Final call for entries for MPB Filmmaker of the Year
Posted on May 9, 2025 by Pro Moviemaker
Time is running out to enter our contest for all indie filmmakers, so get your entry in NOW!
You have until 30 May to get your entries in for our MPB-backed Filmmaker of the Year contest for commercial and next-generation filmmakers, content creators, YouTubers, students and those new to the industry.
Any one filmmaker or independent filmmaking company can enter, as it’s all about honouring the unsung army of creatives who shoot and edit everything from marketing and promotional films to music videos, documentaries, events, wedding, sports, social media and more, as pretty much anything goes.
Pro Moviemaker magazine’s third annual Awards recognise all kinds of professionally produced content that’s watched across the globe on websites, YouTube, Vimeo and social media – as well as branded content, marketing and social media films and shorts, adverts and vlogs. We celebrate original content.
These MPB-backed Filmmaker of the Year awards are about innovation in either long- or short-form content in lots of different classes, with extra awards to recognise editing, lighting, audio, cinematography and visual effects too.
Entrants can be individuals or part of a team, and simply have to link to their chosen entry if it’s online, or submit work directly to us.
The contest closes on 30 May, at which stage entrants will be judged by a panel of experts looking for originality, creativity and all-round excellence.
Entering is easy. Just choose a category – or categories – and let the world see your work. There’s no lengthy process to enter; it’s totally free and you don’t have to make a bespoke showreel or new film. Content you’ve created for clients or non-paid work for charities or sports teams, personal projects or anything else you’ve worked on is what we want to see.
Visit our Filmmaker of the Year competition page to enter. All we need is a link where we can watch the video online, such as on YouTube or Vimeo, plus the password if it’s protected. Alternatively, send in a link to a downloadable file. Be sure to let us know if we have permission to link to the film on our website or social media, and whether any credits are needed.
In the simple entry form, tell us the category or categories you want to enter your work into, your role on the film and the client, if any. It’s also helpful to write a paragraph or two giving some context to the shoot, challenges you faced and any success your film has already had.
If you have any questions, just email [email protected] with subject line Filmmaker of the Year, and we’ll try our best to help. Let’s take a look at some of the entries we’ve had so far over the next few pages.
MPB backs the 2025 awards
The official title sponsor of the Filmmaker of the Year Awards is one of the best-known and fastest-growing brands in retailing in the UK, US and Europe: used equipment specialist MPB. It’s a brand at the cutting edge of the latest trends in filmmaking and sustainability.
MPB has vast stocks of the latest cinema cameras, camcorders, mirrorless cameras and DSLRs, as well as lots of lenses and accessories. Everything is individually photographed and graded on MPB’s website, where you can buy or sell in confidence.
MPB not only saves you money, but is leading in saving the planet thanks to its circular business model. By encouraging recycling of equipment, it’s eco-friendly while helping next-gen talent make sustainable choices and get hold of great kit. This is recommerce at its finest, while also lowering carbon emissions.
MPB’s staggering growth proves it’s perfect for modern times, and it also supports many creative causes. For all types of filmmaker, it’s the best option when a kit upgrade is needed, so is a great title sponsor for the MPB Filmmaker of the Year Awards.
Action & sports
Finding the fastest movers
The rivalries, competition, pressure, equipment, organisers and thrills of action often tell incredible stories. This exciting category places the spotlight on attention-grabbing footage featuring action used to tell incredible stories. Let’s see some of your exhilarating work for 2025!
Aerial
Bird’s-eye views
This award category is perfect for those filmmakers who shoot aerial camerawork; it can be the sole content of your film or just a part of it. From normal drones to FPV, even pole cams or from planes, wow the judges with your aerial work.
We aim to celebrate the people who know it’s not as simple as just sending a drone up to get an establishing shot. Incredible work takes time and expertise to do well.
Best editing
For the masters of post-production
Any serious filmmaker knows it’s in the edit that the visuals and audio come together to create something even more incredible. Grading, cuts, sound design and graphics all add to the mix.
In this class, any sort of film is welcome, as long as it highlights some serious skills. That could involve stunning work in editing, grading, motion graphics or more. It can be your own film, one you helped shoot or one you worked on as an editor.
Cinematography
Setting up amazing shots
This award recognises the cinematography being used in smaller-budget productions that looks like it utilised a large team but is actually cost-effective and driven by creativity rather than cash.
It’s all about lens choice, camera angles, lighting and editing, deployed to make something that’s stylish and memorable. So show us your best work!
Commercial & corporate
The cream of the crop in professional projects
Branded content, promotional videos or adverts commissioned by clients are the heartland of our flagship class – commercial & corporate. This could be for a paying client or a charity.
Last year’s winner was Jonny Lewis with his series of documentary shorts made for an art gallery. His win also meant he was picked as the overall Filmmaker of the Year.
We want to see storytelling in a stylish and engaging way that serves to entertain, inspire and captivate audiences.
Documentary
Combining real-life narratives with stylistic filmmaking
The documentary category always stands out for compelling storytelling – and one particular standout entry this year is Andy Holt’s powerful story called Ahkameyimok: To Persevere.
The film focuses on the Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society, indigenous strength, cultural revitalisation and healing. Featuring stunning visuals, heartfelt interviews and the wisdom of tribal elders, it highlights the inspiring journeys of those who have found hope through connection, culture and the guiding principles of their ancestors.
Event
Highlight edits from live events
This category is for the polished edits of any sort of event, using editing to tell a wider and more engaging tale than live streams do. That might include interviews, graphics, a presenter and BTS insight. If you shoot events and edit the footage into highlight films, this is for you.
Future filmmaker
Finding the best next thing
This is where the future of our exciting industry show what they’re capable of. This is an open class for aspiring professionals or those in the first two years of a career, so anything goes!
A great entry this year is called Mia’s Bridge – Some Dreams Live Forever and is written, produced and edited by Mike Fox. It’s an inspiring, powerful film with an impactful storyline, cinematic action and great characters. It includes a highly diverse cast and crew to help bring unity and healing in an action-packed drama.
Sponsored by CVP
The award-winning retailer CVP is Britain’s leading cinematography, broadcast and TV equipment supplier with huge stocks of kit– staffed by experts who want to give you the very best advice. CVP isn’t just about making sure everyone gets incredible service when choosing the right gear; it’s about helping new filmmakers take the next big step in their careers.
CVP is serious about the future of filmmaking and invests in holding events, product demonstrations and education sessions to make sure that emerging talent can reach their full potential. With CVP education and CVP TV offering insight and help that’s hard to get anywhere else, it’s investing in the future, so is a natural backer for this category.
From live and virtual events, product demos and training sessions – as well as repair, hire and both used and new kit – CVP sits at the very heart of the commercial filmmaking community. With its inspiring central London event space and showroom, CVP allows filmmakers to meet, network and get hands-on with the latest kit to buy and rent – all at keen prices.
Instructional
Showing how it’s done
This category is for those how-to videos, instructional pieces or training movies that help a viewer do something new or improve. It’s a key filmmaking skill that takes lots of planning and logical thinking to get right. Whether you were involved from scripting through to final production for a client, or worked on the filming or post-production, send us your work.
Lighting
Using light and shadow to build atmosphere
Mastery of light – from renting a barrage of artificial lights for a shoot or careful application of a mixture of ambient and practical sources – is what this award is all about. We’re looking for uses of lighting that create a certain feel.
That’s certainly the case in Feel Me, a short for a near-future drama TV pilot written, directed, produced, shot and edited by entrant Corry Raymond.
Sponsored by Godox
The care and attention poured into every scene – from the performances to cinematography – resulted in a cohesive, thought-provoking piece. The visually attractive film blends comedy and horror to reflect the stresses of modern living.
Lighting is critical when it comes to making professional-level productions, and natural light often just isn’t good enough. The right lighting that turns your film project into something special shouldn’t be overlooked, so you need to have equipment you can rely on without blowing the budget.
For pro-level lighting that’s great value, Godox boasts various LEDs to suit all needs and pockets. The brand offers powerful COB lights, fresnel lights and modifiers, LED light panels in large and small light sizes, plus practical sources such as tube lights. The most popular lights for filmmaking are the wide range of COB lights, which come with a Bowens mount that can take many different modifiers that truly enhance your films.
Livestreamed event
The currency of immediacy
Livestreamed video is a high-pressure job, more in line with live TV production than narrative cinematography. Yet, great camerawork shines through
in the entry from Bubble Production, which works all over the UK producing big, multicam outside broadcasts.
Bubble’s live coverage from the Arenacross World Tour displayed live off-road motorcycle racing with a show that included dancing girls, pyros, presenters and commentators.
Music video
Helping tracks come alive
Music videos are where many talented filmmakers learn their trade. This award is for any sort of genre. We’re not judging the music, but how the video adds to the whole creative package.
A great entry this year is Aron Randhawa’s Speak in the Dark for British-Bengali musician Tara Lily. The video merges nature, darkness and surrealism in a dreamlike world. It was produced using both in-camera work and VP to add real polish.
Open
Send in your best projects
This category is for narrative drama, long- or short-form films or experimental work. If you have a personal project that deserves a bigger audience, let’s see it.
It doesn’t matter if it’s paid-for, commissioned work, charity or a personal project. It can be all your own or where you worked as a main filmmaker on the team.
Social media
Short-form content at its best
Video dominates social media, and as such is crucial for many commercial clients who want to stand out. Creating short-form video for social platforms – from marketing campaigns to branded content or virals – is a growing way of using video to grow an audience and greater engagement.
From short vertical videos shot for Instagram Reels, Facebook, YouTube Shorts or TikTok to longer-length films for any social media platform, this is the place where great work is going viral. We want to see the content you’ve been creating.
Sponsored by Amaran
In the booming world of content creation, good gear is paramount. Social media is a serious business for professional filmmakers, creating great content for clients who realise that their audience will no longer accept subpar work.
To up your production value, investing in some seriously good lighting and modifiers is the best way to go. This is where Amaran steps in to steal the spotlight. Its range of great-value LED lights are stunners with truly pro-level performance.
Whether you’re nailing a viral TikTok, shooting cinematic YouTube content, snapping jaw-dropping Instagram shots or streaming live on Twitch or Kick, Amaran’s perfect tools won’t break the bank.
Amaran continues to expand its selection of fixtures and has a wide range, including sleek panels, versatile tubes, on-camera options and even a Magsafe-compatible smartphone light. The brand makes it ridiculously easy to take your content from basic to the next level with lighting that hits the sweet spot of quality, affordability and ease of use.
The Amaran App further adds to the user-friendly approach. It’s your all-in-one control centre, letting you adjust brightness, tweak colours and fine-tune your set-up directly from your phone or desktop.
The winner of the social media category will score the epic Amaran Ace 25c Kit, the Amaran Go and the Amaran Tag.
Sound
Highlighting immersive audio masterpieces
The sound recording and design is crucial in any film. If you’re a dedicated sound recordist or just have some incredible audio on a film you made, this is for you. Maybe you created a stunning soundscape or solved a technical problem to record audio in difficult, testing conditions. We want to hear your best work that helps create the right mood.
Sponsored by Sennheiser
Sennheiser is the go-to high-end audio brand, with a massive range of professional-quality sound solutions to suit all kinds of projects.
From lots of XLR shotgun mics to stereo and mono DSLR-type mic options, Sennheiser is the master of capturing clear audio consistently. For many years, the brand has been a leader in wireless audio mics and lavaliers, getting rid of cables that can ruin a shoot. It’s also a pioneer in the world of content creation and vlogging with its new Profile Wireless system, which includes a handheld mic.
Offering accessories that range from wind jammers to headphones designed for monitoring, handheld reporter mics, USB mics for podcasting, VR mics and more, Sennheiser is the leading supplier of pro audio products for video use.
You know you’ll receive superb sound from Sennheiser, every time.
Student
Learning the ropes
If you’re studying filmmaking, photography, mixed media or any other creative course, this category is for you – current students or recent graduates from the past two years.
This open category includes anything from commercial-style work to social media, documentary or narrative. The film can be all your own work, or something you worked on as part of a team. It could be a project, showreel, personal work or paid-for by a client.
Visual effects
Creating real magic
Visual effects now encompass a huge range of techniques for creating movie magic. The latest computer trickery can be used to develop stunning scenes. This category celebrates everything from classic in-camera techniques and practical effects to greenscreen work, right through to VFX and VP using LED panels. We want to recognise the best and most creative effects.
Wedding
Immortalising the big day
Modern wedding films are often cinematic masterpieces packed with creativity. The best are stylish, romantic, evocative and even dramatic films – with close attention to the details of the day, such as location, the bride’s dress and the festivities.
Shooting weddings is very popular and continues to grow. This category aims to honour the best and most creative – no matter what religion or type of ceremony.
Sponsored by MPB
One of the most common paths to professional cinematography is shooting weddings, which can open up a world of creativity while paying well. But running a wedding films business calls for dedication to much more than just shooting the day and making the edit.
Marketing, insurance and cashflow can make or break many enterprises, as most weddings take place during summer. This is why it makes sense to spend as wisely as possible and get the most for your money when buying kit. One way to save cash is by buying used cameras and lenses, as long as they’ve been fully tested and guaranteed. You can’t run the risk of taking just one camera or lens you bought off an auction site.
As the UK’s number one used camera specialist, MPB stocks the plenty of the latest cinema cameras, camcorders, mirrorless cameras and DSLR, as well as lenses and accessories. Equipment is individually graded and photographed on MPB’s website, where you can buy or sell in confidence.
Not only will you be saving money, but you’ll also be helping the planet by recycling your equipment. For all types of filmmaker, MPB is the best option for equipment.
YouTuber
The fastest-growing video outlet
YouTube dominates when it comes to delivering video, but of course, other platforms like Vimeo are eligible too.
This award isn’t about the number of views or subscribers; it’s about creative work that’s right for the intended market and looks professionally made.
This article was first published in the May/June 2025 issue of Pro Moviemaker
