Oscar Technical Categories

Cinematography:

Roger Deakins - Skyfall
Janusz Kaminski - Lincoln
Seamus McGarvey - Anna Karenina
Claudio Miranda - Life of Pi
Robert Richardson - Django Unchained

Claudio Miranda seems to have this category all but sewn up, with landmark work in a popular film, but surprises do happen - last year there was no film more jaw-droppingly visual than Tree of Life, but lenser Emmanuel Lubezki went home empty handed, losing his Oscar to two-time previous champ Robert Richardson for the lovingly rendered Hugo (hard not to be glad about that one). Life of Pi need not worry about any such upsets, though. Unlike divisive outsider Tree of Life, Pi is the second most nominated film at the Oscars, with no cause for backlash.

Miranda's only real competition is Skyfall's Roger Deakins, who has nine unsuccessful previous Oscar nominations to his legendary name. Deakins claimed the top prize from the American Society of Cinematographers, who would logically want to endorse traditional lensing, as opposed to Life of Pi's digitally enhanced approach. But the Academy has had no trouble embracing Virtual Cinematography with Avatar and even, to an extent, Hugo. Statistically, the odds in this category are always in favour of the Best Picture nominee, which also gives Miranda the edge over Deakins.

The other nominees are last year's winner Robert Richardson, for Django Unchained, frequent Spielberg collaborator (and two-time winner, for Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan) Janusz Kaminski and Seamus McGarvey, who probably made a strong bid for the prize for 2008's Atonement, but is unlikely to have enough momentum to pull off a surprise win for this year's divisive Anna Karenina. 

Conclusion: Roger Deakins is a living legend and turned in probably the most beautiful action film ever, but Life of Pi remains the most talked about visual achievement of the year.

Will win: Life of Pi
Should win: Skyfall
Could win: Skyfall

Original Score


Mychael Danna - Life of Pi

Alexandre Desplat - Argo
Dario Marianelli - Anna Karenina
Thomas Newman - Skyfall
John Williams - Lincoln


Though a respectable list, some of the year's best scores (The Master, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Moonrise Kingdom, Zero Dark Thirty) have been sadly left off, but I will surely rant and rave about that elsewhere. For now, who among the safe five will claim the prize?

Like Skyfall cinematographer Roger Deakins, Thomas Newman has ten nominations to his name (think Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty and WallE), with no wins. Newman's Skyfall score is probably the most urban and inventive of the five, but his layered, urban action score is unlikely to bag him the big prize, although BAFTA thought otherwise, so he remains a threat.

Alexandre Desplat has five unsuccessful prior nominations and scored no less than nine films in 2012, including Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, Moonrise Kingdom, Ruse and Bone and Rise of the Guardians. Two of these went on to be Best Picture nominees and he is nominated for the de facto Best Picture winner, Argo. Seems like a logical winner, but his vibey, suspenseful, sometimes sentimental middle eastern score simply isn't his most distinctive work.

Dario Marianelli is a recent winner for Atonement (swoon), while Spielberg staple - and five-time winner (from 48 nominations) John Williams delivered a spare, dignified score with playful Southern hayseed interludes which is surprisingly fun, but only stands any chance of winning if Lincoln sweeps. And let's not get our hopes up.


Which leaves Mychael Danna, channeling whimsical wonder, danger and Parisian / Indian vibes for Ang Lee's Life of Pi. The Oscar is his to lose.

Will win: Mychael Danna - Life of Pi
Should win: Thomas Newman - Skyfall
Could win: Alexandre Desplat - Argo

Production Design & Set Decoration:

Anna Karenina
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Les Miserables
Life of Pi
Lincoln

A bunch of good eggs. Anna Karenina takes literal the Shakespeare adage that all the world is a stage and lets the great Russian melodrama play off entirely in sets constructed inside an old theater.

There is similar innovation in Les Miserables, which strikes a careful balance between realism and stylised theatrical sets to evoke 19th century France.

The Hobbit initially covers the same Shire ground as the Lord of the Rings trilogies, but soon explores brand new forests, Goblin caves and VIP sections of Rivendell in gorgeous detail, not to mention the awesome art-deco-ish designs of the lost Dwarf mountain kingdom. While much of The Hobbit's execution is CGI, the design remains breathtaking.

Life of Pi may seem an odd pick, considering it's mostly the story of a dude and a tiger in a boat, but the production design is a significant layer to the visual experience that is Life of Pi. Those ocean scenes were filmed in a giant water tank with bluescreen backdrops before the digital awesomeness was added; the meerkat island scenes were first filmed in a Taiwanese Banyan tree reserve before CGI rounded it out and the gorgeous scenes in Parisian India themselves leave plenty to ogle. 

Finally, Lincoln plays off in beautiful, fanatically detailed historical sets filled with significant character and period detail that helps transport us back to a critical moment in history.

So who wins? Hard to say. The Art Directors Guild divide their awards into Contemporary, Period and Sci Fi / Fantasy categories and awarded Skyfall, Anna Karenina and Life of Pi respectively. The BAFTAs went with Les Miserables, the Golden Satellites went with Lincoln and the Critics Choice chose Anna Karenina. 

Karenina would appear to be the logical frontrunner (and could tie in nicely with its expected Costume Design win), but that could all change if Life of Pi, or Les Miserables, sweep the technical awards. Or Lincoln sweeps in general. But let's not get out hopes up.

Will win: Anna Karenina
Should win: Anna Karenina 
Could win: Life of Pi 

Costumes:

Jacqueline Durran - Anna Karenina

Paco Delgado - Les Miserables

Joanna Johnston - Lincoln

Eiko Ishioka - Mirror Mirror
Colleen Attwood - Snow White and the Huntsman

The inclusion of both Snow White movies is refreshing and a welcome departure from the Best Picture race. Snow White and the Huntsman's Colleen Attwood is the veteran of the category, with nine previous nominations and three wins to her name. Charlize Theron spent not a moment of the film looking less than awesome but, suffice it to say, Huntsman as a whole isn't exactly the pinnacle of Attwood's career.

Mirror Mirror's Eiko Ishioka has won previous nomination - and win - a full twenty years ago for Bram Stoker's Dracula. Mirror Mirror seems like the featherweight in the race, but its costumes are the most inventive of the bunch and Ishioka is a distinctive talent (with notable work for Tarsem Singh and Bjork) who passed away in January 2012. If anyone could pull off a surprise win, it's Ishioka. You never count out the film with the Queen.

Joanna Johnston is a first time nominee for her detailed period costumes for Lincoln. Other than Sally Field's suitably flashy get ups, her costuming is mostly on the understated side and, while they are gorgeously effective, flashy tends to win in this category. Flashy Queens.

Paco Delgado is another first-time nominee, producing stylised costumes for a huge cast that evoke the stage without pushing the point. While his Les Mis costumes certainly don't lack flash and colour, they're more on the gaudy squalor side of things, as the story demands, which is why Anna Karenina has the edge.

This is Jacqueline Durran's third nomination for her outstanding work on Joe Wright's period films (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement). Anna Karenina is gorgeous eye candy, with the costumes easily holding their own alongside the Oscar-nominated sets and lensing. With the most lavish, opulent period costumes for a large cast, Anna Karenina seems easily the frontrunner, challenged only by the inventive Mirror Mirror.

Anna Karenina and Mirror Mirror were each honoured by the Costume Designers Guild (in the Period and Fantasy fields, respectively), but Mirror Mirror failed to be nominated at the BAFTAs or the Critics Choice Awards, both of which Anna Karenina won. Mirror Mirror did, however, prevail over Karenina at the Golden Satellites. But who cares about the Satellites? The strongest case for Mirror Mirror is that the movie with the Queen in it is usually the winner.

Will win: Anna Karenina

Should win: Anna Karenina

Could win: Mirror Mirror

Make Up & Hairstyling

Les Miserables

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Hitchcock

Squalid 19th Century Parisian suffering, Middle Earth and 1950s Hollywood. Singing squalor wins.

Will win: Les Miserables

Should win: Les Miserables 

Could win: The Hobbit

Visual Effects:

Life of Pi

Prometheus

The Avengers

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Snow White and the Huntsman

Who are we kidding? Life of Pi has already made it into the Visual Effects annuls. On top of that, it's the only Best Picture nominee in the list. It has had a virtually perfect winning streak so far (barring the odd Golden Satellites award for Flight, not nominated here). Think leaping whales, epic boat sinkings and Richard Parker. It's in the bag.

Will win: Life of Pi

Should win: Life of Pi

Could win: Avengers

Sound Editing:

Life of Pi

Skyfall

Argo

Django Unchained

Zero Dark Thirty

The Sound Editing award is for the sourcing and recording of original sounds for a film. War and action films tend to dominate. Expect the prize to go to one of the Motion Picture Sound Editors winners - Skyfall or Life of Pi. 

Will win: Life of Pi

Should win: Zero Dark Thirty

Could win: Skyfall

Sound Mixing:

Life of Pi

Skyfall

Les Miserables

Argo

Lincoln

Sound Mixing, on the other hand, is the art of taking available sounds (including those created by the sound mixing team) and blending them together into the film's scenes for optimum effect. Musicals almost always dominate this category when they are in the running, and Les Miserables is particularly worthy as it blends live singing with separately recorded orchestral arrangements for wall-to-wall singing. It also has the Cinema Audio Society's Award, and the BAFTA to its name. In the bag.

Will win: Les Miserables

Should win: Les Miserables

Could win: Life of Pi

On Life of Pi and the matter of Virtual Cinematography

With Life of Pi all but sweeping the year's cinematography awards, and expected to take the Oscar on 24 February as well, I'm struggling to make peace with the odd idea of virtual cinematography being honoured over traditional lensing. I appreciate the need for virtual cinematography and certainly admire its results - the visual awesomeness of Avatar, Tron Legacy and Life of Pi is undeniable - but where is the line between Cinematography and Visual Effects?

There's no doubt that Life of Pi is the visual movie event of the year, but to see the prize for best lensing go to a digitally manufactured product is odd. In the past few years, it has been the Academy's preference: Avatar winning for an almost entirely virtual world in 2010, Hugo (with its virtually filled in cityscapes) beating the jaw dropping photography of Tree of Life in 2011. It could be that both those films were simply more popular than their contenders, but it's interesting how easily the Academy has embraced the reliance on CGI in this most essentially cinematic craft.

The acting fields are notoriously resistant to motion-capture performance (Andy Serkis, in particular, has been repeatedly snubbed for his groundbreaking work as Gollum, King Kong and Caesar in The Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit, King Kong and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, respectively), even though the primary work is done by an actor and only digitally adapted in post-production (much like the seascapes of Life of Pi). Somehow they still see Gollum and Caesar as a Visual Effects achievement, rather than an acting one. Any arguments about unfair disadvantages from digitally "enhanced" acting count just as strongly against virtual cinematography.

Of course, digitally enhanced cinematography isn't a new phenomenon. Back in 2001, Bruno Delbonnel was one of the first to use computers to enhance the hues and tones of his footage in post-production for Amélie. But is it cheating, or at least an unfair advantage? Perhaps it doesn't matter. Perhaps it's just how the industry is changing. When it comes to complex, effects-driven 3D films like Avatar or Life of Pi, digital enhancement is a fairly logical extension of the filming process, but when it comes to handing out little gold men for the year's best representation of the Cinematographer's trade, what are Cinematographers awarded for? Lighting? Composition? Movement? Visual metaphor? Mood? Technical dexterity or innovation? Getting the right angle on a gorgeous landscape? Of course it depends from film to film. So when a film and story like Life of Pi is so reliant on the poetry of its visuals, a cinematographer who rises to the occasion, with or without the help of computers, to deliver what his director envisions is one worth awarding (although I'd argue we'd be falling over ourselves in a whole different way if he did it without the computers).

So if the visual design and execution and effect is what we're awarding, regardless of how the cinematographer got there, why not recognise some of the incredible landscapes created by Pixar in recent years? The great (Oscarless) Roger Deakins, for example, consulted on the "cinematography" of Wall-E, advising the technical team on effective lighting and realistic camera movement (to create a more immersive cinematic experience with all the authentic bumps and shakes of a real camera). There's no denying the visual beauty of a film like WallE, or the technical brilliance of the underwaterscapes in Finding Nemo (which go to great pains to capture the light and shade of an ocean backdrop). So what sets WallE apart from Life of Pi, or even Avatar, where a large chunk of the film is digitally animated?

While we're at it, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland won an Oscar for its Production Design, even though much of the execution was digital. Burton Produced Nightmare Before Christmas, on the other hand, features iconic, influential sets as tangible as the chair you're presumably sitting on, only miniature. But what did it contend for at the Oscars? Visual Effects. Once again, WallE features impeccably designed sets, but you'd barely see it contend for them. And while inserting a photo-real (for back then) Gollum into an actual real life background will win you a Visual Effects Oscar, placing animated fish into a photo-real (if mildly stylised) ocean backdrop will not even get you nominated. But perhaps I am splitting hairs.

So what's the distinction? Does it only count as cinematography or production design if it features at least some real actors? Perhaps the distinction is the real collaboration between two worlds - it's okay that Avatar or Life of Pi were largely finished on computers, because they started on real sets, with real cameras, even if just for the bones of the eventual visuals. For Pixar, it's all computer. Perhaps that is a fair distinction.

On Oscar night, both Claudia Miranda and the Visual Effects team will pick up Oscars for their respective contributions to the film's astounding visuals. And power to them. Digital enhancement is here to stay and, if it  ups our movie going & movie making experience, let's embrace it (even if it means Roger Deakins goes home empty handed, again).


While we're at it, let's take a look at some of the good old-fashioned camera work that was overlooked by the Academy this year, after the cut: