The Economist explains

How Oscar winners are decided

It's a bit like the "alternative vote" system. But it may not be fair

By M.S.H.

THEY are the awards craved by all of Hollywood. Every November more than 6,000 voting members from the 17 branches of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences are sent a nominations ballot for the Oscars. On this, they rank their favourite five films in a particular category, from best director to best makeup and hairstyling. After the votes are tallied, the awards are handed out at a glitzy ceremony, being held this year on February 22nd. But how, exactly, are Oscar winners decided?

Members of the Academy are all current or retired industry professionals, either put forward by their peers or award nominees themselves. Each can only nominate within their branch: a writer, for example, cannot submit a nomination for best sound editing. PricewaterhouseCoopers, an accountancy firm that is responsible for tallying the votes, uses a method almost identical to Britain's proposed “alternative vote” system. All the first-choice ballots for each film are counted, with those above a certain threshold securing a nomination. The lowest-scoring film is then eliminated and its second-choice ballots assigned to the remaining films. The process continues until five films are over the threshold (with the exception of the best-picture category, which can have as many as ten nominees on the shortlist). If a film receives a particularly large number of nominations, so that further votes for it are in effect wasted, a trickle-down process kicks in, and subsequent ballots are redistributed to the next highest choices using a fractional weighting scheme. Once the shortlists are announced in each category, Academy members are sent a second ballot, and simply pick their favourite in each category. In this second round they are allowed to cast votes in categories outside their branch, but they are advised to avoid those where they lack expertise.

Some people think there are problems with this process. For one thing, voters can pick films they haven’t even seen. A larger difficulty is that the Academy’s membership is not particularly diverse: a report in 2012 found that around 94% of its members were white, and more than 77% were male. The situation is improving, says Gareth Ellis-Unwin, a producer and an Academy voter. But there is still progress to be made. “Selma”, an acclaimed biopic of Martin Luther King, received just two nominations last week: some blame this and other slights (such as all the best performance nominees being white) on the Academy’s lack of diversity.

Film awards are both a lucrative and a costly business. Mr Ellis-Unwin compares it to running for a political office, with up to $10m spent on wooing voters. (The high cost of campaigning for voters’ attention means smaller films are at a disadvantage.) But the stakes are high. Winning awards, particularly Oscars, often increases a film’s box-office performance, as well as boosting the reputations (and egos) of the stars involved. This year’s Oscar campaign is now entering its final stretch. Academy members have just received their second ballots, and the winners will be determined in the next few weeks. Then the campaign will be over, and the drama of the ceremony will begin.

Dig deeper:
What makes a “Best Picture”? (Feb 2014)
Can you win an acting Oscar without appearing in a film? (Jan 2014)
Oscar night: Normal for Hollywood (Mar 2014)

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