For each category of the Bafta awards last night, camera teams race round the auditorium and point their equipment in the faces of the hopeful nominees. When it came to "outstanding debut", the camera operator looked at his map, rushed up to us, looked at his assistant and frowned. The camera assistant shook his head. No. Can't be. Don't know who these guys are! It was a perfect, hilarious reminder of just how lucky we were to be there in the first place.
We found ourselves caught between two ways of thinking. The first was this: what the hell are we doing here? When the video tape for Black Pond came on, we felt very proud, but also like we'd somehow snuck a wily, plucky peasant into a festival of lords and ladies. Just for context, Black Pond is our first film and it cost less to make than what most people were wearing (£25,000).
The other way of thinking was more like: actually, this isn't as scary as we thought it would be. Our whole journey with this film has been about demystifying the world of making films. From an outsider's perspective, everything seems very daunting. It feels like you need a special ticket in, or a secret crib sheet with all the answers on it. But what we discovered is that you don't. At the Baftas, one of the obvious perks is that you get to play spot the famous people.
But the thing is – spotting the big names and faces wasn't half as exciting as we thought it would be. And that's because, well, when you see "a famous person" in real life, it suddenly becomes very obvious that they are just a person. Like all the other people. They are just somebody who has a job. The Royal Opera House on Bafta night is not Mount Olympus. It's not a convention of the gods, or of a higher form of being. If anything – and of course it is a lovely evening and we had a great time and it was an amazing feat of organisation and we were privileged and grateful to be there and to breathe the same air as Martin Scorsese and John Hurt – but it is (sort of, when you look at it a certain way) a little bit like a business conference. With great canapes.
• Black Pond is out on DVD on 16 April
