Oscars nominations: Last week, nominations for the Academy Awards this year were unveiled. The Power of the Dog, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and directed by Jane Campion, is leading the nominations stats with 12 nods, while science-fiction Dune by Denis Villeneuve comes in second. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences give out the Academy Awards, better known as Oscars, every year for films and it is the most highly regarded award in the industry, despite not having any monetary reward. Here’s how nominations and winners are selected for the Oscars.
The Academy, which had been set up in 1927, comprises over 9,000 professionals of motion pictures. It had been the idea of Louis B Mayer, co-founder and then head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Mayer had felt that the Academy would benefit the film industry and also improve its image.
The Academy has a membership, and in theory, any artiste who is a part of the business of theatrically released films in any of the 17 categories can be a part of it. The categories include actors, directors, writers, costume designers, editors, makeup artists or hairstylists, cinematographers, producers, music, production design, visual effects, sound, documentary and short films or feature animation, according to a report in IE. Apart from this, a category of Members-at-Large is also present, so that those who do not fit into any of the other categories can also be accommodated. While there are unique requirements a potential member needs to meet for each category, there is no application for membership per se. They just need to have two people involved in the same branch to sponsor them.
However, nominees do not even need sponsorship as they are automatically considered for membership.
For nominations, artists for a category by the members of that particular branch itself, using both online and paper ballots. This means that actors can only be nominated by actors, directors can only be nominated by directors, etc. A maximum of five entries can be submitted per member. However, nominations for the Best Picture category are voted for by every member of the Academy, with each submitting a list of five to 10 entries.
Members have to go with a preferential voting system, which means that members have to rank their entries in accordance with their preference. For the final nomination list, the first-preference votes of a film are counted. In case an entry gets over 50% such votes, it is nominated. However, since this rarely happens, the second-preference votes are counted, and then the third-preference votes and so on. For this process, one of the big 4 accounting firms, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), is called on.
Winner selection process, on the other hand, is fairly simple, with all categories becoming open to all members of the Academy to vote on once nominations have been decided. Members then vote across all categories. Interestingly, only two partners of the PwC are aware of the winners until the envelopes are opened during the ceremony.