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How Our Lecturer Won a BAFTA

Film and Media Lecturer, Leigh Alner, was part of a team that won a BAFTA at this year’s award ceremony.


When Leigh isn’t teaching on college and degree courses he’s also involved in projects that gain national recognition.

Leigh helped a project group win the ‘British Short Animation 2017’ category with ‘A Love Story’.

The animation, which was the brainchild of Director Anushka Kashani Naanayakkara, portrays the consequences of falling in love. It was shown at film festivals around the world before being nominated for a BAFTA.

Leigh was involved in storyboarding, planning shots and lighting the film– which featured two puppets. The seven minute sequence took 12 months to make.

Leigh said: “It was one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever done. If you can imagine, we had to manipulate these puppets frame by frame and ensure the lighting was perfect so it didn’t catch the glass reflecting on the camera lens. It was painstaking work and very, very time consuming!”

Leigh was at the celebrity-studded ceremony held at the Royal Albert Hall in London last week which was also attended by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. He said: “It was such an amazing experience and we were so thrilled to be nominated, let alone win the award!”

He was asked to assist with the project through the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield through his role as a freelance cinematographer. Leigh also studied Cinematography at the NFTS, graduating in 2009.


Leigh has been working at the college for a year and a half. He said: “I love working at the college because I really enjoy sharing my knowledge with the students I work with.

“The Media Department at the college is also a great place to be. We have a really strong team of staff and we are all really passionate about working with the students and creating exciting projects for them to work on.”

Leigh has a long history of credits to his name including working on the 2011 documentary ‘Mission to Lars’ in which Metallica-obsessed Tom Spicer, who is severely autistic, is broken out of his Exmouth care home by his siblings and taken on a road trip to the States to meet his hero – drummer Lars Ulrich.

He has other exciting projects up his sleeve, including the making of a music video with London Rapper Micall Parknsun, which our students will be assisting with.

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