The Asian Academy Creative Awards (AACA) is expanding its focus as its heads towards its ninth edition.
The annual showcase of Asia Pacific content, set to take place on December 3 in Singapore, will introduce awards for best direction (feature film) and best microdrama as it widens its spotlight from broadcast and streaming to theatrical titles and emerging forms of storytelling.
“We don’t want to be one of those awards that has the same categories even when the industry has evolved,” says AACA founder and president Michael McKay. “We did a lot of work before introducing a microdrama category, but it has been immediately accepted by the industry and we were practically over-subscribed with judges.
“The award for best direction (feature film) is a natural progression from our scripted direction category, where film and series were competing as one. It got to the stage where it was demanding to be split into two, which is what we’ve done.”
It has come a long since its first ceremony in 2018, which included awards for Game Of Thrones and prize-winning attendees such as Indian director Anurag Kashyap for Netflix series Sacred Games, New Zealand supermodel-turned-host Rachel Hunter for lifestyle show Tour Of Beauty and CNN news presenter Kristie Lu Stout.
This year, 39 awards will be presented to nominees from 18 countries across the Asia Pacific region, with Mongolia joining for the first time.
AACA president McKay is no stranger to accolades having picked up an International Emmy and Australian Academy Award (AACTA) for reality show The Amazing Race Australia.
The Melbourne-born executive’s connection with Singapore can be traced back two decades when he started production company activeTV in the city-state in 2006. At that time, “people were always bemoaning that we didn’t have our own Oscars, Emmys or Baftas and wanted their own reputable award system,” he recalls.
“The truth is that’s hard to achieve. Some awards are purely commercial – you buy a table, get an award and judging isn’t transparent with a small panel of judges close to the organisers.”
Academy for Asia Pacific
McKay had the vision to create more than an awards programme, but also an academy for the Asia Pacific region with training programmes, conferences, a membership, paid internships and a strict judging process. In 2018, he received the greenlight from Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). “They agreed to fund us for the first three years to get us going”, he says.
AACA was born as part of IMDA’s Singapore Media Festival (SMF), which also includes the long-running Asia TV Forum & Market (ATF) and Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) among others. Ricky Ow, then president of WarnerMedia’s Turner Asia Pacific, was AACA’s founding chairperson.
In 2023, AACA organisers – the Asian Academy of Creative Arts – became a not-for-profit industry body and introduced an Elite Membership programme. As it no longer relies on government funding, it looks to the industry for support through entry submissions, conference ticket sales and sponsors such as new microdrama presenting partner Rising Joy and outside broadcast provider Reality Rentals.
The first-round of this year’s National Winners will be announced on September 30. They are the nominees for the final winners who will join the awards gala at Singapore’s historic Capitol Theatre on December 3.
Running alongside will be the National Winners Conference, an industry platform set to run December 2-3, including a keynote address from AACA chairperson Beverley McGarvey, president of Network 10 and head of streaming at Paramount Australia and New Zealand.
Apart from overseeing a two-stage judging system, McKay’s main role includes staging the awards production as executive producer, drawing on more than four decades of experience in TV production. As well as international editions of The Amazing Race, his extensive list of credits include Asia’s Next Top Model and several Netflix comedy specials with the likes of Kevin Jay and Fakkah Fuzz.
One of the most technically ambitious AACA editions were the virtual ones, amid the Covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021. “When major awards were abandoned or scaled back, we created a four-storey theatre setting based on a Parisian opera house for the red carpet and got actors and performers to record themselves in their own green screen environments,” he recalls.
“It was complex, one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.” It was live-streamed across seven locations such as the Philippines, Jakarta, and Singapore. The virtual production was recognised, winning a gold award at the New York-based Telly Awards.
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