GBRC

Well, things looked promising as sat down for our movie shortlisting session.

Darren had made cookies and Yael had the coffee percolating (them being WWF's project leads on the Great British Refurb). We opened our home energy efficiency competition for entries back last year, and despite a cracking promotional programme that saw us get plugs from sources as varied as BAFTA, the Times and a host of film and arts colleges across the country - including one of our project partners, the University of Arts - with just 72 hours to go we had a mere few of films submitted.

But obviously the UK's budding talent was just keeping us on tenterhooks as another 30 or so films came flooding in over the last weekend (before we closed the competition on Mon 16th). Relief would be a serious understatement as we have a wealth of senior and serious-minded industry types coming along to the final judging event later this month (kindly hosted by Channel 4), and cancelling it due to a lack of films would have been mortifying.

The film shortlisting process itself had us vacillating between laughter, wry smiles, contemplation and unfortunately on more than a few occasions, sheer bafflement. Thankfully, we were highly impressed by a significant number, which we thought showed a good mix of innovation, creative insight and technical film-making ability.

And our crack cadre of judges will have the joy of sifting through the seven-strong shortlist for the 30th January final event. Ably led by the Great British Refurb point man Kevin McCloud, the judging team includes David Parry from Canon UK (also a project partner, and what a job title - 'Product Intelligence Expert'!), B&Q's Director of Marketing Katherine Paterson (who we're hoping will be leading the charge in actually selling eco-home retrofits in the UK) and environmental film expertise from both Georgie Bridge, WWF's Head of Design and Richard Edwards, Chief Exec of the Wildscreen Film Festival. And to bring a dose of political oomph to the process, Energy Minister Greg Barker will round off the panel.

Until the judging is completed enjoy the shortlisted film.  Next Monday we'll also put out a few others that although they didn't make the cut, we thought deserved a special mention.