after four days of judging, a few things stuck with me.
Big budgets and famous faces don't make an idea great. Great ideas do. Same goes for incredible cinematography, slick production and an emotional soundtrack. Execution and craft matters, but if there's no strong idea underneath, even the most polished film is just an expensive way of saying very little. The best stuff usually starts with a universal human truth we all recognise, whether it's funny, sad or just painfully familiar.
Here are the chips I'm taking away from the table:
1. Great work connects before it tries to impress.
The strongest work opened with something recognisable, like an awkward family dinner or a small lie everyone tells, allowing you to resonate within seconds. Only then did the craft or the twist do its job. Impress them after you’ve connected, not instead of it.
2. Great work knows when to surprise, when to hold back, and when to let the audience work it out themselves.
Great films have rhythm. Not every beat needs a twist, and not every emotion needs explaining. The stand outs left a gap and trusted us to fill it, and that small moment of figuring it out is why they stuck.
3. Great work doesn’t overbrand or overcomplicate things, and it doesn’t confuse being conceptual with being clever. Most importantly, it respects people’s attention.
A logo in every frame kills the feeling you’ve just built, and a film that needs a paragraph of explanation has already lost the room. Layered ideas only work if the first layer is satisfying on its own.
4. Every second has to earn its place.
By the hundredth film, nobody is feeling generous. This isn’t an argument for everything being short, but for everything being necessary. Cut the extra establishing shot, the redundant line, because nobody owes your three-minute masterpiece three minutes of patience.
5. AI doesn’t change the basics.
“Made with AI” is no more an idea than “shot in 4K” ever was. Much of the AI in the room was there because it could be, while the best uses served a strong idea. Using something new isn’t the same as doing something new, and a great concept will outshine the tool it was made with.
At the end of the day, judging isn't about backing the loudest film, the biggest celebrity or the flashiest production. It's about spotting the ideas that are still standing once the noise dies down. The best bets are the ones you can still defend when the jury starts debating.
