Two prestigious awards for two different shows were presented to the Flemish production company deMENSEN at the Promax/BDA Festival in New York.

Promax and BDA are the most important awards for marketing (Promax) and Design (BDA, Broadcast Designers’ Association) in the area of television.

Blocks

The silver Promax World Award was awarded to There’s no life without blocks, a series of trailers for the popular trivia and Tetris combination game Blocks (Blokken). Never actually having been shown on television, the trailers won the award in the special category Best Work Never Seen; for work that achieved a high standard of creativity, but was - for some reason or another - never shown. The trailers all show toddlers playing with blocks. Someone approaches the playing toddler and takes away the blocks, after which the toddler begins to cry heartbreakingly. After this, the text appears: There’s no life without Blocks (‘t is geen leven zonder Blokken).


These trailers were developed by deMENSEN in August 2006. They were to announce the start of the series in September. Tests showed that the general public thought the trailers were very funny, but a little too harsh and up-front for a family show like Blocks. Consequently, deMENSEN and the Flemish television channel “één” agreed unanimously not to broadcast these trailers.


The series of three trailers was recorded at the VRT’s day care centre, the VRT being the Flemish Radio and Television Network. Obviously he toddlers’ parents, all makers of television programs themselves, gave explicit permission for the recording of these trailers. After recording, toddlers Florentin, Louis and Noha were immediately got their blocks back along with a big hug.


Even without the trailers, Blocks is one of the highest scoring shows on Flemish television this season. This season, Blocks pulled an average market share of more than 41% - unrivalled until now – and an average rating of 8 points. These are the highest numbers awarded ever in the thirteen-year-old history of the show.


The gold medal was awarded to the Spanish – Portuguese television channel Odisea. The bronze was for NBC.

Elections 2006, Town Hall Live

In 2006, deMENSEN produced a television show about the upcoming elections, Elections 2006, Town Hall Live (Verkiezingen 06, ZegNuZelf) in collaboration with the news service of the Flemish Radio and Television Network. The show was hosted by three renowned political journalists Ivan De Vadder, Annelies Van Herck and Wim De Vilder. Today in New York, it was awarded a bronze BDA Award (Broadcast Designers’ Association Award) in the category One Time Only Set for its unusual set design.

After two extremely successful editions of the popular This is Your Vote (Doe De Stemtest) during the elections of 2003 and 2004, a completely new approach was chosen for the 2006 municipal elections. The Flemish population was called to organise debates between citizens and politicians all over the country. A studio was designed with a place for one Flemish citizen from each of the 308 municipalities. This panel was compiled as accurately as possible according to demographic proportions: there were exactly 158 women and 150 men; age groups were represented proportionally and the panel included 80 pensioners, 16 students etc.

All these people were asked to take a seat around one central debating table. In this way, they not only formed the set design, but they also emphasised the fact that the debate topics in these local elections were determined by the public.

The set design for Elections 2006, town Town Hall Live is the result of collaboration between production company deMENSEN, set designer Rik Jacques of Pièce Montée from Ghent, lighting designer Michiel Milbou and art director Ludovic Beun. This same team also styled deMENSEN shows such as the late-night quiz Elementary (De Tabel Van Mendelejev), the interactive game show The Home Team (De Thuisploeg) and the memory quiz Black Out.

In this category, silver was awarded to Sky, and gold to NBC.

The greatest winners at the Promax and BDA-awards were the major American broadcasting companies CNN, ABC, NBC, HBO, Fox and MTV. The trailers for Blocks and the set design for Elections 2006, Town Hall Live were the only nominations from Flanders.