Face time... Ben Affleck at the premiere of Hollywoodland at the London film festival. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP
It may not directly involve the film-going public, but the Bafta screening season - which is just getting under way - is evidence of how a single scheduling change has brought about a fundamental sea change in the British film industry.
Back in 2001, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts moved its annual film award ceremony from April to February. It was intended to give the Baftas a bit more of a profile by shoving them into the early-year frenzy of awards (the Globes, Writers Guild of America et al) that traditionally occur in the run-up to the Oscars. But, amazingly for such a shameless act of coattail-riding, its effect has been considerable.
The most pronounced of these has been the elevation in status of Bafta itself. When the awards were a little-regarded spring event, it played into the public perception of the organisation as a fusty, cobwebby place. It was the domain of old buffers, a port-and-cigar backwater with little bearing on the outside world.
Five years later, they've had to close the membership, even after massively increasing the fees. And since the securing of an Oscar is still commercially significant, squads of Hollywood faces now make a regular stopover in London just to show their faces to the Bafta membership - and to help edge their way onto the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' radar.
Tonight Ben Affleck will be fronting a screening of his film Hollywoodland, about the mysterious death of George "Superman" Reeves, well before its release date. The aim of this charm offensive is surely twofold: if Hollywoodland secures a Bafta nomination, the reasoning is that an Oscar nod must not be far behind.
But all this activity doesn't just benefit the privileged elite. Major names often do double duty by turning up to events at the London film festival, which runs concurrently with the Bafta screenings. Now you know why Affleck found himself on Jonathan Ross the other night. It's all part of the Bafta-Oscar campaign.
