Those winning a prize at the upcoming British Academy Film Awards will bag a coveted bronze mask trophy — and get a bit of an arm workout taking it home.
Along with the honor of being named the best of the year in the industry, winners at the BAFTA ceremony on Feb. 22 will be awarded one of the dozens of the 3-kilogram (6.6-pound) prizes.
This year the cast and crew of “One Battle After Another,” “Sinners,” “Hamnet,” “Marty Supreme,” and “Sentimental Value” are in the running for the trophies at the EE BAFTA ceremony, to be held at London's Royal Festival Hall.
As with many things in show business, all that glitters is not gold. The BAFTA masks are made of phosphor bronze, polished to a mirror finish that will reflect the happy face of its new owner.
Craftsmen at the AATi Foundry in Braintree, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of London, use a sandcasting technique to make about 350 bronze trophies each year for all the BAFTA ceremonies — covering the film, television and gaming industries.
They are created in batches, and making one from start to finish takes around a week, the foundry's director Hugh Bisset said Tuesday.
The process starts with a pattern by the tooling team, often out of timber or 3D printing. That tool moves to the molding team which uses sand to make two recessed impressions of the mask, one each side. They are then closed together, ready for molten hot bronze — up to 1,200 degrees Celsius (2,192 Fahrenheit) — to be poured into it.
The metal takes about three or four hours to cool down, when it can then be removed from the sand. The masks' surfaces look dull and a bit rough around the edges at this stage, but after fettling, threading and polishing they are ready to be assembled before being checked over extremely carefully.
Bisset says it’s important that the masks are shiny and have no polish left on them.
“The thing I’m always conscious of is that these amazing actors and actresses, they pick up their awards and my big concern is that a smudge of polish will end up over their lovely, beautiful white dress,” he said. “There’s lots of things we need to think about.”
Bisset reckons the diligence and care that his skilled team puts into the making of the masks reflects the hard work of the winning filmmakers and movie stars.
While it’s still unknown if favorites Jessie Buckley, Timothée Chalamet and Teyana Taylor will get the glory on Sunday, whoever does win will take home something worth more than its heavy weight in bronze.
“There’s a lot of metal in it,” but each mask also has “a lot of time and love being put into it,” Bisset said.
