Nominations for the 85th Academy Awards® were announced this morning by the show’s host, Seth MacFarlane, and actress Emma Stone. The nomination announcement is always done very early in the morning in Los Angeles to air live during the East Coast morning shows.
The films eligible for the Visual Effects category, showcased at the Visual Effects Bake-Off were:
Life of Pi, Marvel’s The Avengers, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Skyfall, The Dark Knight Rises, Snow White and the Huntsman, The Amazing Spider-Man, Cloud Atlas, John Carter and Prometheus.
In the category Achievement in Visual Effects, the nominees are:
Life of Pi
Guillaume Rocheron
Erik-Jan De Boer
Donald R. Elliott
Marvel’s The Avengers
Jeff White
Guy Williams
Dan Sudick
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Eric Saindon
David Clayton
R. Christopher White
Snow White and the Huntsman
Philip Brennan
Neil Corbould
Michael Dawson
Prometheus
Trevor Wood
Charley Henley
Martin Hill
Life of Pi received 11 nominations, only Lincoln had more with 12. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey had three nominations, Snow White and the Huntsman received two. The visual effects nomination was the only nomination for the rest of the films.
The Hollywood Reporter has a great analysis in an article titled: Oscar Nominations By the Numbers: Fun Facts, Shocking Stats that points out that Life of Pi becomes only the fourth film to score Oscar nominations in all seven technical Oscar categories – best cinematography, film editing, best original score, best sound editing, best sound mixing and best visual effects. Last year’s winner Hugo was the most recent film to be nominated in all seven categories, before that it was Titanic (1997) and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2002).
Cinematography
Anna Karenina
Seamus McGarvey
Django Unchained
Robert Richardson
Life of Pi
Claudio Miranda
Lincoln
Janusz Kaminski
Skyfall
Roger Deakins
Animated Feature
Brave
Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman
Frankenweenie
Tim Burton
ParaNorman
Sam Fell and Chris Butler
The Pirates! Band of Misfits
Peter Lord
Wreck-It Ralph
Rich Moore
A complete list of nominees can be found: oscar.go.com/nominees
The Academy also recently announced that visual effects supervisor and director of photography Bill Taylor has been voted the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Named in honor of the late director of special projects at Warner Hollywood Studios, the John A. Bonner Medal is awarded for “outstanding service and dedication in upholding the high standards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.” The award – a medallion – will be presented at the Scientific and Technical Awards presentation on Saturday, February 9, at The Beverly Hills Hotel.
The Impossible deserved a nomination. Seamless, invisible work. Too often showy visual effects get nominated over the less obvious, story serving works!
Well a strong year to be sure… I was surprised DKR did not get a nod – but that is the way it is…
🙂
mike
I’ll mention upfront that unfortunately The Impossible has not been released here yet so I’ve been unable to watch it, but in my experience the Acedemy seems to favour rewarding films that really try and advance the field of VFX in some significant way, which I suppose is a little at odds with the type of VFX you mention.
The kind of effects you are talking about I would suggest are using techniques that have been highly polished and maybe not so ‘risky’ / flashy, where there was potentially significant R&D spent (not to take away from the fact that the work is still incredible, dont get me wrong!).
Again, I dont say this to take anything away from films you are talking about, and of course there more than likely were significant challenges to overcome in those films, which to their credit may have been fantastically executed. But by the very nature of refining these existing techniques rather than coming out with new ground breaking technology, maybe this is what differentiates a nominated film to one that was not, despite both of them having amazing VFX?
Again, having not seen The Impossible I’m not saying this is the case here, it’s just something I have observed over the last few years. Maybe we should have two awards – greatest advancement in VFX, and most seamless VFX (sometimes they may go hand in hand, others not?) 😛
Of course I could be totally wrong here, just a thought!