What is The Academy and why is The Academy?
Who are the people that stand behind the award nominations and why do they get to decide who wins and who doesn’t? Chances are a lot of your favorite celebrities are part of the voters.
Another year rolls around and another award season does, too — the time when the most exciting conversations happen between movie-goers and their strong opinions. The closer we approach the date of the annual Oscar ceremony, the noisier they become, but also the more questions arise. What is the big deal with the Oscars?
What?
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is the most prestigious organization in Hollywood in the field of making movies, so prestigious that nowadays it’s referred to as just The Academy. Its purpose is to support advancements in the arts and sciences of moviemaking, to celebrate the achievements and the artistry of cinema, and to unite the biggest, most honorable people working in the film industry around the world.
The biggest night of the year for any movie-making person or movie-loving person is the night of the Academy Award ceremony, which usually takes place at the end of February, beginning of March, about a month after the nomination announcements. All the celebrities gather in their expensive gowns on this gala evening and all movie appreciators gather online in their pajamas to see which movies will be crowned as the best of the year in 24 different categories.
This year would mark the 95th edition since the beginning of the tradition.
When?
The Academy first came into existence thanks to producer Louis B. Mayer in 1927, when he gathered with a few other movie professionals and discussed the idea. The original goal was nothing related to awards. At the time, The Academy members were pretty busy dealing with other problems, such as labor conflicts and the industry’s suffering reputation.
Around middle of 1928 the still very green committee, which started with just 36 members, began expanding and considering the idea of giving out annual “Academy Awards of Merit” for recognition in 12 categories, chosen by 5 branches of professionals. The number of those has only grown larger since then as Hollywood gained prestigious international recognition.
A few years after the first ceremony the nickname “Oscars” started popping up and, funnily enough, there’s nothing too elite about it.
Why?
A few individuals have trademarked the statuettes as “Oscars” and to this day, no one has officially stated who the first source was.
Some think it’s actress Bette Davis — she claimed the back of the statuette resembled her husband Harmon Oscar Nelson. Some consider Sidney Skolsky, renowned for his Hollywood gossip writing, to be the first who made it legitimate when he jokingly called the award “Oscar” in a New York Daily News article, annoyed at the snobbery of the award. The most popular explanation relates to academy librarian Margaret Herrick, who exclaimed the statuette looked like her uncle Oscar.
Members of the Academy continued to dub their awards the same way until eventually it became so famous that they rebranded the awards completely to “The Oscars”.
Who?
The Academy currently includes over 10 thousand film industry professionals in different fields, who cast their votes on the nominations and the winners.
The members are split into 17 branches, representing the different lines of work in the business (for the lack of a better word) — Actors Branch, Directors Branch, Writers, Producers, Sound, Editors, Makeup, Casting Directors, and so on. Each branch has 3 elected representatives. The representatives from all the branches, along with the president, the vice-presidents, and the CEO, make up the Board of Governors of the Academy.
The Oscars do not publish their full list of 10 thousand members, aside from the representatives, but be sure that a lot of your favorite celebrities are either taking part or at least have been offered membership.
After quite a few reforms in the recent years caused by scandals and callouts, the Oscars are doing a lot to diversify their pool of voters beyond just older white men. As of 2022, online researches show about 81% of voters are white and 19% are non-white. About 67% are male and 33% female.
How does one get in?
There’s no application process to become a member. Because of the institution’s exclusivity, it’s with invitation-only. In order to be considered for an invitation, a candidate must be sponsored by at least 2 existing members of the selected branch. New candidates are accepted during a specific yearly cycle and only if their candidacy is approved by the Board of Governors.
Wait, there’s more. Of course, there are certain requirements a candidate must pass in order to be eligible for membership. For example, an actor must have a minimum of 3 feature film credits, or a costume designer must have at least 5 years of experience and 4 feature film credits. All the requirements are published on the Oscars website.
Finally, any person nominated for an Oscar automatically becomes qualified for membership in the Academy.
How?
Each branch of members nominates only in categories of their relevant expertise. Actors nominate actors, editors only nominate movies with best achievement in editing, sound designers in sound design, etc.
It’s important to establish that not all movies everywhere get considered for Oscars, they also need to fulfill certain requirements to be submitted for consideration — a minimum runtime of 40 minutes and a minimum run of 7 days in a specifically certified movie theater. The Academy posts the full list of eligible movies to choose from every year: here’s the one for 2023.
Those two rules above do not apply to the Short Film categories and the International Feature Film category. Those have special rules. The requirements are different, and all the members are allowed to nominate.
After the nominees are announced, the voting for the winners happens on a simple one-choice system… except for the most important one of all.
The system for choosing Best Picture, or in other words, the award for movie of the year, is based on a preferential ballot, also known as Ranked Choice Voting. This method works more effectively when there are 10 nominees instead of 5 and it’s objectively better at choosing a winner that the majority of voters will be satisfied with. Ranked Choice Voting is a common method used in public elections in some countries and parts of the US as well as organizational elections similar to this one.
Essentially, what happens is all members of the Academy put the Best Picture contenders in order of their liking. If the first choice is the same for more than 50%, it automatically wins, but if it’s not, the counting of the second choices continues. If a movie doesn’t have too many first-choice votes but is overwhelmingly most people’s second choice, then it might end up winning. That’s why this method is favored — it decides not based on hard numbers, but on consensus.
March 13th is the judgement day this year. Mark your calendars, get ready to judge all the questionable fashion choices on the red carpet and keep your fingers crossed for your favorite movies to win.
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Georgi Petkov is a senior student at the American University in Bulgaria, majoring in Journalism & Mass Communication. He enjoys following award season ceremonies since they help him stay in touch with current trends in cinema and culture.
