Academy Awards 2012

[swishbig]

My bold prediction, Hugo will win everything. Why? It's already a critics' darling, so why not just award them everything else?

Don't get me wrong, I want Dark of the Moon to win, but you gotta consider the mindset the Academy has.

Exactly, that is why I could care less about what the Academy thinks.

[BAYsplosions!]

Unless I read it wrong or missed something, I saw Dark Of The Moon was nominated for 3 Oscars: Best Sound, Best Sound Editing, and Best Visual Effects. By all means I hope it wins Best Visual Effects and I'm not just saying it cause I'm a huge Michael Bay fan, these vfx were outstanding and from what I saw this year, not much came close. But just to be nominated is great. Hopefully it wins something. What do you guys think?

[jiggyjazzman]

Wasn't one of the other Transformers movies nominated for best sound and best sound editing as well?

[Albershide]

^^ Yes, the first one.


I still hope that the academy will do the right thing and give the VFX Oscar to DOTM. The movie is the end of a franchise that was neglected by them and they can wash their hands with acclaiming in. At least one movie from the trilogy. I'm sure that they know about the buzz that was created around the 2008 winner and the 2010 nominations. And if they want an opinion they should ask the experts. Look at the VES nominations and if you ask any professional that is doing VFX he could tell you that Planet of the Apes is very far from perfect CGI, on the other hand DOTM was almost perfect.

[IHeartBayhem]

Wasn't one of the other Transformers movies nominated for best sound and best sound editing as well?

The first one was nominated for both, while Revenge Of The Fallen was only nominated for Sound Editing.

[I Fight Giant Robots]

are the academy awards the same thing as SAG awards? i know nothing about that kinda stuff.

[Albershide]

are the academy awards the same thing as SAG awards? i know nothing about that kinda stuff.

Academy awards are the Oscars. SAG is Screen Actors Guild awards.

[I Fight Giant Robots]

Academy awards are the Oscars. SAG is Screen Actors Guild awards.

thnx for clearing that up. when are the oscars? and is anyone else hoping that DOTM wins most of the awards, so michael bay decided to make an announcement about i dont know....transformers 4!? haha

[swishbig]

It would be cool if they win but if they don't I wouldn't say it would mean anything....I mean...it's only the Oscars, not like it's a fancy award.

[Trailbreaker]

when are the oscars?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=When+are+the+2012+Oscars%3F

[Albershide]

A guy at the TFW2005 boards mentioned a blog that I find extremely interesting. It's a long but great read. I'll try to sum things up.
The blog is run by Todd Vaziri - a visual effects artist that works for ILM and who worked on all the major ILM projects from 1998 (including the 3 TF movies). In the recent years Todd was trying to find a method by which you can predict which movie will take home the VFX Oscar. For ease I'll quote directly from his blog.

In early 2008, I took an exhaustive look at the previous 23 years of visual effects nominees and tried to determine what was a better predictor of the film that wins the Oscar: critical acclaim or box office popularity. And please keep in mind that this is a game of prediction; this process does not take into account the actual quality or achievement of each years' nominees. We are looking at Academy voting trends, and what criteria influences Academy voters' choices.

This prediction method was good until 2007 when the least critically acclaimed and least box office popular movie won the Oscar - The Golden Compass. I'll return to this later.

After analyzing the data and looking for the trends in the winning films, we added several new criteria and weighted the criteria until we hit paydirt. Using nine carefully weighted scores, we devised a formula which was able to predict the visual effects Academy Award winner with a 100% accuracy

Here are the 9 points that make up the formula that correctly predicts the winner:

• Critical Acclaim
• Domestic Box Office
• Academy Nominations
• Month of Release
• Sequel Score
• Previous Sequel Was Oscar Winner
• Primary VFX Are Creatures
• Facial Animation Acting
• Lead Actor Prestige

The VFX Predictinator (as this method is called) will guarantee an Academy Award win if the film is critically acclaimed, is a huge box office hit, grabs several additional Oscar nominations, and is released late in the calendar year. It can't be a sequel and it must contain lots of organic character work that includes facial performance. Oh, and the lead should probably have an acting Oscar under his belt.
This, however, is a fairly obvious conclusion. What makes the Predictinator interesting is not solely the criteria itself, but the assigning of weight and value to each piece of criteria. The heavy weight of performance-based, organic characters, actor prestige, and critical acclaim, and Oscar nominations match the subjective values of the heavily actor-based Academy. It truly is an honor to be nominated by your peers in the visual effects community, but to win the Oscar, your film needs to be loved by actors who enjoy (and wish to reward) lively character-based visual effects.

So if you apply this method to the last 22 years of VFX Oscars you'll get the winner. It's 100% accurate. Of course the guy tweak many things so this would work for everyone. The hardest tweak was for the 2007 Oscars. Yes that's right the year that Transformers was robbed. Here are Todd's thoughts on this:

In 23 years of charting, in years where there were three nominees for Best Visual Effects, the film with the lowest critical acclaim never won the Oscar. In addition, the film with the least box office return never won the Oscar, as well. Thumbing its nose at the historical statistical data, the 80th Academy Awards gave the visual effects Oscar to "The Golden Compass," the film with both the lowest critical acclaim (by a slim margin) and the lowest box office tally, amongst its fellow nominees.

All the Industry watchers predicted that Transformers, would win the visual effects Oscar for several reasons: its celebrated visual effects, its enormous popularity at the box office, and the fact that the movie was generally entertaining. So exactly how did "Compass" claim Oscar? Here are a few ideas:

Theory 1: The Academy is biased against ILM. This myth, still repeated among some visual effects fans and professionals alike, proclaims that old Hollywood is still fuming at George Lucas, founder of ILM, for his departure from Hollywood, and his hoarding of "Star Wars" riches. The theory also says that Hollywood is tired of ILM 'bullying' the effects community, and after years and years of success, needed to be brought down a notch

Theory 2: The vote was split between "Pirates 3" and "Transformers," giving "Compass" the win. This theory postulates that the majority of Academy voters actually wished that either "Pirates 3" or "Transformers" take home the Oscar, giving a plurality to "Compass."
How would this work? Let's say that 60% of the Academy voters marked either "Pirates 3" or "Transformers" as having the best visual effects of the year, which isn't entirely unreasonable. Well, if that 60% is split right down the middle, that leaves the 40% earning "Compass" with a plurality, and the Oscar win.

Theory 3: "Compass" is the best family-friendly choice. "Compass," on paper, is the most family friendly of the three nominees, starring cute child actors, the handsome Daniel Craig, the beautiful Nicole Kidman, and-- gasp! -- cute, cuddly, talking animals. In fact, one cannot forget a similar upset from 1995, when "Babe," the G-rated family-friendly film defeated the overwhelming odds-on favorite, "Apollo 13." What did "Babe" have that "Apollo 13" didn't have? Cute, cuddly, talking animals.
Although all three films carried the PG-13 rating, "Transformers" and "Pirates 3" were hard PG-13's, in my opinion, with some serious mean streaks of violence and intensity, while "Compass'" action sequences were less intense.

Theory 4: The Academy doesn't want to reward Michael Bay. The poster child for 'all that is wrong in today's cinema' is Mr. Bay, according to the Hollywood establishment, and the theory states that the Hollywood establishment would go out of its way to avoid rewarding Bay by not voting for the film that bears his name.
Bay's crimes include: legitimizing quick MTV-style editing; making films that celebrate explosions, cars, car chases, and boobs; creating the world's shoutiest movies, where a quiet moment is an anomaly; creating dizzying shaky-cam action sequences with so much frenetic camera movement whose ultimate outcome is confusing and disorienting, leaving the audience wondering 'what the heck is going on?'; creating one-dimensional characters; essentially filming misogynistic, racist, jingoistic, product-placement-dripping, military recruitment movies with only as much integrity and honesty that 13 year old boys can handle... and all along the way, driving home with giant dumptrucks full of cash.

Whatever the reason surely there is something strange about 2007. You choose which one is closer to the truth.

And now the prediction for 2012:

graphic2.jpg

So according to this Hugo should easily win the Oscar and DOTM is with the smallest chance of them all. We'll see if this is right in 20 days. I think that this guy will have to tweak again this method as he did after 2007 because I really can't see Hugo win. But who knows.....

What do you guys think?

http://fxrant.blogspot.com/2010/01/v...or-part-1.html

http://fxrant.blogspot.com/2008/03/p...ar-part-5.html

http://fxrant.blogspot.com/2012/01/v...my-awards.html

[Bayhem]

*Critical Acclaim

Yeah, why I'm not surprised that (again) certain people are using critical reviews as some sort of indicator of whether a movie is good or bad. Or whether it deserves to win an Oscar for Visual Effects. "ID4" won an Oscar for VFX and that movie was not exactly a critical darling. But either way it doesn't matter - as far as I'm concerned, the Oscars lost their credibility years and years ago.

Bay's crimes...

Crimes? : rol

I'm curious, what's next? He'll be the destroyer of the entire human race?

I think some people take movies too seriously. Way too seriously. And if what's written on that section is coming directly from that guy Todd Vaziri, he can expect a letter from his bosses. As Megan learned, you don't trash the guy who's giving you a job. And that "Bay's crimes" section is clearly bashing (it's also insulting his fans) and it's clearly coming from the guy who owns this blog. I'd be careful if I were him.

[Trailbreaker]

Exactly what I'm predicting, Hugo. DOTM and everything involved in it simply deviates from the mindset of the Academy. I would honestly love to see it win, it totally deserves it, but that's just not happening.

[Albershide]

Yeah, why I'm not surprised that (again) certain people are using critical reviews as some sort of indicator of whether a movie is good or bad. Or whether it deserves to win an Oscar for Visual Effects. "ID4" won an Oscar for VFX and that movie was not exactly a critical darling. But either way it doesn't matter - as far as I'm concerned, the Oscars lost their credibility years and years ago.

Don't take this too seriously. For critical acclaim he uses Rotten Tomatoes. We all know about them. This is just a small part of the method.

Crimes? : rol

I'm curious, what's next? He'll be the destroyer of the entire human race?

I actually think that he is being sarcastic about these "crimes". He has nothing personal against Michael.

[Bayhem]

Don't take this too seriously.

Oh trust me, I'm not. I just find it very...for lack of a better word, predictable. That's all.

I actually think that he is being sarcastic about these "crimes".

Well to be honest, I see nothing sarcastic about this. But I don't want to derail the thread, so I'll just leave it to that.

[Albershide]

Well to be honest, I see nothing sarcastic about this. But I don't want to derail the thread, so I'll just leave it to that.

I might be wrong. A friend of mine who worked at Digital Domain and was one of the people responsible for the animation of Wheelie in ROTF and Wheelie and Brains in DOTM is now working with us. We're doing Dungeons and Dragons 3. Very often I speak with him about Michael and TF. He told me that every visual effects artist has a huge respect for Michael. Yes he may be a bit too demanding but he knows his stuff and people from the VFX area really appreciate this. That's why I thought that Todd was quoting about MB's "crimes" according to the so called critics and Academy members.

And really we don't have to pay so much attention to a prediction. I thought it's an interesting read. Especially with the 2007 precedent.

[sora]

Crimes? : rol

I'm curious, what's next? He'll be the destroyer of the entire human race?

Sounds funny when Hollywood, the motherland of spectacular films says things like that. If making entertaining movies is a crime, The Lumière brothers were original sinners to begin with.

I hope VFX and sound teams will be given well-deserved recognition.

[Bayhem]

Sounds funny when Hollywood, the motherland of spectacular films says things like that. If making entertaining movies is a crime, The Lumière brothers were original sinners to begin with.

Exactly.

That's why I thought that Todd was quoting about MB's "crimes" according to the so called critics and Academy members.

Let's assume he doesn't like Bay's films. There's nothing wrong with that. He's a person and just like all of us he has his own views and preferences. What I don't like is how all of that is presented in his article - "crimes", "racist", "audiences wondering what's going on the screen". That's just too much, especially when you're talking about a director like Michael Bay, whose films have always been embraced by the audiences all over the world. I seriously doubt that people will keep watching his movies if they were indeed "racist" and "dumb", or if you, as an audience member, couldn't tell what was going on the screen.

[swishbig]

All I have to say is that....I hate the Academy. Not because they never let Transformers win but it's just the way they go about voting and choosing the winners. To me, the Oscars is not a fancy award. Of course I'm not a film maker or part of the movie business so it's easy for me to say that but really, I hate the Academy Awards.

[Albershide]

Yesterday the British awards (BAFTA) gave the award for best VFX to HP. It was competing with Hugo and POTA. Obviously this year nothing can be predicted.
According to this thread everything points to Hugo, but the VES gave the award to POTA and BAFTA to HP. So why not the Oscar to DOTM.

http://www.deadline.com/2012/02/64th...a-awards-live/

[Crainy]

Oscars are a publicity stunt: DOTM will not win. And it does it matter? Not for me.

However, i think the idea that in 2007 the votes were split between Pirates and Transformers is.. intriguing.

[Albershide]

Here is Comingsoon's prediction of the 2012 Oscars. From the Academy's point of view makes sense:

Visual FX – Rise of the Planet of the Apes and the amazing photorealistic apes created by WETA along with the performance by Andy Serkis have wowed everyone who've seen the movie. While we'd prefer to see the "Harry Potter" franchise finally get its due for FX, and it does offer a potential spoiler being the last chance for it to be honored, the WETA team have already won the Visual Effects Society award, which is the strongest precursor.

Sound Editing – Transformers: Dark of the Moon should win because this category is for sound FX and there are few movies that rely as much on sound FX in this category as Michael Bay's movie, and this should be the movie's consolation for losing the visual FX prize again.

Sound Mixing – Hugo should take this one because this award is about the actual mixing of sound FX, dialogue and music and Martin Scorsese's film should receive this technical award because it epitomizes that. While Spielberg's War Horse could be a spoiler, the lack of support elsewhere won't help.

[Matthew62]

There giving all the awards to hugo tf is 10 times better the academy awards are voted on by herbs i cant believe this, lets hope vfx wins

[jamjam101]

No surprise there. They already got shanked from best sound mixing which, HUGO did NOT deserve compared to the complexity and intricate mixing of TF. I can personally guarantee that TF will not get best VFX solely because of the people behind the desk voting.

[Matthew62]

I hate the academy awards tf deserved atleast vfx hugo didnt even look good!