A day before Hollywood dresses up for the Oscars, it let its hair down to honour independent cinema at the Film Independent Spirit Awards.
But with few surprise winners and many overlapping nominees, the beachside ceremony may have served as a casual-dress rehearsal for Hollywood's top awards to come today.
Birdman took three awards including best feature, as well as the prizes for cinematography and best male lead for Michael Keaton, who played a washed-up Hollywood actor reinventing himself on Broadway in the dark comedy.
Coming-of-age drama Boyhood won best director for Richard Linklater, as well as best supporting female for Patricia Arquette.
Crime reporting drama Nightcrawler won two prizes as well, for best first feature and best screenplay.
Most of the Spirit Awards' top winners are also nominated for the Oscars, including Birdman, Boyhood, Linklater and Birdman director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and all four winners in the acting categories.
Best female lead winner Julianne Moore, best supporting male winner JK Simmons and Arquette are considered strong favourites to win.
But backstage , winners played it cool about the big day to come.
“It's tomorrow?” Moore joked with media. “I'm just taking it one day at a time.”
Asked how he was preparing for the Oscars, Keaton had two words.
“More tequila,” he answered.
The tone turned serious with the prize for best documentary, awarded to Citizenfour, which recounts the first secret meetings between US government cyber-spying whistleblower Edward Snowden and investigative journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald.
Speaking with media backstage, Greenwald said Citizenfour chronicled a “subversion of democracy,” and said Snowden deserved “not decades in prison, but our collective gratitude.”
“The story shows that if you go public and shine a light on what they're doing, that actually can provide meaningful limits,” Greenwald said.
The award for best international film went to Poland's Ida, which beat nominees from Russia, Canada, the Philippines, Sweden and the UK.
Founded in 1984, the Film Independent Spirit Awards honour independent films produced for less than 20 million dollars, including first films and work by unknown, up-and-coming filmmakers. The awards are given by Film Independent, a non-profit arts organization.
Sapa-dpa