The Academy Awards ® , or Oscars ® , are presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a professional honorary organization composed of over 6,000 motion picture professionals who are associated with the US film industry (or Hollywood). The awards are intended to recognize "excellence in film-making achievement." The Academy Awards ® were first organized in 1929 and have grown to become benchmarks for filmmaking, as well as playing an important economic role in the industry.
The Academy's regular awards are presented annually for outstanding individual or collective efforts of the year in up to twenty-five categories, including Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, Editing, Cinematography, and Costumes. As many as five nominations are made in most categories, with balloting for these nominations restricted to members of the Academy branch concerned; directors, for instance, are the only nominators for Achievement in Directing. Nominations for awards in the foreign language and documentary categories are made by large committees of members drawn from all branches of the industry. Best Picture nominations and final winners in most categories are determined by vote of the entire membership.
Each January the Academy mails nomination ballets to its members (over 5,600 voting members in 2002). The secret ballots are returned by members to Price water house Coopers, the professional services firm formerly known as Price Waterhouse. The results of nomination balloting are announced in late January or early February. Then, final ballots are mailed in early February and members have two weeks to return them. After ballots are tabulated, only two partners of Price water house Coopers are said to know the results until the envelopes are opened on stage during the awards presentation ceremony at the end of February. The Academy Awards ® Presentation televised program is itself a media event, attracting worldwide audiences and extensive media coverage.
The nominations and awards are considered some of the best ways to promote a film and can potentially lead to a substantial increase in revenues. Dodds and Holbrook (1988) evaluated the impact of Academy Awards ® on film revenues and found significant effects of Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress awards on post-award revenues. The authors of another study found that theatrical revenue can increase from 5 to 10 percent if a film is nominated, while actually receiving an award can enhance a film's value for cable and network television by 50 to 100 percent (Donahue, 1987, p. 81).
Thus, receiving a nomination and ultimately an award is seen as adding value to a film commodity. Serious efforts are made to attract these honors, and expensive campaigns to influence voting begin in November each year. In the past, elaborate strategies involved targeted advertising and promotional gimmicks. The major Hollywood studios, independent distributors, and publicists use various strategies to make sure that the Academy members view their films. Special screenings are held, free admissions are offered to commercial runs of a film, or videocassettes or DVDs are shipped to the voters. For several years, the Academy has aggressively monitored award campaigning and has issued guidelines that limit company mailings.
However, at least one author and film critic believes that the campaigns around the Academy Awards ® have become "nastier, more aggressive, more expensive and more sophisticated." Emanuel Levy, chief film critic for Screen International and the author of All About Oscar ® : The History and Politics of the Academy Awards ® , notes that "aggressive campaigns have been run for Oscars ® as far back as the 1940s." (p. 212)
The campaigning may indeed affect the outcome, as over the years there have been some classic examples of films that won (or did not win) because of political and/or economic reasons. For instance, in 1941 Citizen Kane , directed by Orson Welles and based on the story of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, lost to How Green Was My Valley. It was widely suggested that Hearst's influence in Hollywood had much to do with ensuring that Welles did not triumph. Although in 1959 screenwriter Nedrick Young failed to win an Oscar ® for The Defiant Ones because he was blacklisted, his pseudonym, Nathan E. Douglas, won it instead, and in 1998 heavy spending by Miramax was believed to have helped Shakespeare in Love defeat Saving Private Ryan , which was widely regarded as the more worthy film.
Indeed, there seems to be a general sense that Academy Awards ® have neglected some great films, as well as great directors, actors, and actresses. Looking back at Oscar ® winners, many have argued that numerous great films did not win awards, while other important films were not even nominated. While the designation of "great film" is highly subjective, many films generally deemed important did not win Best Picture. In addition to the previously mentioned Citizen Kane and Saving Private Ryan , other neglected "great" films include Sunset Boulevard (1950), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), and Five Easy Pieces (1970). Some of these oversights may be explained by an abundance of good or great films in one year. However, there have been films now regarded as important that received no Oscars ® at all, including The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Magnificant Ambersons (1942), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Psycho (1960), Taxi Driver (1976), and Blade Runner (1982). Other significant films were not even nominated for a single Academy Award ® : King Kong (1933), Modern Times (1936), The Searchers (1956), and Paths of Glory (1957).
These misguided decisions or omissions have been explained by a politicized voting process that leads to various kinds of biases, by the neglect of certain genres, or by the simple argument that Oscars ® are merely "popularity contests." Others have maintained that Hollywood is rather conservative, or "middle-brow," when it comes to recognizing its own artistic and creative excellence.
It might be noted that the Board of Governors is empowered to offer Scientific and Technical awards, Honorary awards, Special Achievement awards and other honors, in addition to the regular annual awards conferred by vote of the membership. Recent examples of Honorary Award recipients have included Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Peter O'Toole, and Blake Edwards, while at the turn of the millennium Special Achievement awards tended to focus on achievements in visual and sound effects. Meanwhile, the Academy also presents Scientific and Technical awards for "any device, method, formula, discovery or invention of special and outstanding value to the arts and sciences of motion pictures—and employed in the motion picture industry during the awards year."
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