Oscar Screener Ban to be Revoked for Academy Members

bigjocker writes "Yahoo is reporting that the ban to distribute screeners copies will be revoked. The bad news is that only members of the Academy will receive them." It's still unclear how this will affect events such as the Golden Globe awards. According to the article, several critics' organisations have yet to decide their reaction. I'm guessing that at the least, Academy members are pleased to know they won't have to find a theatre to screen award nominees.

Comments

Ah, the acadamy...

[TrippTDF]

There was a teacher at my college that was a member of the academy, and every Oscar season he would show all the nominees back to back in the school's screening room. He'd start showing them at 7 or so and we would not be done until like, 4 or later.

Man, I miss college.

Re:Do you want to know what I think about this?

[stoolpigeon]

When I first read about those on /. I thought "this will be another subtle little thing that I will never notice" I'm just not one of those people who picks up on all the little nuances of media quality - be it audio or visual.

I was so wrong.

At kill bill - there were times, like when they popped up on the blue background of a fight scene that was all about visuals, that I nearly screamed. I was so annoyed and distracted I could not stay on track with the movie. And we are talking about a basic martial arts/action film. Not something real cerebral. If this is how films will be from now on - I am not going to the theater any more.

Quentin Tarantino

[A1miras]

I was listening to a morning show in LA when Quentin Tarantino was on, and I thought he made an interesting point. He basically said that it hasn't been all that long that people have been receiving dvd screeners. When they asked for a copy of Pulp Fiction he was greatly insulted. He said something to the effect of "Are you kidding me? IT'S STILL IN THE F-ING THEATRES. I don't want him sitting at home doing laundry and having his kids asking him to drive them to their friends house while John Trovolta's blowing some guys head off."

Please note that's a very rough translation from memory.

Re:They should watermark them.

[stephanruby]

You can't really put an image across the screen that takes away from the visual effect of the film, and by the same token, you don't want tones on the audio track that take away from the soundstage. Any watermark would simply be useless in the longrun.

An "image"? You only need to change the shade of ONE pixel in the entire movie to make a unique watermark. In that situation, hackers will be able to reconstruct the original movie if they have access to multiple watermarked copies of the same movie.

So assuming we have 1000 Oscar Members, the real solution would be to watermark 1000 pixels and to have 999 identical overlapping watermarks accross multiple copies of the movie. This way, everytime a hacker runs into a tainted pixel, he will be fooled into thinking it was in the original movie.

Bad News? Why?

[crucini]

The bad news is that only members of the Academy will receive them.

Why is this bad news? Who should receive them? Why do you care about the movie industry's ritual pat-on-the-back?

I though the only interesting aspect of this ongoing story was that the proliferation of fast internet access was forcing the industry to restrict screeners. Nothing really good or bad in that. And no, I don't care if some less mainstream film wins an Emmy or Grammy or whatever. The only outcome I'd find "good" is if the industry stops being profitable, so cultural energy flows into less centralized channels.