How the Oscars Work

by Melissa Russell-Ausley and Tom Harris

Browse the article How the Oscars Work

Introduction to How the Oscars Work

AP Photo/Amy Sancetta
A statue of an Oscar stands outside Kodak Theater on Thursday, Feb. 20, 2009. See more movie-making pictures.

Every spring, the movie industry gears up for its biggest celebration: the Academy Awards, more commonly known as the Oscars. There is extensive press coverage of the event, even down to the arrival of the stars; flash bulbs and microphones abound as the nominees and other famous, well-dressed guests make their way down the "red carpet," flanked by cheering onlookers.

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The Oscars aren't just for Hollywood's most powerful and glamorous, though -- millions of people tune in every year to root for their favorite movies and actors, check out the incredible clothing on display, or maybe just catch any embarrassing podium mishaps as they happen.

In this article, we'll find out what the Oscars are all about. We'll take a look at the organization behind the Oscars and see what the "Academy" actually is, check out the Oscar statuette itself, and learn some interesting tidbits of Oscar history.

The Academy

So many Oscar winners gush, "l would like to thank the academy" that it's become a cliche. But what is the Academy, anyway? And why should it be thanked?

The Academy, in this case, is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a professional honorary society formed in 1927. In spirit, the Academy is something like the Phi Beta Kappa Society or National Honor Society. It's an organization dedicated to promoting excellence in a particular field (filmmaking). Just like similar organizations, it has many members connected to that field (more than 6,000 filmmaking professionals).

Photo Courtesy A.M.P.A.S.
110 of the 76th Academy Awards nominees, gathered together at the 23rd Annual AMPAS Nominees Luncheon at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, CA

You must be invited by the Academy to become a member. Different branches of the Academy (focusing on different aspects of the filmmaking world) have their own standards of eligibility for potential members.

The Academy is involved in a lot of different projects -- from film preservation to developing new film technology -- but it's best known for its yearly awards ceremony. The purpose of the Academy Awards is to promote excellence in filmmaking by honoring extraordinary achievements from the previous year.

Members of the academy, including actors, producers, directors and a variety of other film craftsmen, choose who will receive the awards that year by casting ballots. So when a winner thanks the academy, he or she is really thanking all their professional peers who collectively decided to bestow the honor. They're also thanking the organization as a whole, which decided to hand out awards in the first place.

That's the story of the Academy, in a nutshell. But then who's Oscar? In the next section, we'll get acquainted.

All About Oscar

Photo courtesy ^©A.M.P.A.S.
The Oscar^® statue

We generally think of the entire Academy Awards ceremony as "the Oscars," but Oscar is really just a nickname for the actual award statuettes and their image.

When MGM art director Cedric Gibbons and sculptor George Stanley created the statuette in 1928, the Academy referred to it as the Academy Award of Merit. It didn't take on the name Oscar until the 1930s.

There are several stories about the nickname's origin, and nobody is completely sure of the truth. The Academy supports this version: In the early '30s, an Academy librarian named Margaret Herrick remarked that the statue looked like her Uncle Oscar. The name stuck, and the Academy staff began referring to the statue as "Oscar." In 1934, Sidney Skolsky mentioned the nickname in a column on Katharine Hepburn's first Best Actress win. The name caught on, and the Academy officially adopted it in 1939.

Photo courtesy ^©A.M.P.A.S.
Riggers hoist a giant Oscar into place in front of Shrine Auditorium before the 73rd Academy Awards.

According to the Academy, the Oscar statuette depicts a crusader knight, grasping a sword. The knight stands on a film reel, with five spokes that represent the five original branches of the Academy: Directors, Actors, Writers, Producers and Technicians.

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Casting an Oscar statuette

Photo Courtesy ^©A.M.P.A.S.
Assembling an Oscar statuette

The statuette weighs 8.5-pounds (3.85 kg) and stands 13.5-inches (34.3 cm) tall. Craftsmen at R. S. Owens & Company carefully cast each statuette in britannium (a metal alloy), and plate it with 24-karat gold. The figure is mounted to a round, black marble base.

Oscar Deviations
Source: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

The original Oscars were cast in bronze. After a few years, the Academy switched to britannium to make it easier to apply a smooth finish.

In the early years, the Academy gave child winners miniature Oscars.

In 1937, ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy, won an Oscar for special acting: a wooden Oscar with a moveable mouth.

In 1938, the Academy honored Walt Disney with one full-size Oscar and seven miniature statuettes for "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

During World War II, Oscars were made of plaster due to the metals shortage. Winners were allowed to turn in the plaster statues for gold ones when the war ended.

Picking the Winners

The first stage in selecting Oscar winners is narrowing all the possible honorees in a given year down to five nominees for each award category. To be eligible for nominations in any of the feature film categories, a movie must meet these basic requirements:

It must be more than 40 minutes long.
Its public premiere must have been in a movie theater, during the appropriate calendar year (during 2003, for the 76th Academy Awards).
It must have premiered in 35mm or 70mm film format or in 24-frame, progressive scan digital format.
It must have played in an L.A. County theater, for paid admission, for seven consecutive days, beginning in the appropriate calendar year.

If a producer or distributor would like their eligible film to be considered for an Oscar nomination, they must submit an Official Screen Credits form. This form lists the production credits for all related Oscar categories. The Academy collects these forms and lists the submitted films in the "Reminder List of Eligible Releases." In January, the Academy mails a nomination ballot and a copy of the "Reminder List" to each Academy member.

Photo Courtesy ^©A.M.P.A.S.
A postal carrier, the Beverly Hills Postmaster and PricewaterhouseCoopers officials load up a mail truck with nominee ballots for the 75th Academy Awards.

For most of the award categories, only Academy members in that particular field are allowed to vote for nominees (that is, only directors submit nominations for best director and only editors submit nominations for best editor). Foreign film and documentary nominees are chosen by special screening groups made up of Academy members from all branches, and everybody gets to select best picture nominees. Foreign film nominees are selected from a list of films submitted by foreign nations. Every foreign country can only submit one film per year.

Photo Courtesy ^©A.M.P.A.S.
Academy staff sorts through foreign film submissions. In 2002, the Academy received a record 54 entries in the foreign language film category.

An Academy member can select five nominees per category, ranked in order of preference. For most categories, voters write in only the film title. For acting categories, the voters pick specific actors. It's up to the individual Academy voters to decide whether an actor should be nominated for leading role or supporting role. An actor can't be nominated for both categories for a single performance, however. The Academy assigns the nominee to whichever category the nominee qualifies for first. Producers often take out ads in Variety and other major movie industry magazines to suggest nominees for particular categories.

Academy members typically have a couple of weeks to submit their choices for nominees. Once the ballots are in, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers tabulates the nominee ballot votes in secrecy. Soon after, the Academy announces the nominees in an early morning press conference at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills.

Photo Courtesy ^©A.M.P.A.S.
Oscar®-nominee Sigourney Weaver and AMPAS President Frank Pierson announce nominations for the 76th Annual Academy Awards.

A week or so later, the Academy mails final ballots to all Academy members. Members have two weeks to return the ballots, and then the "polls" are closed. PricewaterhouseCoopers tabulates the votes in absolute secrecy and seals the results.

While all this is going on, production companies are sinking considerable funds into campaigning for their contenders. The Academy condones any efforts to get Academy members to see the films, but restricts production companies from mailing out inappropriate incentives. Production companies are allowed to send Academy members video copies of contender films, and to organize special screenings of their films.

Is it Really a Secret? In the Academy's early years, the award winners were announced the night before the ceremony. This allowed newspapers to have the winners listed in the late-night editions that would go out on the night of the Oscars after the winners had been announced. However, newspapers began printing the Oscar edition earlier in the evening, and by 1940, ceremony guests could pick up a paper and find out who won while on their way to the ceremony. Perhaps sensing that this early notification would bring an end to people actually attending the ceremony, and to add suspense, the Academy began keeping results in the sealed envelopes that we know today. Now, when the Oscar presenter says, "and the Oscar goes to," we're all finding out at the same time.

Categories

The Oscars honor the entire spectrum of filmmaking, from acting to technical achievement. There are now 15 Academy branches in all:

actors
art directors
cinematographers
directors
documentary
executives
film editors
makeup
music
producers
public relations
short films and feature animation
sound
visual effects
writers

There are now 24 competitive Oscar^® categories, and a handful of special-recognition Oscars every year. This year, awards will be given for:

Actor in a Leading Role
Actor in a Supporting Role
Actress in a Leading Role
Actress in a Supporting Role
Animated Feature Film
Art Direction
Cinematography
Costume Design
Directing
Documentary Feature
Documentary Short Subject
Film Editing
Writing (Original Screenplay)
Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
Visual Effects
Sound Editing
Sound
Short Film - Live Action
Short Film - Animated
Best Picture
Music (Song)
Music (Score)
Makeup
Foreign Language Film

After all the ballots are in, and the votes are counted, it all comes down to the big night itself. The Oscars is a night of honoring big-budget entertainment, and, appropriately, it is big-budget entertainment event, itself. Every year, hundreds of workers, including carpenters, artists, musicians, cameramen and chefs, work days on end preparing for the big show. The result, in a good year, is a vibrant, glamorous celebration of all things Hollywood. (See Los Angeles Almanac: Locations of the Academy Awards Ceremony to check out the past and present locations for the big event.)

And the Nominees Are ...

Best Picture:

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
"Frost/Nixon"
"Milk"
"The Reader"
"Slumdog Millionaire"

Foreign Language Film:

"The Baader Meinhof Complex" - Germany
"The Class" - France
"Departures" - Japan
"Revanche" - Austria
"Waltz with Bashir" - Israel

Actor in a Leading Role:

Richard Jenkins in "The Visitor"
Frank Langella in "Frost/Nixon"
Sean Penn in "Milk"
Brad Pitt in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
Mickey Rourke in "The Wrestler"

Actress in a Leading Role:

Anne Hathaway in "Rachel Getting Married"
Angelina Jolie in "Changeling"
Melissa Leo in "Frozen River"
Meryl Streep in "Doubt"
Kate Winslet in "The Reader"

Actor in a Supporting Role:

Josh Brolin in "Milk"
Robert Downey Jr. in "Tropic Thunder"
Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Doubt"
Heath Ledger in "The Dark Knight"
Michael Shannon in "Revolutionary Road"

Actress in a Supporting Role:

Amy Adams in "Doubt"
Penelope Cruz in "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Viola Davis in "Doubt"
Taraji P. Henson in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
Marisa Tomei in "The Wrestler"

Source: Oscar.com

For much more information about the Oscars and their history, check out the links on the next page.

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