With the Oscars six months away and counting, the Academy are continuing to tweak the rules to try and shake up the awards ceremony — perhaps doing their damnedest to ensure, “Up,” “Star Trek” and other populist fare finally get their due. First came the announcement that the Best Picture category was being expanded to ten films, and then we heard that the amended rules for Best Original Song may eliminate the category altogether unless the contenders reached a certain numerical score during the nomination process (after all, too many songs make that ceremony too long; they’d rather run more ads). Now comes word that the voting process used to nominate the Best Picture films will be used to decide the final winner as well. The new system will weigh both number one votes and how many ballot appearances a film makes to determine the final winner. Algebra isn’t our strong suit so here’s a direct quote from the Hollywood Reporter about how the process will work:
The Academy has opted to use the preferential system in the best picture race because it realized that with a field of 10 nominees, a winner could emerge with just slightly more than 580 votes out of the potential voting pool of 5,800 members.
The preferential system is designed to measure depth of support, since second- and third-place choices can be just as important as first-place choices. “PricewaterhouseCoopers will then be able to establish the best picture recipient with the strongest support of a majority of our electorate,” Academy president Tom Sherak said.
Under the system, ballots are first separated according to first-place choices. If one film wins a majority among all first-place votes, it’s the winner.
If not, the film with the fewest number of first-place votes is eliminated and the No. 2 choices on those ballots are redistributed among the remaining films. The process continues until one film has picked up a majority of votes.
While it seems the Academy is trying to level the now ginormous playing field of ten nominees, it seems the process is geared to favor the most popular film, but not necessarily the best. Great, expect the Oscars to be the biggest farce in years? So once again, smaller films that don’t have the marketing dollars behind them to make sure all 5,800 Academy members get to see their film may lose out even if they get the most number one votes because the Weinsteins were able to schmooze everyone in town with cocktails and “Inglourious Basterds” DVDs.
It seems that the more the Academy tries to shake things up, the more they amend their own rules to make sure things stay the same. Are they really still just so pissed that “The Dark Knight” and “Wall-E” didn’t score nominations? Get over it guys! At the very least, can we get a decent host this year? We’re nominating David Cross.
The single most important tweak the academy should do is simple; make it mandatory for voters to watch at least 90% of the films before voting. These voters usually watch about 20 to 30% percent. And this is completely and utterly unacceptable. How can you pick your favorites, if you don't even know what they are?
And what film fan wouldn't give up an arm and a leg to be a member? It is a complete disgrace that they don't watch most of these amazing films.
If the voters don't have the time to watch the films, if they don't meet the minimum requirements, then they must refrain from voting for that year.
No voting out of ignorance allowed.
I think this simple rule will immediately cut out most of the bull crap nominated.
And here's the thing, the voters don't have to drive 4 hours to some child molester's basement to catch "Che". They get screeners months and months in advance. No excuses. These screeners are sitting right there. Just put it in and watch it for goodness sake. This very simple responsibility is the most important. It should be mandatory.
Okay, rant over.
I actually like this change, being a math person it makes sense to me as the best quality film would most likely have the highest overall votes, but maybe not the most #1 due to peoples personal opinions. I think this new math system will lower the number of flash in a bottle winners who get a big following but aren't necessarily the best film that year.
the oscars have become cheap. i like star trek. not for best picture . i like up. thats why their is a fucking best animated category. whats gonna win that this year? monsters v aliens? fuck this. between this, Scorsese getting treated like a common asshole, and david fincher directing failure to launch 2…fuck the business
If it was just counting 1st place votes, it is possible for each of the 10 nominees to get 10% of votes. And who knows, but a winner could have won the Oscar with less than 20% of the votes if the voting was distributed.
The change makes sense, where the films with few first place votes will be eliminated 1 by one with 2nd and 3rd place votes coming into play as voting proceeds.
I don't think this will help films like TDK or Wall-E because they likely would have just broken into the nominee field anyway with probably much fewer 1st place votes (meaning they'd get eliminated from contention sooner). So if a bunch of people, die-hard fans of Star Trek vote it #1, but more neutral, critical voters vote it #9,#10, it's total count would likely not be anywhere near good enough.
And hopefully, the actors, producers, writer, etc who vote make an effort to see most the acclaimed movies of the year. I mean, after all, they are voting for colleagues so it would make sense that they've seen the films anyway. Who knows, maybe of the 5800 voters, only half vote for the foreign film category if they've seen it and the others obstain.
You can't complain about the voting change–it had to be done. In the worst world, the vote could split almost evenly, and something could win with 11%. If that film is on the bottom of everyone else's list, and one of the others with 10% is everyone's #2, then the latter clearly deserves to win. And voting is a literally a popularity contest, so it's not really anything new. 'Tis the nature of the beast.