Well, a few weeks back I promised to keep you updated on who had won the inaugural Sky ‘Green Shoots’ short film competition – and true to my word, I now have the results.

As you may remember the competition involved a nationwide search to find the best short film to inspire people across the UK to take action to tackle climate change by making small changes in their everyday lives.  Entries were submitted to Sky’s user generated content website, Sky Cast and then a panel of judges (including myself!) voted on the best short film.

So, who won?

Well, we decided that Tony Moon’s film ‘Going Green’ was the stand out entry. The film is a story based around ‘young’ George who is left home alone and decides to surprise his parents by making changes around the home to lead their family in the fight against global warming. I fully support Sophie Turner-Laing, Sky’s Managing Director of Entertainment when she said of the film that it “…tackled a serious issue in a light hearted and entertaining way. It’s great that he was able to combine his passion for film with an issue close to his heart.” Tony’s film will be shown during the ‘The Close Up’ show, on Sky Premier, at 5:30pm, Tuesday 26. February – and at other times throughout this week. You can view Tony’s film below.

The runners up were Robert Ford with ‘Small Changes’ and Przemek Sobkowicz with ‘It May Help’. Please click on the relevant title to view their respective films.

Using this type of viral media is an exciting and engaging way of communicating energy saving messages to people. Provided the content is compelling enough – as is the case with the three films mentioned above – then in a blink of an eye, it is quite feasible for a film to quickly circulate by email around, not only the UK, but perhaps the World. Indeed, I think this post rather proves my point seeing as I’ve provided links to the two runners up films and embedded the winning entry below! I, for one, will certainly be interested to see how many ‘hits’ all three of these films receive over the coming months.

Well, you get the idea anyway! Today, I got the chance to partake in the rather pleasant duty of judging Sky's 'Green Shoots' competition. I was involved along with other much better qualified people in the form of Winnie De’Ath - Director of Communications at WWF, Elliot Grove - the Founder of Raindance Film Festival and David Croft - the Head of TV Directing at the National Film School.  For those of you who are not aware of it ( where have you been?), this is a competition to encourage ordinary citizens to put together short 60 second videos with the aim of keeping the public motivated on the issue of climate change by delivering a creative call to action in an engaging way.

The competition closed recently and there have been 25,000 (yes - 25,000 hits!) on the website on Sky Casts platform. This in itself is a credible achievement in terms of engaging citizens on climate change and inspiring them with new ideas, but as importantly was the quality of the short listed clips. These - from a personal perspective - ranged from the really rather excellent to the somewhat bizarre, but hey what do I know? I run a company, I would not claim to be Alan Yentob!

Anyway I digress. We waded our way through 18 short listed clips and a winner and two runners up were duly chosen and no, I am not telling you who they are.  Suffice to say that they will be probably be shown during the week of the 23 February on Sky Movies Premier Close Up.  It was an interesting experience; not quite as arduous as choosing the Booker prize winner (should that be the Man Booker prize winner now?), but each of us had our own views. My thanks also go to Sky for hosting the whole affair and for Solitaire Townsend from Futerra for refereeing in the clinches.  We more or less arrived at an agreed verdict in the end; anyway have a look to see what you think.

We will be posting the links once the winners are announced.