What goes into winning a vfx oscar?

It’s Academy Awards time, but does the VFX Oscar accurately represent the industry? Jim Mccauley asks the experts

Both MPC and Framestore were nominated for an Oscar for their work on The Martian, pictured above

The Academy Awards are the high point of the year for the film industry. Beyond the headline awards there’s a raft of recognition for the essential supporting elements of filmmaking, and for the VFX industry there’s only one award that matters: Best Visual Effects.

But as our panel of industry experts explain, the process of how the Academy come up with their final five nominees is a story in itself. However, does this process take the focus away from the VFX work itself? And is a single Oscar enough to reflect the contribution made by the industry?

The process begins in December, as Greg Butler from MPC Vancouver explains: “The Academy’s Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee meets to select 20 films that they feel meet the criteria for nomination. Every film that meets the Academy’s general rules for consideration is listed, regardless of how much VFX work it contains, how much press it has received or how much money it has made. Occasionally films on the list are still a few weeks away from release. A few weeks later, the committee meets again to reduce the list down to 10 films that are invited to the bake-offs.”

The bake-offs are where things really get interesting: a three-hour event in which the 10 shortlisted nominees show a 10-minute reel, give a presentation on their work and then take questions from Academy members.

It’s no small undertaking for potential nominees. “I’ve done five bake-off presentations – three as the team leader,” says Double Negative’s Paul Franklin, who took home the VFX Oscar last year for Interstellar. “It’s a lot of work and you only have a couple of weeks to pull it together. The Interstellar presentation needed several editorial and film-handling teams to be coordinated across two continents, and required the sacrifice of a $ 50,000 70mm exhibition print.”

“We only had about three weeks from when nominations are announced to bake-off night,” says Greg of his last bake-off appearance, for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 in 2012. “I wrote a brief summary of the work I supervised on the film. I described some of the creative and technical challenges we faced and mentioned the wide variety of effects we supplied. Tim [ Burke, the overall VFX supervisor] incorporated much of what I and the other nominees wrote into his speech before the reel.”

With the presentations done, the Academy members vote on the five final nominees. It all comes down to innovation, technical excellence and work that speaks to the story of the film, says Paul. “It’s no longer enough to just turn up with a reel full of whizz-bang CG – everyone has that nowadays! The members also respect physical practical work – miniatures, physical effects and so on – as there are lots of physical effects guys in the chapter,” he continues: “If you make great claims that you’ve ‘done it for real’ and then can’t support that on the night, they’ll see through you!” With all the preparation that goes into