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I have not found any LEDs that I have liked yet. CRI is way off even the cheapest CFLs, in the mid 70%. They also haven't figured out quality control, one bulb will have a green tint the other yellow. LED also gets very inefficient when you get to high powers.

I've even tried fixtures worth thousands of £'s in photography. The discontinuous spectra is a massive problem, and CRI values cannot really be used. Give this a look, the Academy of Motion Picture and Sciences did some tests on LEDs: http://www.oscars.org/science-technology/council/projects/ssl/index.html

CFLs are good now. Good ones are difficult to find on the high street though, and I think that this is the problem that people buy crap bulbs. High CRI (95%+), instant on, dimable, efficient. I just wish more came in 4000K rather than 3200K.

Motion pictures released direct to video are ineligible for Oscars because they're not publicly exhibited in an LA theater. Is there an industry-recognized award for such motion pictures at all?

Wouldn't a better /. story be about the Sci-Tech awards?

The main Academy Awards may not be news for nerds, but the Sci-Tech Awards are certainly full of /. fodder.

- Jasen.

Massimo Troisi won the best actor in a leading role for Il Postino in 1995 posthumously. He and Peter Finch are the two actors that won posthumously for leading roles - there have been few other actors who won in other roles.

Yes. List of posthumous Academy Award winners. It's been over 30 years since an actor has won one posthumously, though.

Actually I have to clarify my previous post, Ray Harryhausen was awarded an Oscar. It was the "Gordon E. Sawyer Award" and you can see the details and other recipients here:
The Gordon E. Sawyer Award

This is something like a lifetime achievement award for technical contributions and it's not awarded every year. I'm glad that he got it but unlike Stand Winston he was never nominated for "Best Visual Effects" during his most productive years. Which is also sad because during the years when he was doing his best ground breaking work the Academy didn't recognize him. I've always thought that the Academy has something of a stick up their collective a** regarding science fiction, I was amazed that "Lord Of The Rings" not only was nominated for but also won best picture (granted it's Fantasy not scifi but I'll take it), but can you imagine something like "Aliens" being nominated for "Best Picture". I live to see the day.

It's worth keeping in mind that he got the Oscar from ~6500 people involved in the entertainment industry. And nowhere near 6500 people are involved in the documentary feature voting:

http://www.oscars.org/80academyawards/rules/rule12.html

I can't find it anymore, but if my memory serves, somewhere less than 50 people actually submitted votes for the 2007 Best Documentary Feature.

It was nice of them to give him a pretty statue, but it doesn't really say all that much about the film.

Why the scare quotes? Crash won the Oscar for best motion picture of the year.

Or perhaps you meant the crash of the movie industry? Pbbbbbttt.

...do you guys realise that an open source project received an Academy Award this year? I find it weird that it hasn't been reported much in the geek news outlets.

Also, if I remember correctly, they were some of the first to experiment with particle renders for CG (they used it in the Mask to create some of the storm/tornado transformations).

ILM introduced the concept of particle systems for film. It was first used for the Genesis Sequence in Star Trek 2. William Reeves then presented a paper at SIGGRAPH 83. He was also awarded an Academy SciTech award for it:

Particle Systems -- a Technique for Modeling a Class of Fuzzy Objects
Particle Systems
Particle Systems SciTech Award

Look at all they have done. While some of the stuff on there may have sucked... there is some really fucking good stuff on there.

I have a more complete list and that doesn't even include the hundreds of commercials they worked on:

ILM credits

Which Pixar film do you think was being snubbed? The Incredibles was the last Pixar film to be released, it was released in '04, and happened to win the Best animated feature film of the year oscar that year.

...then they should apply for a SciTech award.

For those curious, here's a group photo of all the winners.

http://www.oscars.org/77academyawards/sci-techawar ds/winners.html

if you want something more than the glossover,here you go: http://www.oscars.org/77academyawards/sci-techawar ds/

Video games, while outselling movies (in dollars), don't have "video game stars" that can attract a large audience to a televised awards show. I guess the geniuses at SpikeTV saw a huge video game industry (around $20 billion), a relatively narrow demographic (young males), but no "video game stars" to sell the telecast. The result: babes and loud music.

Even the Oscars Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony is held at a seperate venue on a different date than the main awards ceremony. Only brief highlights of the Sci & Tech Awards are shown during the Oscars telecast. And guess what: they use babes (J Garn, Ch Ther, R Zell, S Hay, A Heche) to keep viewers from changing the channel.

Video games, while outselling movies (in dollars), don't have "video game stars" that can attract a large audience to a televised awards show. I guess the geniuses at SpikeTV saw a huge video game industry (around $20 billion), a relatively narrow demographic (young males), but no "video game stars" to sell the telecast. The result: babes and loud music.

Even the Oscars Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony is held at a seperate venue on a different date than the main awards ceremony. Only brief highlights of the Sci & Tech Awards are shown during the Oscars telecast. And guess what: they use babes (J Garn, Ch Ther, R Zell, S Hay, A Heche) to keep viewers from changing the channel.

Video games, while outselling movies (in dollars), don't have "video game stars" that can attract a large audience to a televised awards show. I guess the geniuses at SpikeTV saw a huge video game industry (around $20 billion), a relatively narrow demographic (young males), but no "video game stars" to sell the telecast. The result: babes and loud music.

Even the Oscars Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony is held at a seperate venue on a different date than the main awards ceremony. Only brief highlights of the Sci & Tech Awards are shown during the Oscars telecast. And guess what: they use babes (J Garn, Ch Ther, R Zell, S Hay, A Heche) to keep viewers from changing the channel.

Video games, while outselling movies (in dollars), don't have "video game stars" that can attract a large audience to a televised awards show. I guess the geniuses at SpikeTV saw a huge video game industry (around $20 billion), a relatively narrow demographic (young males), but no "video game stars" to sell the telecast. The result: babes and loud music.

Even the Oscars Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony is held at a seperate venue on a different date than the main awards ceremony. Only brief highlights of the Sci & Tech Awards are shown during the Oscars telecast. And guess what: they use babes (J Garn, Ch Ther, R Zell, S Hay, A Heche) to keep viewers from changing the channel.

Video games, while outselling movies (in dollars), don't have "video game stars" that can attract a large audience to a televised awards show. I guess the geniuses at SpikeTV saw a huge video game industry (around $20 billion), a relatively narrow demographic (young males), but no "video game stars" to sell the telecast. The result: babes and loud music.

Even the Oscars Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony is held at a seperate venue on a different date than the main awards ceremony. Only brief highlights of the Sci & Tech Awards are shown during the Oscars telecast. And guess what: they use babes (J Garn, Ch Ther, R Zell, S Hay, A Heche) to keep viewers from changing the channel.

Video games, while outselling movies (in dollars), don't have "video game stars" that can attract a large audience to a televised awards show. I guess the geniuses at SpikeTV saw a huge video game industry (around $20 billion), a relatively narrow demographic (young males), but no "video game stars" to sell the telecast. The result: babes and loud music.

Even the Oscars Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony is held at a seperate venue on a different date than the main awards ceremony. Only brief highlights of the Sci & Tech Awards are shown during the Oscars telecast. And guess what: they use babes (J Garn, Ch Ther, R Zell, S Hay, A Heche) to keep viewers from changing the channel.

From the corporate perspective, the Hollywood studios are starting off from a stronger position than the music industry, though. CDs were always easy to copy analog, but most DVD players will MacroVision scramble (possibly multiplied with other copy proteciton systems) a program so that the everyday consumer cannot copy it. Yes, there are hacks for these protections and codecs for pulling off the Mpeg-2 video into a DVD+/-R-friendly format. But it's not as easy as making a tape off an album was.

But it can't last. With digital television and broader-band internet (e.g., WiMax) coming, something is going to have to give. Mandating chips into players and burners only can go so far. It cannot last forever against the democratic marketplace of Open Source and Creative Commons economics.

But it will take time, and pain. For music, it's proving to be not as painful as it might have been for the musicians, though the tassled-loafer boys living in Bel Air might be feeling the pinch. But with movies, a lot more people are involved in each project. And what this spells for the big movie, I don't know. (If the blockbusters go, no real loss, some would say.)

We are in a time of upheaval, and one of the biggest sectors of our economy -- entertainment -- is going to be pretty much unrecognizable to our soon-to-be-outdated perspective in just a few years.

Funny how that site gives you a definition for the noun and a definition for the adjective and you decided to quote the wrong one, eh? Creative quoting, I guess.

Here's the other one (for the noun, from the very same page):

"A work, such as a film or television program, presenting political, social, or historical subject matter in a factual and informative manner and often consisting of actual news films or interviews accompanied by narration" (fits Fahrenheit 9/11 like a glove, more so than any of Moore's previous documentaries, in fact).

But let's see what specialised sites have to say about it:

[1] "an interpretation of theoretical, factual, political, social or historical events or issues presented either objectively or with a specific point of view"

[2] "a nonfiction motion picture film having a theme or viewpoint but drawing its material from actual events and using editing and sound to enhance the theme"

[3] "a non-fiction film which usually, although not always, has a particular point of view regarding its subject matter"

[4] "an eligible documentary film is defined as a theatrically released non-fiction motion picture dealing creatively with cultural, artistic, historical, social, scientific, economic or other subjects"

[5] "factual footage arranged in such a way that it informs and expresses a point of view"

I've been working on (and watching) documentaries for a couple of decades, and these are the definitions employed and accepted by the authors, the industry, the critics, the festivals and the viewers. If you think a documentary is something else, you can either a) correct yourself or b) try to convice every filmmaker, film institute, film festival, cinema historian, etc., that they are wrong.

Either way, good luck, it's not going to be easy.

RMN
~~~

From Rule Twelve of the Offical Rules.

No television or internet transmission shall have occurred at any time anywhere in the world in any version prior to the qualifying run or furthermore contrary to section III.2.B.1. or III.2.B.2. of these rules.

I'm not sure what is meant by a 'qualifying run', but it could well make him ineligable for the documentary award. I don't think that applies to the Best Picture award though.

From oscars.org:

No television or internet transmission shall occur at any time prior to, or within the nine months following, the first day of the qualifying exhibition, and not before completing the minimum four-city two-day theatrical runs. Any documentary which is transmitted anywhere in the world in any version as a television or internet program within this period will automatically be disqualified from award eligibility.

http://www.oscars.org/77academyawards/rules/rule12 .html

> ...making this possibly the world's first all-artificial movie.

As luck would have it, there's already series of all-artificial awards they can earn.

He did get an oscar for his "fictional comedy" under the documentary categorie:

Best documentary feature "Bowling for Columbine" 2002

I guess this is a bit strange. I think it's partly due to neither "Phantom" nor "Menace" being a good abbreviation for a film... though I suppose "Empire" isn't the least ambiguous nickname either. Of course, none of the first three have the word "Episode" in their titles, so that nickname possibility was out- their proper names are:

Star Wars
The Empire Strikes Back
The Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

Lucas has sown confusion about this by releasing different movies (deceptively labelling them as "reissues") which reuse some of the footage from the classic trilogy- these were named Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi. I suppose the shorthand names "Episode 4" through "Episode 6" would refer to these films, but the quality of these zombies (which were composed of edited cuts from the classic films interspersed with random crap) was very poor so there's rarely a reason to mention them.

I guess this is a bit strange. I think it's partly due to neither "Phantom" nor "Menace" being a good abbreviation for a film... though I suppose "Empire" isn't the least ambiguous nickname either. Of course, none of the first three have the word "Episode" in their titles, so that nickname possibility was out- their proper names are:

Star Wars
The Empire Strikes Back
The Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

Lucas has sown confusion about this by releasing different movies (deceptively labelling them as "reissues") which reuse some of the footage from the classic trilogy- these were named Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi. I suppose the shorthand names "Episode 4" through "Episode 6" would refer to these films, but the quality of these zombies (which were composed of edited cuts from the classic films interspersed with random crap) was very poor so there's rarely a reason to mention them.

I guess this is a bit strange. I think it's partly due to neither "Phantom" nor "Menace" being a good abbreviation for a film... though I suppose "Empire" isn't the least ambiguous nickname either. Of course, none of the first three have the word "Episode" in their titles, so that nickname possibility was out- their proper names are:

Star Wars
The Empire Strikes Back
The Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

Lucas has sown confusion about this by releasing different movies (deceptively labelling them as "reissues") which reuse some of the footage from the classic trilogy- these were named Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi. I suppose the shorthand names "Episode 4" through "Episode 6" would refer to these films, but the quality of these zombies (which were composed of edited cuts from the classic films interspersed with random crap) was very poor so there's rarely a reason to mention them.

I guess this is a bit strange. I think it's partly due to neither "Phantom" nor "Menace" being a good abbreviation for a film... though I suppose "Empire" isn't the least ambiguous nickname either. Of course, none of the first three have the word "Episode" in their titles, so that nickname possibility was out- their proper names are:

Star Wars
The Empire Strikes Back
The Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

Lucas has sown confusion about this by releasing different movies (deceptively labelling them as "reissues") which reuse some of the footage from the classic trilogy- these were named Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi. I suppose the shorthand names "Episode 4" through "Episode 6" would refer to these films, but the quality of these zombies (which were composed of edited cuts from the classic films interspersed with random crap) was very poor so there's rarely a reason to mention them.

I guess this is a bit strange. I think it's partly due to neither "Phantom" nor "Menace" being a good abbreviation for a film... though I suppose "Empire" isn't the least ambiguous nickname either. Of course, none of the first three have the word "Episode" in their titles, so that nickname possibility was out- their proper names are:

Star Wars
The Empire Strikes Back
The Return of the Jedi
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

Lucas has sown confusion about this by releasing different movies (deceptively labelling them as "reissues") which reuse some of the footage from the classic trilogy- these were named Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi. I suppose the shorthand names "Episode 4" through "Episode 6" would refer to these films, but the quality of these zombies (which were composed of edited cuts from the classic films interspersed with random crap) was very poor so there's rarely a reason to mention them.

Also the winner have been known for more than a month:

Scientific and Technical Achievements Honored with Academy Awards

Besides Massive there were 2 other software related. There was the initial subsurface scatteting research done at Stanford (the Henrik Wann Jensen paper from SIGGRAPH 2001), and the first practical application of subsurface scattering by Christophe Hery of ILM and Joe Letteri and Ken McGaugh of Weta (although both were at ILM prior to joining the Two Towers, the initail reserch was done at ILM for Ep. 2). I have two writeups on those:

ILM Wins 2003 Sci-Tech Oscar for Subsurface Scattering
Star Wars Newsletter Discusses Christophe Hery Sci-Tech Oscar Win

2001
To John Anderson, Jim Hourihan, Cary Phillips and Sebastian Marino for the development of the ILM Creature Dynamics System.
This system makes hair, clothing, skin, flesh and muscle simulation both directable and integrated within a character animation and rigging environment.

To Dr. Steve Sullivan and Eric Schafer for the development of the ILM Motion and Structure Recovery System (MARS.)
The MARS system provides analysis of camera motion and object motion, and their dimensions. It employs a rich set of user-interface tools and sophisticated algorithms.

1998
To Cary Phillips for the design and development of the "Caricature" Animation System at Industrial Light & Magic.
By integrating existing tools into a powerful interactive system, and adding an expressive multi-target shape interpolation-based freeform animation system, the "Caricature" system provided a degree of subtlety and refinement not possible with other systems.

1996
JOHN SCHLAG, BRIAN KNEP, ZORAN KACIC-ALESIC and THOMAS WILLIAMS for the development of the ViewPaint 3D Paint System for film production work

JEFFERY YOST, CHRISTIAN ROUET, DAVID BENSON and FLORIAN KAINZ for the development of a system to create and control computer generated fur and hair in motion pictures

1995
DOUGLAS SMYTHE, LINCOLN HU, DOUGLAS S. KAY and INDUSTRIAL LIGHT AND MAGIC for their pioneering efforts in the creation of the ILM Digital Film Compositing System

...plus many more. Just do a search for "Industrial" at http://wwwdb.oscars.org/scitech_db/index.html

Pixar has a ton too.

Christophe Hery of ILM won an award this year for his work on rendering realistic skin. ILM has won a number of other awards from the Academy for their technical work over the years; see the Oscars web site.

Oscars web site, 2003 sci-tech winners

To Christophe Hery, Ken McGaugh and Joe Letteri for their groundbreaking implementations of practical methods for rendering skin and other translucent materials using subsurface scattering techniques.

These groundbreaking techniques were used to create realistic-looking skin on digitally created characters.

Other folks honored for related work are:

To Henrik Wann Jensen, Stephen R. Marschner and Pat Hanrahan for their pioneering research in simulating subsurface scattering of light in translucent materials as presented in their paper "A Practical Model for Subsurface Light Transport."

This mathematical model contributed substantially to the development and implementation of practical techniques for simulating subsurface scattering of light in translucent materials for computer-generated images in motion pictures.

They don't mention it in the article but Massive, the software used to do the battle scenes (amongst other things), won a Scientific and Engineering award:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0102385/2004/01/29.html#a 509
http://www.oscars.org/scitech/2003/winners.html

This may be a case where the rule needs to be changed. As more and more big-budget films heavy on the FX are released, the existing limit of seven contenders may no longer be adequate.

This may be a case where the rule needs to be changed. As more and more big-budget films heavy on the FX are released, the existing limit of seven contenders may no longer be adequate.

Not so. LOTR was one book: it was published as three separate volumes due to either a post-war paper shortage, or the publisher's concern that it wouldn't be well received, depending on who you talk to.

Wikipedia was where I grabbed the publishing factoid, but I know I've seen it elsewhere.

Your statement on the Oscars is equally incorrect: numerous Oscars have been given out in the more technical categories for the first and second in a three movie serious: check the original star wars trilogy, the godfather trilogy, and the first two Lord of the Rings movies for some examples, which can easily be verified at the oscars.org database.

It only takes a couple of minutes to check your facts before posting. Cheers.

Well then what the MPAA has to say has no binding effect for them. Of course the Academy may try to force everyone to follow the MPAAs lead or be banned from awards ceremonies. However tehre are only 5816 members of the Academy so if you convinced enough people...

Well then what the MPAA has to say has no binding effect for them. Of course the Academy may try to force everyone to follow the MPAAs lead or be banned from awards ceremonies. However tehre are only 5816 members of the Academy so if you convinced enough people...

They should. George Lucas quit the MPAA after they tried to fine him for not putting opening credits in Star Wars. It didn't seem to hurt his career!

This is completely wrong. The MPAA is a collective trade and bargaining group of major studios (read a brief history here. It was originally created to deal with protectionist issues overseas. Now it is the collective "face" of the studios who set standards for everything from how loud a trailer is allowed to be (notice, for example that they don't blow your ears out like they used to) to self-policing through the use of a rating system. It is also a lobbying group, which regularly responds to legislative concerns such as violence in movies and works to get favorable legislation such as the DCMA passed. When the MPAA acts or speaks, it is the collective voice of "the Hollywood studios", the "majors", or "the industry".

The MPAA also acts as a "shield" behind which to hide unpopular actions, just as the recording industry hides behind the RIAA when suing people. If Warner Bros. sued a musician for downloading their music, people would boycott WB. But because it's under the auspices of "RIAA", it deflects attention from the member companies.

From what I've heard, George Lucas quit the DGA (Director's Guild of America) after the credits fiasco in Star Wars. The DGA is a union (umm, I mean a "guild") that represents the interests of directors specifically in negociating with the studios. It has a standard agreement with its signatories (the large studios) that includes stuff like minimum wages, credit determination, etc.

Other film industry unions and guilds include the WGA (writer's guild), IATSE (cartoonists, grips, etc.), SAG (Actors guild), etc. Each of the Unions typically have their own awards ceremony each year with members voting for them. The MPAA sends screeners to these voters because they want to win early awards like the WGA award, which creates buzz for the Oscars.

Finally there is AMPAS, the "Academy" that people are always thanking when they win an Oscar. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is like an honorary organization of filmmakers. They are the ones who put on the Oscars every year.

If those people decided to jump ship and form their own movie collective, they could. Easily. Hell, many of them ALREADY have their own production companies and\or studios. Sure the MPAA technically controls distribution - but do you see any of the huge theatre chains saying 'no' to the latest Redford or Scorsese flick

I think this is a misunderstanding of how movies get made. The production companies that you allude to owned by these directors or actors typically have what's called a "development deal" with the MPAA member companies-- ie, the studios. In the studio system, a production company gets development money, which pays for a production company's offices, development executives, etc. in exchange for a "first look" at any scripts being developed by the production company. In fact, when a script is bought in the first place by the production company, it's typically paid for by the studio. It's rare for a production company to have it's own money. Self-financed production companies are out there, but they're rare. A production company with its own money is called a "buyer" -- they compete with studios to buy scripts...

When a production company that has a deal with the studio finally makes a movie, the films are usually 100% funded by the studio that is going to distribute it.

In short-- it usually works something like this. Bob the Celebrity has a first look deal with a studio. The studio gives Bob money to run his company. Bob meets with writer's agents to solicit "spec" (speculative) scripts. They also develop their own ideas in-house. They might also be looking at comic books or video games or listening to pitch

If you disagree, please explain why Kevin Costner has a "Best Director" award but not Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock or Akira Kurosawa?

The Oscars aren't fair.

The fact that it depends a lot on your fellow nominees in a particular year (tough / weak competition) was already mentioned in this thread.

However, one of the main reasons for the lack of fairness - look who's picking nominees, and who's picking the winners. Directors who are members of the AMPAS pick the nominees, all AMPAS members (~6,000) vote for the winner.

So if directors like or dislike a particular fellow (competitor) director, he may be nominated although he doesn't deserve it (or the other way around, may not be nominated although he deserves it).

Even if a worthy director gets nominated, all 6,000 AMPAS members vote on the award. Every sound engineer, actor, producer who may know nothing about directing has a vote. It's a miracle that sometimes the right people do get the award.

And for those who never get a real Oscar, there's still the life time achievement award. ;-)

Yes this is old news.

As far as the leading edge I guess having the biggest R&D dept. doesn't count, or having another paper (besides other presentations) atthis years SIGGRAPH doesn't count. Much of the technique for Gollum's skin (sub-surface scattering) came from an idea ILM made public at a RenderMan Users Group Meeting a few years ago. I guess those Sci-Tech Oscars a couple years ago, or something like the release of OpenEXR, were just figments of our imagination ;-):

Smoke Simulation For Large-Scale Phenomena
RenderMan, Theory and Practice
Creatures, Critters & Clones: Styles and Techniques Unique to Industrial Light + Magic
Academy 2001 Sci-Tech winners
ILM Sci_Tech awards

To lump all computer vision together and say "it's not there yet" is phooey! There are lots of problems in vision, and they do get solved, but those problems are all specific-- you can't use a red-light-runner system to do facial tracking...

Don't you mean the right source?

That's correct, you can search the AMPAS database for these awards here. If you search for keywords, you can see that Dolby, for example, has received 6 awards, Sony has 3, and Apple none...

I believe that the Academy Awards are a fine idea. I don't fault the Nobel Prizes for their choice of subject matter (Economics, for ecample, must've seemed a shining star when the award was created, yet the Nobel's own awards show its unfulfilled promise -- i.e. in Physics or Medicine consecutive laureates always agree on 99.9%+ of their subject; in economics, they may disagree on their most central tenets)

However, I think that this noble concept -- to advance the art by recognizing its finest work -- has been caught in a common quandary. changing too much is disruptive (as in the religious debates of baseball and other sports over decades old rules changes and equipment technology) and difficult. Consistency has value in the judging process and allows competitors to know precisely where they stand. The patina of age and tradition also serves the dignity and value of the awards.

But change is also necessary. Perhaps the conflict is intrinsic. Perhaps, despite the Academy's efforts to recognize advances in the science and technology of film, it is inevitable that an award for 'film' will pass the way of national awards for artistic heiroglyphics or penmanship. there are already major motion pictures in theatrical release that are displayed digitally on electronic screens. It is difficult or impossible to argue that inherently pixellated films like Toy Story (an Oscar winner) are any more film-like than an Australian indy production that was disqualified because its live actors were recorded on videotape instead of emulsion.

The numerous flaws of the Academy's voting system are well known (e.g. it is universally agreed that most members have not seen even a sizable minority of the candidates, and vote based solely on publicity). We at Slashdot have seen similar issues -- to the extent that we scrutinize the process and read 'hidden' discussions like sid=lostkarma, sid=moderation, and sid=metamoderation.

As far as the internet ruling goes: it is merely an explicit elaboration of a rule that has existed from the beginning. The foreign film rule, however, seems to be an accomodation of changing realities that do not violate fundamental tenets of the Oscars (it is a recognition that LA is not the alpha and omega of the film world) I cannot condemn them for their decisions.

We really do need to establish an award for Internet Art, that will stand alongside the Emmys and Webbies of the future. The idea is not original to me. I've read it in this very thread.

However, since this project will not create itself, if there is sufficient interest, I am willing to commit the resources (time, money, access, programming) necessary, including a website to be established by the end of the July 4th holiday weekend. I would appreciate input and assistance in identifying the categories and nominees, criteria and structure, fixing on a name, locating suitable judges, etc. (though public voting can and should play a role, I am not sure the 'standard' web voting site is suitable to be the sole element of voting at present. I have seen too many abuses and flaws in that system) and other areas. I look forward to such feedback, and anticipate turning to Slashdot frequently as this noncorporate venture proceeds.

This is the letter that I emailed to AMPAS at ampas@oscars.org. Feel free to copy/modify/reuse this letter to complain about this ridiculous restriction. The method of distribution of a film obviously has no bearing on its quality.

Dear Sirs,

I am amazed by the shortsightedness of your organization in refusing
to consider films released on the internet for Academy awards. While
it may be true that currently no internet-released film has reached
the necessary popularity to earn one of your awards, this will surely
change in the not-so-distant future. Digital distribution is the
way of the future, and no amount of wishful thinking or ludicrous
regulation on your part (for whatever unfounded reasons) stand even
a slight chance to stop it.

Beyond basic requirements like reasonable picture quality, the quality
of a great picture has no dependence whatsoever on what media it is
recorded and distributed on, or what channels it is shown through.
This should be obvious to anyone-- but especially a group that claims
it is qualified to judge motion pictures.

I have lost any and all respect for your organization. I no longer
consider such a shortsighted and closed-minded organization capable
of judging anything at all-- least of all what constitues a great film.

You should be ashamed of yourselves.