The 82nd Academy Award update.

[Lord_Stewie]

hey,

There is a slight change you may notice in the upcoming Academy Awards.

Back in June, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced that there would be 10 Best Picture nominees instead of 5 at the upcoming 82nd Academy Awards being held next February. To this day still, that decision causes heated debates among film fanatics, mainly because we don't yet know the kind of impact it will have, and every week we see new movies that have the potential to make it in as a nominee (District 9? Inglourious Basterds?). However, the Academy has announced new voting rules today for members that may effect the final outcome in a big way. It's confusing, but we'll do our best to explain.

Here's an explanation of the new voting rules courtesy of The Wrap. Read on for why it makes a difference.

Instead of just voting for one nominee, the way Academy members have almost always done on the final ballot, voters will be asked to rank all 10 nominees in order of preference — and the results will be tallied using the complicated preferential system, which has been used for decades during the nominating process but almost never on the final ballot.
As a result, a film could be the first choice of the largest number of voters, but find itself nudged out of the top prize by another movie that got fewer number one votes but more twos and threes.
The goal, says Academy executive director Bruce Davis, is to eliminate the possibility that one of the films could win with less than 18% of the vote. One of the issues that increasing the nominees to 10 presents is that, initially, members voting for one movie would vote so sporadically, that it would only take 18% for one movie to win - and that wouldn't be a proper representation of the Academy's choice for Best Picture (they want a majority). That's why this change was made, in order to eliminate that extreme possibility, with the Academy members ranking all 10 of the movies instead, then using a bit of math to determine the winner.

Our friends at Film School Rejects have a fantastic write-up on the new voting rules and both the good and bad. "The major problems have to do with voters themselves," Cole says, but "there are still going to be tight races, still going to be upsets and surprises, and still going to be some genuine winners." Everyone will argue about this for months and months, and even after the Best Picture winner is chosen next year, I'm sure a few people will still argue about it. That's just the nature of the Oscars, but it's also why they're so exciting. Right now I'm just looking forward to seeing what 10 movies end up getting nominated. Bring on the Oscars!

Controversial, Maybe? What are your thoughts on this?.

Enjoy.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by shadblz

hey,
What are your thoughts on this?.

Well, getting past
--1) We've known this for three months now,
there's
--2) This decision's already been nicknamed "The Revenge of Wall-E", as it was clearly designed by last year's regretful committee voters ("Slumdog, what were we friggin' thinking??") to railroad "Up" into a Picture nomination this year.
and not so much
--3) The Academy trying harder to Do What the Golden Globes Do, since the shortened voting period leaves less room to think up new nominations, so most votes just copy off the Critics' Circle and Globe nominations as if the thinking has already been done for them.
(Despite the fact that the CC's deliberately "nyah-nyah" nominate the Dreary Arthouse Favorites, out of fear that the Oscars will go for commercial favorites like they used to , while the GG's are West Coast-sucker enough to believe any studio-generated publicity-buzz campaign and paste it into the nominations without thinking.)

So I'm guessing the CC's will still take over, and we'll maybe get two "Affirmative Action" nominations of commercial films taken from the Globes' "Best Comedy or Musical" in addition to Carl & Kevin's drafting.
Every studio now thinks its own hit is going to be The One That Gets Picked--we've heard from Star Trek and Harry Potter VI's producers already--but personally, I've got my eye on Watchmen showing up as the "token" cineplex Picture.
Not that it 100% deserves it, but feels more like it can play Serious, once the Committee goes back to Serious Commercial again after the novelty wears off.

[Secretagentnumber6]

So it looks like the academy is going to a voting system much like the heisman trophy system.

[kpkelley]

Originally Posted by Secretagentnumber6

So it looks like the academy is going to a voting system much like the heisman trophy system.

They are returning to the voting system they used throughout the 1930s and the first half of the 40s.

[FindYourWay]

Hollywood wants to boost film revenue. It is known that any Best Picture nomination film always gets a big financial boost in either another theater run or home video/sales. Now 10 films get to be talked and written about before the big win. Yeah, I get it.

[MarkJ801]

So what is the new voting system? That article explained the old system, but not the new one at all...

[kpkelley]

Originally Posted by mnx12

So what is the new voting system? That article explained the old system, but not the new one at all...

each voter ranks the movies 1-10. This is supposed to weigh the full opinion of each voter instead of just voting for one movie. They hope that it will give a better consensus as to which of the ten nominations is more widley considered to be the best.

[Chordata]

So what's the update?

[fatediesel]

Originally Posted by O_V_N

So what's the update?

Voters will now be voting for 10 nominees in order of preference instead of just 1 movie. It's been known they were switching to 10 nominees, but they hadn't announced the voting changes.

[Lord_Stewie]

Originally Posted by O_V_N

So what's the update?

lol. . Well apparently the AC is going to be nominating 10 best picture nominees instead of 5. So we have gotten used to before won't be happening this time around. Like the Previous posters on this thread discussed (Read Eric J's post number 2 to 5) Its a weird process. Hope that helps.

[Chordata]

Originally Posted by shadblz

lol. . Well apparently the AC is going to be nominating 10 best picture nominees instead of 5. So we have gotten used to before won't be happening this time around. Like the Previous posters on this thread discussed (Read Eric J's post number 2 to 5) Its a weird process. Hope that helps.

Hasn't that been known for months?

[Lord_Stewie]

Originally Posted by O_V_N

Hasn't that been known for months?

According To Eric and you it had been. Doesn't necessarily means I knew about it or others.

[Chordata]

Originally Posted by shadblz

According To Eric and you it had been. Doesn't necessarily means I knew about it or others.

It was discussed here.

[Lord_Stewie]

Originally Posted by O_V_N

It was discussed here.

didn't find it. I will look it up, and have a mod merge it. thanks.

[fatediesel]

Originally Posted by fatediesel

Voters will now be voting for 10 nominees in order of preference instead of just 1 movie. It's been known they were switching to 10 nominees, but they hadn't announced the voting changes.

As I mentioned above the change is the number of pictures that nominators will be voting on, and that they will be voting in order in preference. I would assume the film the voter puts as the first choice would get 10 points, the film the voter puts 2nd would get 9 points, etc, or something to that effect.

[Lord_Stewie]

Originally Posted by fatediesel

As I mentioned above the change is the number of pictures that nominators will be voting on, and that they will be voting in order in preference. I would assume the film the voter puts as the first choice would get 10 points, the film the voter puts 2nd would get 9 points, etc, or something to that effect.

could you clarify that. Thats where i am confused about the process.

[fatediesel]

Originally Posted by shadblz

could you clarify that. Thats where i am confused about the process.

I think they will ranking their favorite movies from 1-10. So they could have a ballot like I put below and they fill in their favorites at each slot. The film they put as number one will count for more points than the number 10 film. Like secretagent said this is similar to the voting for the Heisman Trophy.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

[drobswim13]

Originally Posted by O_V_N

It was discussed here.

It was only discussed that there would be 10 nominees instead of 5. The update is on the way the voting system is going to work. They just came up with that system this week, so we have not talked about that yet.

I still think they should just keep 5 nominees but I don't know how I feel about the voting system for 10. I'll have to look at it harder in order to form a full-fledged opinion.

[Lord_Stewie]

Originally Posted by fatediesel

I think they will ranking their favorite movies from 1-10. So they could have a ballot like I put below and they fill in their favorites at each slot. The film they put as number one will count for more points than the number 10 film. Like secretagent said this is similar to the voting for the Heisman Trophy.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Much clearer thanks. and figured out the voting process.

[Lord_Stewie]

Originally Posted by drobswim13

It was only discussed that there would be 10 nominees instead of 5. The update is on the way the voting system is going to work. They just came up with that system this week, so we have not talked about that yet.

I still think they should just keep 5 nominees but I don't know how I feel about the voting system for 10. I'll have to look at it harder in order to form a full-fledged opinion.

so there is no need to have it merged i guess. thanks.