Let the Boyhood backlash backlash commence. In common with most right-thinking individuals we felt rather discombobulated when, last month, Birdman took home the top prize from the Directors Guild Awards. As much as we enjoyed Alejandro González Iñárritu's picture, it surely couldn't compare to Richard Linklater's time-lapse epic. Could it? Happily, 24 hours after the DGA aberration, Boyhood was back in pole position, having been named Best Film by Bafta.

If sheer quality wasn't enough to lure us into the Boyhood camp, there is always the small matter of national pride.

Shane F Kelly, Linklater's regular director of photography since A Scanner Darkly, hails from Sixmilecross, Co Tyrone. He has worked on Boyhood, a film that was shot over 12 years, since the beginning, first as the film's camera operator, then as cinematographer.

“It felt like a little project we were working on,” says Kelly. “Most jobs are two months long. I think only Rick [Linklater] and the producer had any idea how it would turn out. The rest of us were just hoping that it would make it over the 12 years.”

Kelly graduated from the University of Ulster at Coleraine some 25 years ago with a degree in multimedia. At that time, he had little option but to leave Ireland to find work in the filmmaking sector. Having relocated to London, he was a runner, then an editor in Seattle, before moving to Los Angeles to work behind the camera. He finally wound up in Austin, Texas.

“I was looking to get out of LA for a bit,” recalls Kelly. “But the film community in Austin is very small so it didn’t take long to run into Rick. And we’ve been working together ever since.”

He and Linklater, both "self-taught" talents, have already shot their next project, That's What I'm Talking About. "It's a lot more in line with Dazed and Confused," says Kelly. "It's probably not what people are expecting. But Rick never stands still."

Sounds tremendous. But for now, we're practising with our pom-poms for Oscar night. Go Boyhood.