The Academy Awards are undeniably the highest honor an actor or filmmaker can aspire to in their career. It began in 1989 and has annually rewarded brilliance in all areas of filmmaking ever since, as organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Although the academy is based in Hollywood, it also recognizes outstanding films and filmmakers from different parts of the world. Find out more about the Academy Awards here, including their history and origins, categories and voting procedures, rules and awards facts.
Origin and history of the Oscars
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded in 1927 and tasked with solving simmering problems in the motion picture industry. One of the avenues they explored was the establishment of an awards committee to recommend the launch of the awards. This recommendation was accepted and a year later the very first Academy Awards took place. It happened on May 16th , 1929 and had fewer than 300 guests in attendance. From that humble beginning, the Academy Awards have grown to become the world’s most celebrated awards ceremony. In fact, top honors in other disciplines such as sports or photography are often referred to as the Oscars of those disciplines.
voting process
The voting procedure is the exclusive concern of the Academy. The voting process consists of two steps. In the initial phase, the renowned accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) compiles the names of the eligible applicants and sends them to the Academy members for voting. After the first phase, PwC calculates the result and reveals the competitors. The academy members vote again in the second stage. The winners will then be announced at the actual ceremony.
categories
The Oscars include 24 standard categories as well as other special categories. The most anticipated are usually:
- best picture
- Best actor
- Best Actress
- Best supporting actor
- The best supporting actress
- Best Director
- Best Foreign Language Film
- Best Animated Feature Film (launched in 2001), etc.
The Academy Awards also have special categories such as
- The Technical Achievement Award
- Honorary Academy Award
- Gordon E Sawyer Award
- Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award
- Academy Special Achievement Award
- Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award
The special prizes are not necessarily awarded every year.
Rules
For a film to be eligible for this year’s award, it must have had a week’s public showing in a commercial theater in the United States during the previous year (i.e. January 1st to December 31st ) . Hence, one film was released in March 2012 and another on the 25th December 2012 both qualify for the 2013 Oscars.
Best Foreign Language Film nominees are exempt from the requirement of having been screened in a US cinema.
Another rule is that a film must be at least 40 minutes long (feature length) to be eligible. Of course, this requirement does not apply to films in the short categories.
Facts about the Academy Awards
1. Beginning in 1950, an Oscar winner can no longer sell his statuette without offering the Academy the first rejection option. The Academy reserves the right to buy it back for as little as $1.
2. The youngest person to win an Oscar was 10-year-old Tatum O’Neal in 1974. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1973 film Paper Moon .
3. The 1968 Academy Awards were postponed from the 8th of March to the 10th of March . This happened due to the funeral of assassinated civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.
4. Halle Berry is the first black woman to win an Oscar for Best Actress in a leading role. She achieved this feat in 2002 with the film, Monsters Ball .
5. Meryl Streep is the actor/actress with the most Oscar nominations. She has been nominated 17 times and won three.
6. Three films hold the record for most Oscar wins – 11. They are Titanic (1997), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) and Ben-Hur (1959).
7. In the past, the list of Oscar winners was given to press people before the ceremony. However, they only release it after the ceremony. This practice lasted until 1939, when the LA Times slipped up and published the list before the ceremony. Currently, the winners will only be announced during the ceremony.