Easy: if the budget is limited, why not to devise a great event and create the real gala as a failed version of this great event, with lots of humour? Adrian Smith´s idea was therefore to create a story to explain the event that couldn’t be.

The new idea was to break up with the normal award gala convention (award delivery, music break, award delivery, music break). "With the support of the president of the academy, Joel Joan, we create a whole new look for the ceremony”, Adrian explains.

To do so, they created an “aquatic” story, with characters who would relate to the award ceremony. The force behind this theming, explained Adrian, was that "neither the budget, the time or the venues were going to restrict our vision of creating the first water awards”.

The ideal staging was designed for the Palau Sant Jordi. It included a swimming pool, an oyster shell that opened, a fountain, a 90-piece orchestra on a mobile platform, two huge prizes statues and a huge ladder and the largest LED screen ever. "Having reached to this ideal concept, then we had the task of deconstructing according to what we could afford, given the time and the venue chosen”.

What finally got set on the Coliseum Theatre was a model to demonstrate the ideal gala. When the audience came to the theatre, its appearance suggested that they were entering into an aquatic gala. "There was no suspicion of what was to happen”, Adrian recalls.

But when the curtains opened, everything was half done. On the stage was the model that explained the concept of the award ceremony, the producer, writer, designer, technician, helmets, ladders, electrical cables and children’s pool and slide. Then the director asked for explications to the producer, who shows him the model, of what how the gala was going to be. He can’t stand it and leaves.

What to do? The technical team then has to choose someone from the public ceremony as a presenter, and they dress him into a mermaid to comply with the theming. And here begans the aquatic event that had to be... but with a lowered obviously staged, which was the basis for the funny situations throughout the night.

Then comes The Mortimers, dancers dressed as women bathing suits, fins and inflatable orca. They took the objects that were on stage and made up a song with the title of the nominated films before making a demonstration of synchronized swimming in the children pool.

For more information: Designstage