The Ben Winston-directed video for One Direction's Best Song Ever won Best British Video at the 2014 Brit Awards last night (February 19th), thanks to a staggeringly popular social media vote which registered over two million tweets.

It was the first time in several years that an award for best music video was presented at the Brits. And with the public able to vote for their favourite video via Twitter, it was also the first award awarded through social media at any major awards show. The vote contributed hugely to the Brits becoming the most tweeted British TV show ever, with over four million tweets over the course of the show, broadcast live on ITV - and half of those tweets coming in the voting for Best British Video. 

With One Direction's huge fanbase, they were hot favourites to win the popular vote for the award. They duly did so, edging out videos by Ellie Goulding, Calvin Harris ft Ellie Goulding, Naughty Boy and John Newman. 1D's Harry Styles tweet of thanks then became the most retweeted of the evening.  

The video – which features the members of the band in heavy disguise as the fast-talking producers of a proposed One Direction movie – was co-written by Ben Winston and BRIT Awards host James Corden. It was produced by Luti Fagbenle at Luti Media and Carly Shackleton at Fulwell73, and commissioned by Mike O'Keefe at Sony Music.

"I'm glad the hard work of Ben and the production team has paid off with this recognition," says Luti Fagbenle. "We're fortunate the video was ever finished as the Miami police department were very close to shutting down our entire shoot. Over a thousand fans turned up outside the shoot location, eager to see the band. It was like Michael Jackson was in town. After negotiating with the police we managed to continue shooting by renting a huge parking lot to contain the fans who had surrounded the building and 10 police cars to control the crowds!  

"The scene outside was crazy. Meanwhile inside the building Ben (Director) and Jamar (our AD) were skilfully shooting a complex shooting order to get each of the 5 one direction boys in and out of prosthetics to play opposite themselves. Much trickier than it sounds especially with dialogue. The boys were somewhat surprisingly fantastic actors and really got into the parts. The video also benefitted from a particularly excellent job by the costume designer Bex Crofton-Atkins and the prosthetics team lead by Donald McInnes for transforming the 1D boys into completely new characters."   

The 4 million tweets recorded during the three-hour period between 8pm and 10:15pm last night, more than doubling the show's previous record and smashing benchmarks set by The X Factor and Comic Relief - even though the show itself only recorded a TV audience of 4 million viewers. Other winners included two awards for Arctic Monkeys - for best band and best album - best male artist for David Bowie, and best female artist for Ellie Goulding.