we're only days away from the 95th annual Academy Awards but over the years as I cover the Oscars I've gotten the same question from a lot of you how exactly do the Academy Awards work and it's a good question because the answer has changed over the years so let's break down all things Oscars and how the movies and talent that win end up on stage with that golden trophy so let's start with the basics first and foremost what is the academy well the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded in 1927 mainly as a labor organization by these people 36 prominent Hollywood figures at the time including actors Mary Pickford Harold Lloyd and Douglas Fairbanks director Cecil B Demille and Executives Louis B Mayer Irving thalberg and Harry and Jack Warner the academy soon became famous for their yearly Academy Awards later known as the Oscars which Grew From a simple luncheon to the elaborate ceremony that we see today there are currently 17 branches of the academy Each of which generates their own Oscar nominations those branches are actors casting directors cinematographers costume designers designers directors documentary Executives film editors makeup artists and hair stylists music producers public relations short films and feature animation sound visual effects and writers there are also members at large people whose film related work doesn't fall directly into one of these categories and also associate members who belong to the academy but don't work directly in Film Production members at large vote for the Oscars while associate members do not today the Academy's membership has grown from its original 36 to reportedly around 9 500 a massive expansion from the nearly 5 800 who belong to the academy just a decade ago the academy roster was expanded significantly in the last several years to address a lack of diversity and membership and the largest branch is the actors Branch at just over 1300 members the smallest Academy branch that hands out its own award is the costume design Branch at just over 150 members and the newest Academy branch is the casting directors branch which was established in 2013. membership to the academy can be gained either by being nominated for an Academy Award or being sponsored for membership by two members of the branch in which your eligible for admission nearly 400 members were invited to join the academy last year including non-nominees like actors Anya Taylor joy and Robin DeJesus Disney executive Dana Walden and film critic and historian Leonard Malton as a member at large the Board of Governors is a group of elected Academy leaders from each branch and they make the final decision on membership as well as any other procedural matters like rule changes and disciplinary issues current Governors at the Academy include actors Whoopi Goldberg and Marley Matlin directors Ava Duvernay and Jason Reitman producer Jason Blum and costume designer Ruth e Carter so we know what the academy is now what films are eligible to be nominated for the Academy Awards well there are some slight differences depending on what kind of film you've made the majority of submissions for the Oscars are live-action narrative features what you would usually go see at a movie theater on a Friday night a movie like top gun Maverick or everything everywhere all at once or let's say King Ralph do you are the new King of England eligible features have to have a run time over 40 minutes long they have to have been publicly exhibited in the eligibility year between January 1st and December 31st on film or on digital with a minimum projector resolution of 2K and stereo sound the movie also has to have been available for paid admission in a commercial theater and one of the eligible markets for the Academy those markets include LA County New York City the San Francisco Bay Area Chicago Miami and or Atlanta and the movie has to have played for seven consecutive days in the same theater playing three times a day with one screening between 6 pm and 10 pm or at a drive-in in at least one of the six eligible markets at least once daily films also have to have been advertised in a way that's considered standard and generally a theater listing with the showtime will meet this requirement recorded performances of exhibitions in another medium don't count which means even if Hamilton had gotten that theatrical police back in 2020 it would not have been Oscar eligible turn around bend over I'll show you where my shoe fits animated features have very similar requirements they have to be longer than 40 minutes they have to meet the exhibition and advertising requirements and for animated features animation must figure into no less than 75 of the film's running time a narrative animated film has to have a significant number of the major characters animated and if the animation mimics live action then the creators have to submit information showing how and why it's actually a work of Animation these rules were recently loosened which allowed for the inclusion of the movie Marcel the Shell with Shoes On this year it's largely live action but animation is a crucial part of the entire movie and most of its main characters are stop-motion animation thus it's eligible but these rules would likely still exclude movies like ready player one which by my calculation did not hit the 75 animation threshold although someone might be sitting there with a stopwatch just to make sure feature documentary filmmakers have to meet all of the exhibition and advertising requirements of their narrative counterparts or they have to have won a qualifying award at a qualifying film festival and the academy provides a list of those Awards and those festivals it's a pretty extensive list a documentary is also eligible if it's submitted by a country as their selection for best International Film this actually happened a few years ago when Macedonia submitted a documentary honeyland for best International Film it ended up being nominated in both the documentary and International Film categories the only time in Oscar history that this has happened speaking of International Film in order to be eligible for an Oscar over 50 percent of the dialogue must not be in English the movie must have played in a theater in its country of origin for seven consecutive days between January 1st and November 30th in the eligibility year although this is subject to review in case the movie is from a country in which exhibition would not be possible creative control must have been primarily in the hands of citizens or residents from the country of origin so sorry Finland you can't just import Steven Spielberg to win you an Oscar and each country can only submit one movie a year for consideration and this has had big ramifications for movies like rrr India did not choose that as their submission for best International feature this past year so it wasn't eligible to be nominated in that category what were you thinking India short films that want to be nominated for Academy Awards have to have a run time of 40 minutes or less they can't be ads or just parts of feature-length films or unair TV episodes or unsold TV pilots and no student films that were not exhibited theatrically are eligible eligible films also have to have had the seven day release in one of the six eligible cities or have won a qualifying award at a qualifying film festival or have won a gold silver or bronze prize at the Student Academy Awards and one category with very dicey rules is best original score a movie score must be created specifically for the eligible feature length motion picture and comprise a minimum of 35 percent of the total music in the film which is subject to appeal in the case of sequels the score has to consist of more than 80 percent newly composed music which does not contain any pre-existing themes and this is played into Oscar history a few times famously Nino wrote a score for the Godfather one of the most famous ever written was disqualified and its nomination revoked because it was discovered that he had used themes composed for a 1958 Italian film called fortunella foreign just this past year the score for tar was deemed ineligible because it did contain original work from composer Hilder iguana daughter but it was mixed with other classical music and thus was deemed not able to be nominated you want to dance the mask you must service the composer so let's say you have all this worked out and the work that you've done is eligible how denominations work well they're different for lots of categories and for every category except best picture the nominees are chosen by the corresponding branch of the academy or a panel of Academy members that are specially selected for certain categories it's important to note that in nearly every category the academy now uses ballots submitted in order of ranked Choice each Academy member selects five ranked nominees with their favorite film or performance at number one and their fifth favorite at number five it's a complicated system and the math Works differently for nominations versus best picture voting but don't worry we're going to do a full breakdown and demonstration of ranked choice balloting in a few minutes when we talk about s picture the important thing to note is that it's important not just who you nominate but how high you nominate them for acting nominations a list of eligible actors and actresses is sent to the acting Branch prior to nominations and up to 10 actors and 10 actresses can be eligible for any given film the members of the acting Branch determine whether a role is a lead role or a supporting role for your consideration campaigning from Studios is just a suggestion when it comes to this and that was evident back in 2021 when lakeith Stanfield was nominated for best supporting actor in Judas and the black Messiah despite a campaign from the studio to nominate him for best lead actor you can't be nominated for the same performance in both the lead and supporting category if you get enough votes to get nominated for both you get a nomination in the category where you had a bigger percentage of the vote technically this means that Michelle Williams whose performance in the fablemans was considered to be a borderline lead supporting performance could have gotten enough votes to be nominated in both categories if voters couldn't decide where to nominate her but since she had more votes in the lead actress category that's where she was nominated and the actress in sixth position would then have been bumped up in the supporting race again hypothetically an actor also can't be nominated for different performances in the same category so even if Meryl Streep gave two career best performances in the same year if they're both lead roles she can only get nominated for best actress once but there is one way that an actor can be nominated twice in one year and that's for two different performances one lead and one supporting this has happened a dozen times in Oscar history most recently back in 2020 when Scarlett Johansson was nominated for best actress and marriage story and best supporting actress in JoJo rabbit the last person to win with two Oscar nominations in the same year was Jamie Foxx who won best actor for Rey the same year he was nominated for best supporting actor in collateral oh oh yeah you ready for animated films who want that Oscar every year the academy assembles an animated feature nominating committee which is open to all Academy members that committee is required to watch a percentage not specified directly in Academy rules of all the films that are submitted then nominating ballots are sent in by the animated feature nominating committee as well as members of The Academy short film and feature animation Branch the person nominated for an animated film must be as the academy rules say quote the key creative individual or individual's most clearly responsible for the overall achievement no more than four people can be nominated for the best animated feature Oscar one must be the director and the rest must be credited as producers not executive or associate or co-producer produced by credits only however if an established producing team is credited as the producer on a project then the academy will consider them a single produce sir this is how five Oscars were given away for Spider-Man into the spider-verse a few years ago three went to the film's directors and two went to Phil Lord and Chris Miller whose established producing partnership allowed them to be credited as a single producer and not to exceed the Academy's limit of four nominees in this category and thank goodness because I would hate to have seen the death match between Lord and Miller to see who was going to get that Oscar nomination let's go I loved you for feature documentaries first the Academy's documentary branch uses a preferential voting system to generate a 15 film short list these shortlists are usually announced in the December before the ceremony about a month before nomination voting begins and then the documentary Branch nominates five films from that 15 film short list Final voting is open to all Academy members who have watched all five nominated films and there are special screenings set up expressly for this purpose when it comes to International films since there are so many submissions for this award technically one per country in the entire world the Oscars actually have two committees for nomination purposes the international feature film preliminary committee views all of the eligible films and votes to produce a short list of 15 movies then the international feature film nominating committee views all 15 shortlisted films and votes for the five nominees as with documentaries final voting is open to all Academy members who have viewed all the nominees in the category now the interesting thing about International Film is that no single person technically is nominated for this Oscar the country is the nominee for awards purposes the Oscars require that the director of the film be the movie's representative and accept the award on behalf of the country but the director of the movie is not the Oscar winner that's how a director like tariko Fellini for example directed four Oscar winners for best International feature but it's never counted as having won a competitive Oscar and the same can be said for legendary directors like Francois truffaut ingmar Bergman Akira Kurosawa and many others they all directed oscar-winning films but never technically won an Oscar when it comes to short films the academy process for nominating documentary animation and live action shorts is entirely unique first volunteers from the short film and feature animation Branch along with invited members of the director's producers and writers branches view all of the submitted shorts and rank them from 10 to 6 where 10 is excellent and 6 is poor why ten to six I don't know the 15 shorts in each category with the highest average score then move on and those 15 shortlisted nominees are viewed by all active members of these short films and feature animation Branch as well as invited members from the other branches all voting members must view every title and submit a ranked ballot from which the five nominees in each category are selected Academy members who have viewed all the nominated films then vote for the winner when it comes to the music categories everybody knows best original score and best original song but did you know that there's an Oscar for best original musical for which the academy has rules drawn up but which has never been presented according to the academy rules it's only activated By Request of the music branch executive committee to the Academy's Board of Governors when that music Branch determines that enough musicals have been made of sufficient quality to Merit and Academy Award the best original musical Oscars been on the book since the year 2000 but Academy guidelines also say that in a year where nine or fewer potential nominees exist the music Branch can recommend that an award not be handed out and the Oscar rules for the best original musical stress the original part it has to contain five songs from the same writers used to advance the story of the film so Elvis for example wouldn't count because they're not original songs the Bob's Burgers movie last year also falls short by a couple of songs because it doesn't have enough original music think of the last time really that nine holy original movie musicals were even released in one year and you can see why this Academy Award is likely to never be given out for best original score the Academy's music Branch watches all of the eligible films and for best original song they watch Clips in order to generate a 15 film short list for each category which is the narrow to five nominees now this is where it gets a little tricky when it comes to the 15 song short list a film can have a maximum of two songs on that short list that are from the same writers if there are several eligible songs written by the same people in a movie the two with the most votes will advance so for example last year only two songs from Encanto could ever have advanced to the short list because they were all written by lin-manuel Miranda but if he had split songwriting duties with somebody else then two of lin-manuel songs could have advanced to the short list and two of the other writers could have but regardless of who wrote the songs when it comes to the five final songs nominated for the Oscar a movie can have only two total songs nominated so let's say you make a movie that has five original songs but they're written by different people um Andrew Lloyd Webber Beyonce Daft Punk John Williams and the Ghost of David Bowie because they're from five separate writers they could all advance to the best original song shortlist but because all five are from the same film only two of them could be nominated for the Oscar if 25 or fewer works are submitted for either category the music Branch can recommend that nominations be decreased to three and as mentioned earlier if nine or fewer works are submitted then a recommendation can be made not to hand out the award at all unlike some of the other categories the entire Academy votes for the final winner in the music categories with no preconditions or qualifications needed based on these rules and a few others individual branches all generate their own nominees and no more than five nominations are allowed in any one category except for Best Picture which now has 10 mandated nominees meaning 10 movies have to be nominated each year at least for right now also if a nomination is revoked for some reason those nominees are not replaced so you don't bump up the next person down if somebody's deemed to be ineligible but that's okay alone yet not alone even though your nomination was revoked you weren't going to beat let it go anyway nothing was going to be let it go so you made an eligible film you went through this entire process and you got nominated what happens next well first the academy requires a copy of every film nominated for an Oscar which then becomes property of the academy the quality is required to be equal to that a theatrical exhibition and for films that were exhibited on film and digital a film print is required now the academy is not selling these out of their trunk they may not use these copies to make money of any kind they're to be used for Academy members to view each nominated film and also for archival purposes any disputes regarding credits are ironed out after nominations are announced and campaigning continues for Academy Awards under special Academy restrictions and if you haven't seen my video on the whole Andrea risborough situation I go a lot more in depth as to what those restrictions are one of the perks of being an Oscar nominee is attending the annual nominees luncheon whereas many nominees as can make it gather to shake hands and take the Academy's annual class picture imagine being the short film documentarian who gets to stand next to Steven Spielberg that's pretty cool select nominees are also often given a high-priced gift bag last year's bag included a fifty thousand dollar three night stay at this castle in Scotland a twelve thousand dollar liposuction voucher from this guy twenty five thousand dollars in home renovation from these people and a four night fifteen thousand dollar stay at this California Resort you know in case the Scotland trip really wore you out the total value of this gift bag was a reported one hundred and forty thousand dollars which is why not all of the Oscar nominees received it just the nominees in the four acting categories the show's three hosts and the nominees for best director you know the people like Denzel Washington and Steven Spielberg who really need a little luxury in their lives although for some of last year's nominees maybe a little time to decompress wasn't the worst thing in the world just you know get away for a while yes it's a little frustrating that this high price swag is reserved for people who could mostly already afford it but I also have to admire the hustle of the Dunst plemons and cruise Bardem households because they're two married couples who got double everything by virtue of the fact that they were both Oscar nominees in the same year hashtag couple goals I hope you all enjoyed Scotland twice and I also hope that you vacation together I don't know that just seems like a delay delightful vacation crew after the nominees have been whined and dined and given things final Oscar voting happens and as a matter of fact final Oscar voting is underway uh uh well right now actually and closes on March 7th ahead of the Academy Awards on March 12th the entire Academy is eligible to vote in every category with the only restriction being the few categories that require members to watch all the nominees once voting is closed the accounting firm pricewaterhousecoopers tabulates the results and keeps those results secret until they are revealed on Oscar night and that firm has been doing this since 1935. they send representatives to the Oscars with the envelopes to ensure that the results that are announced are accurate unless of course one of them is around backstage and hence the best picture presenters the envelope for best actress by mistake and then the wrong winners announced and the other person the one who didn't give the presenters the wrong envelope isn't really paying attention and doesn't catch the mistake until the wrong winners are halfway through their speech we lost by the way but you know guys I'm sorry there's a mistake here's your best picture that's exactly what happened in 2017 by the way a mistake entirely attributable to the two people in the room who had one job which was to ensure the Integrity of the results naturally they were both fired from attending the Oscars not from their jobs and the academy didn't fire pricewaterhousecoopers either Hollywood baby but before those results even hit the inside of those envelopes there's a relatively new process that may have changed the outcomes for a lot of the different races because when it comes to voting most Oscar categories aren't winner take all for the last decade plus the academy has moved to a ranked Choice voting or what some call a preferential ballot system but how does this work well let's break it down academy voters in most categories rank their top five choices in each category using ranked Choice voting or a preferential ballot the goal with ranked Choice voting is to get the majority of number one votes AKA 50 of all votes plus one the easiest way to do this is to get 50 plus one of the voters to rank you number one outright and if that happens you automatically win but given the talent involved with the Oscars it's unlikely that such a blowout win could occur if no nominee has 50 plus one of of the number one votes the nominee with the fewest number one votes is eliminated then anyone who ranked the eliminated nominee as their Top Choice has their number one vote reassigned to their second choice the process then repeats eliminating more nominees if necessary until one nominee has enough number one votes to get that 50 plus one majority I know this sounds really confusing so let's take a look at this system in action for the purposes of this demonstration I took all 10 best picture nominees and had a randomizer generate 21 ranked lists from 1 to 10.
I picked 21 to give us a good sample size and also to cut down on the chances of a tie so let's see what this randomly selected group of fake Oscar voters picked for Hollywood's biggest prize when we look just at the raw ballots the movie with the most number one rankings is women talking with five and in the old system where Academy members just voted for their one favorite movie that would make women talking the winner despite being the top choice of just 5 out of 21 hypothetical Academy members but with ranked Choice voting women talking doesn't meet the 50 plus one threshold needed to win which for this demonstration is 11 out of 21 votes so we begin to get rid of options before we even get started we can eliminate tar from contention because the randomizer did not give it any first place votes and as you can see this removes tar from everyone's list a movie can be everybody's second choice but if it's nobody's first then it's gone besides women talking with five top choices the other films receiving number one votes on this raw group of ballots were Elvis with four the fablemans with three the Banshees even a Sharon with three everything every all at once with two and Avatar the way of water top gun Maverick All Quiet on the Western Front and triangle of sadness with one a piece because ranked Choice eliminates the option with the fewest number one votes we can now get rid of those four movies which after just one round Cuts our 10 nominees down to five now obviously this is an accelerated version of what really happens but for demonstration purposes it works so now we cross those four movies off of everyone's list and everybody who had those movies as their number one pick now has their top vote reassigned this ballot is a good example of how the system works you can see that this voter picked Avatar the way of water as their number one choice and tar as their number two choice of course tar their number two film was already eliminated and now with Avatar the way of water gone their number one vote now goes to their third ranked movie women talking this is why it's important not just for members to rank their top choice but to rank all of them this ballot ranked top gun Maverick and All Quiet on the Western Front as their top two choices and with both of those movies eliminated their number one vote now goes to their third ranked pick everything everywhere all at once this ballot had All Quiet on the Western Front at number one and with its elimination their number one vote now goes to their second pick the Banshees event is Sharon and this voter will likely be very disappointed on Oscar Knight because their top three picks were triangle of sadness Avatar are the way of water and top gun Maverick with those three gone their number one vote now shifts down to their fourth ranked film Elvis all told after these eliminations women talking picked up one first place vote everything every all at once picked up one the Banshees of Innis Sharon picked up one and Elvis picked up one that leaves the tally after round two with women talking still in the lead having picked up one first place vote for a total of six with Elvis right behind at five the Banshees have been a sharing at four and the Fable men's and everything everywhere all at once at three and by ranked Choice rules eliminated with three votes a piece are everything ever all at once and the fablemans and our five best picture nominees are now cut down to three and when we eliminate those two movies this was a big round for the king of rock and roll this fableman's voter had a second choice of triangle of sadness which because it's eliminated also now has Elvis at their Top Choice this everything everyone all at once ballot had their number one vote switched to Elvis which they'd ranked in fourth position and this vote is the same everything ever all at once was their number one ranked movies their number two in three films were both already eliminated so their first place vote also now belongs to Elvis their fourth ranked film round three resulted in a pickup of four first place votes for Elvis one for the Banshees of Innis Sharon and just one for women talking which means that Elvis now leads the best picture race with nine first-place votes compared to women talking seven and the Banshees event Sharon with the lowest number of First Place votes is now eliminated which means our three nominees are cut down to two and with 21 ballots we know that this round is going to produce a winner after the Banshees have been a Sharon is eliminated we now have 21 ranked Choice ballots so let's see how the Best Picture Winner was chosen women talking is the number one ranked film for these two voters so it gets two first-place votes Elvis was the fifth ranked film on this ballot with women talking sixth so that's one for the king women talking is number one on this ballot and Elvis is number one on this one so that's easy here we have one number one vote for women talking one number one vote for Elvis and another number one vote for women talking this list has women talking ranked third and Elvis 10th so that's one for women talking this one has Elvis ranked fourth in women talking seventh so that's one for Elvis women talking picks up a vote here with a number six ranking over this ballot's number seven Elvis Elvis wins here ranked number three and then we have a huge pickup here for Elvis it is ranked fourth on four consecutive ballots and it's ranked higher on each of them than women talking women talking picks up another vote here ranks number two Elvis is ranked number one on these two ballots so that's easy number three on this one and number two on this one overall the final round resulted in a pickup of four number one votes for Elvis and just one for women talking which means that Elvis will leave the building with the best picture Oscar with 13 number one votes to women talkings eight it should also be noted that this flips the result from what it would have been had this been a winner take call system the point of ranked Choice voting is to reportedly represent a more complete view of the Academy's real opinion and with women talking ranked eighth or below on six of these 21 ballots it seems the movie's detractors cost it the Oscar despite the fact that women talking was ranked number one on more ballots than Elvis was Elvis is only ranked below 8th Place on 4 out of 21 ballots and its appeal to the middle seems to have won the day this could mean that a polarizing film is at a serious disadvantage as it could be hurt by those who hate it as much as it's helped by those who love it I think the answer is that there's no perfect way to do this and that this is the system we have it's delivered more conventional winners in the last decade plus like The King's Speech and green book and the artist but it's also given us surprise winners like Moonlight parasite and Coda so regardless of how we get there what happens when you win an Academy Award well the academy categorizes Oscars given to Winners as replicas of their copyrighted statue and since 1951 all Oscar winners are required to offer the academy the chance to buy their Oscar back for one dollar before they try to sell it to anybody else the academy does this to protect the custody and integrity of the awards and to keep them out of the hands of private collectors Steven Spielberg has bought at least three Oscars on the open market for over 1. 5 million dollars just to return them to the academy man that is really nice I mean both the act of returning those Oscars and having 1.
