Academy Awards

Last night, Belgian time, took place the 90th Oscars ceremony of the cinema.

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The Academy Awards are American film awards, given annually since 1929 in Los Angeles, to recognize the excellence of American and international film productions. The awarding of these distinctions in the areas chosen to represent the creative arts professions (direction, performance, script, technique) is organized, managed and directed by the professional association Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The awards are presented to films and individuals who represent, in the eyes of the Academy, the best achievements, works and works of art of the past year. If this competition is open to films from around the world as they are distributed in Los Angeles County the year before the ceremony, it is above all a celebration of the Hollywood industry.

As a result, it almost always pays tribute to American and English-language films: there has been an Oscar for the best foreign-language film since the end of the Second World War, and there are only two feature-length films, which have won awards. Oscar for best film, whose funding is not primarily American: the film of the Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci The Last Emperor in 1988 and the French feature film The Artist in 2012.

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The Academy Awards are the oldest awards in the field of media and entertainment. They are considered the most important in the world cinema industry. Their American counterparts in the fields of music is the Grammy Awards, television is the Golden Globes Awards and theater is the Tony Awards.

Officially named Academy Award, he has been nicknamed Oscar since 1934. An anecdote reports that a member of the Academy, Margaret Herrick, found that he looked like his uncle named Oscar. Another version attributes the paternity of this nickname to Bette Davis whose first husband, Harmon Oscar Nelson, resembled the statuette. The nickname was officially adopted by the Academy in 1939.

History

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, an association dedicated to the promotion and global preservation of cinema, was originally created on May 11, 1927 by Louis B. Mayer, then boss of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with the aim of promoting studio productions, establish a track record in the financing and distribution of feature films on American soil and assist in mediation in social conflicts.

In 2012, the Academy of Film Arts and Sciences has more than 6,000 members and representatives with the right to vote. Among all the members related to the film industry, the actors represent nearly a quarter of the voters. The professional colleges of voters are 17 in number.

• Comedians
• Documentary cinema
• Composers
• Short film and animated film
• Costume designers
• Special effects creators
• Artistic directors and decorators
• Casting Directors
• Directors of Photography
• Executives (managers of companies, distributors, exporters, ...)
• Sound Engineers and Mixers
• Makeup artists and hairdressers
• Editors
• Producers
• Directors
• Public relations
• Scénaristes

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There is an 18th college enlarged to personalities not concerned by any of the 17 professional branches, which is for example the case of stuntmen or representatives of the technical industries.

Each branch of the profession designates three governors who change regularly but participate in the administration of the Academy. These governors represent the interests of their colleges through a special steering committee. Recruitment is done by co-optation: new members are invited to become one and must receive the sponsorship of at least two members of their branch of industry and the approval of the Board of Governors of the Academy.

The invitations are launched after evaluation of a major contribution to the world of cinema. People who have been selected for or rewarded by an Oscar are usually accepted automatically.
Although the association is open to world personalities, most of its members remain from the United States.

Designation of candidates and voting process

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A film may be nominated for Oscars if it was released indoors in Los Angeles County, California between January 1 and December 31 of the year before the ceremony. The film must last at least 40 minutes, with the exception of Oscars rewarding short films and be in 35 mm or 70 mm format. Since the 2000s, the digital format in 24 or 48 frames per second, with a minimum definition of 1280 x 720, is eligible.

The election of the winners is organized, by correspondence, on two ballots.

The first round is used to develop the nominations, based on the top five names or titles for each category. The members of the Academy choose the candidates only in the category of Oscars related to their professional branch: the actors vote for the best actors and actresses in a first or a second role, the directors for the best realization, the decorators for the best sets, the sound engineers for the sound disciplines, ...

On the other hand, all offer five titles for the Oscar for best film. The forms are sent to the voters at the end of December and must be returned by mid-January.

When the nominations are established, the laureates are appointed, in all categories, by a second round of single-member voting in which all the members participate, without any professional distinction.

Voting usually ends the weekend before the ceremony. To facilitate the voting process, the Academy organizes special sessions, exempts its members from the price of commercial screenings and posts them a DVD box containing the eligible films. Ballots have been counted since 1935 by the audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, of which two representatives bring the envelopes containing the results at the last minute during the evening.

Since 2013, votes are counted in two ways: by mail with a traditional paper ballot and electronically, on the Academy's website.

Anecdote

In 2017, there was a concern with the envelope of the winners of the best film, indeed, It is finally the drama Moonlight: the story of a life and not the musical La La Land which received the Oscar for the best movie.

The whole team of La La Land came on the scene before we finally awarded the prize to Moonlight in total confusion.

The problem is that someone handed the envelope containing the card of the best actress category, won a few minutes earlier by Emma Stone for her role in La La Land.

Quickly, the firm Price Waterhouse Coopers, responsible for the surveillance related to the award ceremony apologized for the blunder.

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Promotional campaign

Each year, the pre-election period is the subject of an intense campaign by the studios to promote their productions and their stars to the voters. Important financial issues are in question, the awarding of an Oscar generally allowing the recipient to review its cachet on the rise, movies to attract more audiences and majors to multiply sales on video.

Several communication, marketing and lobbying plans are put in place to attract the attention of Academy members and gather the most votes: presentation of feature films at end-of-year festivals, cocktails, lunches, meetings , advertising in various media, soliciting interviews for celebrities in variety shows, private screenings, prestigious sponsors, influential consultants ...

In general, a good campaign for selections is valued at $ 5 million. Harvey Weinstein, former president, with his brother Robert, of Miramax and founder of the Weinstein Company was considered the champion of pre-Oscar campaigns: in 2012, the films he produced or distributed totaled 300 nominations and 86 statuettes won.

https://steemit.com/movie/@lndesta120282/harvey-weinstein

To limit the excesses of these campaigns and to prevent conflicts of interest or influence traffic, the Academy has taken certain measures, such as the restriction of private receptions and the ban on the sending of electronic advertising messages in favor of candidate aggressively denigrating competition.

Recently, AMPAS management has applied sanctions against certain personalities. For example, Nicolas Chartier, the French producer of the movie Démineurs by Kathryn Bigelow, was banned from attending the 82nd ceremony in 2010 after sending an e-mail calling for the selection of Demineurs, an independent production and not a 500-feature film millions of dollars, targeting James Cameron's Avatar, the main opponent.

In 2014, the Oscar nomination of Alone's best song Yet not Alone is canceled following the discovery of numerous messages sent by Bruce Broughton, former Governor of the Academy and member of the executive committee of the branch composers, to the members of his college to inform them that his song was eligible for the first round of voting which fixes the nominations.

The statuette

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The trophy represents a knight on a pedestal, standing on a reel of film and holding a sword in his gloved hands. It consists of an alloy of tin, antimony and copper, plated with gold. It was designed by Cedric Gibbons, cofounder of AMPAS, and artistic director of the MGM between 1924 and 1956. At a height of 34 centimeters and a weight of 3 kg, it was sculpted by George Stanley and is made by RS Owens & Company in Chicago, which has the exclusivity of its realization. The thin layer of gold covering the statuette is 24 carats. Its price is about 850 dollars. Ten hours of work are needed to obtain a perfect sculpture.

The shape of the reward has changed little in its history but its weight and manufacture have undergone changes: the first statuettes are gold plated bronze. During the Second World War, because of the requisition of metals for the war effort, the prices distributed are painted plaster casts. But the Academy replaces them later with originals from the laureates.

In order to avoid the black market and the bartering for private collections, each recipient of the trophy is obliged to sign the Winner's agreement which commits him to not resell his prize without having proposed it before against a symbolic dollar to the AMPAS.

The ceremonies

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Originally organized as a banquet, the first ceremony takes place on May 16, 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and brings together 270 people. The ceremony is not initially made to last: the first evening ends in ten minutes and the place costs a few dollars.

Before 1934, the statuette has no name, it is only a professional reward called the Academy Award of Merit. At the time, it was nicknamed the Golden Trophy, the Man of Steel or the Statue of Merit.

The banquet system lasts for a few years. But this event always brings more guests, the formula is abandoned in 1944 in favor of a more traditional award ceremony at the Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, in a form that has continued, to some extent, to our days.
The ceremony is broadcast for the first time on television in 1953 on NBC.

Succeeding several venues, the Kodak Theater, renamed Dolby Theater in 2012 following the bankruptcy of the previous sponsor, officially hosted since March 2002, the ceremony televised live or lightly delayed around the world.

Since 1934, the ceremony is organized at the beginning of the year, more than a month after the announcement of the nominations by the President of the Academy. For each category, a personality is chosen to announce the nominees, open the envelope with the name of the winner and present the trophy.

A tradition applied since 1980 concerns the categories of interpretation: the winners award the Oscar of the equivalent category of the other sex the following year. The winners have the right to express themselves only 45 seconds on stage, in case of speech too long, we launch the orchestra and the microphone is cut 🎤

The ceremony is usually performed by a popular comic actor or actress (Billy Cristal, Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldberg, etc.). This major event in American cultural life is a world high mass for the Hollywood industry: the stars are dressed in creations of the great couturiers.

In 2007, the ABC channel estimates the cost of the ceremony at $ 30 million. This amount includes the organization of the evening but also the routing and counting of the ballots, the sending of DVDs of the films mentioned to the voters, the evenings given before the big night, the ball of governors of the Academy and the lunch of the nominees.

The record audience dates back to 1998: more than 55 million Americans watched the ceremony.

The ceremony rewarding the films released during the previous calendar year, it is designated rather by its number than by its year.

90th Academy Awards

It took place on March 4, 2018 at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles to reward films released in 2017. It is presented for the second time by the comedian Jimmy Kimmel.
The appointments were announced on January 23, 2018.

Here are some of the winners:

Best film: The Shape of Water - Guillermo del Toro and J. Miles Dale

Best Director: Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water

Best Actor: Gary Oldman for the role of Winston Churchill in The Dark Hours

Best Actress: Frances McDormand for the role of Mildred Hayes in Three Billboards: The Panels of Revenge

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Personally, my best memory of the Oscars remains the reward of Leonardo Di Caprio in The Revenant, a sacred film and a great actor!

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