"To win at Edi. you need good ideas, good stories, and good craftsmanship"

m&k: Peter Beck, for the first time in the 21-year history of Edi. the entries were judged by two different jury teams. Why this change?

Peter Beck: When we put out the call for entries to the competition in July, it was impossible to estimate whether or not we would be able to hold live judging in September. That's why we gave some thought to alternatives. Especially the awarding of the prizes turned out to be almost impossible to solve digitally, because it needs the discussion and the coordination between the jury members. All computational models we tested showed that the selection of the shortlist digitally allows for interesting solutions, while the awarding of prizes could not be solved satisfactorily digitally.

Why does the shortlist jury have more members than in previous years?

The idea of forming a larger jury in the style of a film academy has been around for a few years. This would be difficult to implement in a live judging, so we didn't want to do it online until now. But now was the opportunity to give it a try. In principle, the reference groups in the jury composition remained the same as always: representatives of the clients, agencies and filmmakers. For the first time, we have added the group of commissioned film producers to the shortlist.

The winners will be determined by a second jury, this live and not online. Why?

There are several reasons for splitting the jury. On the one hand, there is much to be said for having a broadly supported shortlist, on the other hand, it is precisely the determination of the awards with a democratic calculation model that is not really recommendable.
Or how do you rate a film that receives seven silver and one bronze from the jurors versus a film that receives only one gold? The jury has to make this decision together. And that is simply much more feasible live. But our new jury tool would also have allowed online judging in an emergency.

Speaking of the jury tool: The Swissfilm Association has developed software especially for online judging.

In order for the judging to be as objective and fair as possible, a number of parameters must be adhered to. Live judging ensures that the jury members have actually seen the films they are judging. Also, agreements during the process are rather difficult. With the new tool, we have found a handy solution that is not only user-friendly, but also meets our requirements for the process.

You are launching your new website on Monday - in the course of the shortlist publication. Was the previous one outdated?

Edinet.ch is perhaps the oldest still functioning website in the world. We published it back in 2001 and have only made marginal adjustments since then. The great thing about it is the archive, which provides all shortlist and winning films since the beginning in 2000. For the Edi. Competition, however, which represents the benchmark in Swiss commissioned filmmaking, this appearance was already a very big "understatement". It was time to change this.

Were there any surprises among the films submitted?

The overall level of the submitted films, in terms of craftsmanship, has been very high for several years now. As every year, there are outstanding and great productions in 2020. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find the big overachievers among the films submitted. Good stories and good ideas have the greatest chance. Good craft alone is no longer enough today.

Because of the pandemic, this year's Edi. will not - as usual - be a live get-together of the best agencies, production companies and clients, but a decentralized event. How do they want to transport the atmosphere of shipbuilding into the guests' living rooms?

We didn't want to move everything to the net, but try to save what makes the Edi. Awards ceremony in addition to the competition: the personal contact and celebrating together. Since this is not possible in large groups, we motivate our guests to watch the award ceremony with their teams, customers and friends. For this, we provide the ingredients according to the motto: Real, decentralized and a bit digital.