Thanks to Craig over at LiC for the tip-off that first, Steve Pond (Oscar guy who wrote for The Envelope – often has the inside scoop on the goings on within the Academy, and almost always pro-Academy, in my opinion, not that there’s anything wrong with that) has written that there will be a change in Oscar’s final vote for Best Pic – it all makes my girly head spin but why don’t you give it a shot:
Instead of just voting for one nominee, the way Academy members have almost always done on the final ballot, voters will be asked to rank all 10 nominees in order of preference — and the results will be tallied using the complicated preferential system, which has been used for decades during the nominating process but almost never on the final ballot.
As a result, a film could be the first choice of the largest number of voters, but find itself nudged out of the top prize by another movie that got fewer number one votes but more twos and threes.
It sounds crazy, but there’s good reason to make the change at a time when dividing the vote among an expanded slate of 10 nominees could otherwise allow a film to win with fewer than 1,000 votes (out of the nearly 6,000 voting members).
And:
Voters will be asked to rank the 10 best picture nominees in order of preference, one through 10. Davis says that the category will be listed on a special section of the Oscar ballot, detachable from the rest so that a separate team of PricewaterhouseCoopers staffers can undertake the more complicated tabulation process.
Initially, PwC will separate the ballots into 10 stacks, based on the top choice on each voter’s ballot. If one nominee has more than 50 percent of the vote (unlikely, but conceivable some years), we have a winner.
But if no film has a majority, then the film ranked first on the fewest number of ballots will be eliminated. Its ballots will then be redistributed into the remaining piles, based on whichever film is ranked second on those ballots.
If those second-place votes are enough to push one of the other nominees over the 50 percent threshold, the count ends. If not, the smallest of the nine remaining piles is likewise redistributed. Then the smallest of the eight piles, then the smallest of the seven…
Eventually, one film will wind up with more than 50 percent. The process is designed to discern a true consensus and uncover, in Davis’ words, “the picture that has the most support from the entire membership.” But to show that broad support, in most years the best picture winner will need to not only be ranked number one on lots of ballots, but also to be picked number two, three and four.
The rule has the potential to rewrite the strategic rules for Oscar campaigning. In the past, studios and consultants simply fought tooth and nail for those number one votes — which were, of course, the only votes Academy members could cast. Now it’ll be absolutely crucial to make sure your film is also in the top five on as many ballots as possible.
Maybe that’ll lead to more ads from broad-appeal films that might otherwise have seemed to be out of the running. Or maybe it’ll lead to more negative campaigning: after all, a good chunk of the voters don’t have to like your film the most, as long as you give them reasons to like it better than most of the other contenders.
Academy voters, by the way, don’t know about this yet. “I know people have been wondering about it, and even worrying about it,” says Davis. “At some point we’ll do a mailing, probably in the fall membership quarterly, to make it clear what’s coming up.”
Are they making it more complicated or less complicated. I can’t tell. So we’ll be looking for the most popular film overall. Hm. In that way, it’s definitely possible that we may see more splitting between director and picture wins – and it might break up a sweep. Then again, even under these rules, Slumdog still would have taken the whole thing.
66 Responses for "The Numbers – Oscars Best Picture Rule Changes"
REALLY strange, but I’m a fan of upsets.
Woooow! Interesting, I can’t decide if I like this or not yet. On the one hand it seems so much more complicated, but on the other, this could prove positive. We may have a more satisfied Academy/ movie-watching public overall, as a movie that was well liked/loved comes out on top, instead of, say, something polarizing that has few but rabid fans. Also, this could prove better in the sense that perhaps a film won’t win simply because it had the most to spend on a campaign, and we’ll have winners by their own merits (not that that always happens, but it’s an interesting thought). We’ll just have to see…
Slumdog is forgettable!
Some voters will put the “frontrunner” in last place just to give their favorite an edge… and this helps Basterds vastly.
This is really the only way to go now that there are 10 nominees.
Yeah, I was thinking that. People could get petty and rank a movie that they think can win at #10. This is really confusing but thank goodness they aren’t doing it in all the categories…although they may want to if it works out and they’re at it again.
I’m for it. They had to find a way to spice things up with 10 Best Picture nominees.
Cool, right now I say go Basterds, but who knows, itll probly be go where the wild things are by the end
If the system for nominating (rank the top 10 then use preferential ranking) is now the same as the system for winning (rank the top 10 then use preferential ranking) why do we need seperate votes? I mean how many nomination ballots won’t include at least 1 of the top 3 or 4 vote getters?
This whole 10 Best Picture nominees is just stupid. Why couldn’t they just increase all categories to 6 nominees instead of 5? No counting Best Song, of course.
SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!!!
Here’s the easiest way to think of it (IMO):
Old scenario: Film A wins when a third of the voters rank it #1, although the rest of the votes placed it #10. Meanwhile, Film B is ranked #1 by just a quarter of the voters, and #2 by everyone else.
In this new system, Film B would win even though it had significantly fewer #1 votes.
This could really change things, for one thing a polarizing film will probably never win again.
When you put it that way, Bob Wiley, it sounds like a good idea
interesting…
I think we all knew this change was coming and we won’t know what that 1-10 rank will look like until we have a better idea of the nominees.
But I can’t help but think this might lead to some films being placed towards the bottom not because of quality but personal agenda, which could lead to a truly shocking BP winner.
Sight unseen, I can envision a scenario where people rank Nine 7,8, or 9 because Chicago already won and perhaps they’re not fans of musicals.
Great, now I have to figure out the coding for this too?
Great news for Agora, Amelia and Antichrist because a good percentage of voters won’t grasp these rules and they’ll just tick off titles in alphabetical order. Go Bandslam!
We need to find out what’s in Justice Sotomayor’s Netflix queue, because it sounds like this year’s Best Picture decision will end up being argued before the Supreme Count.
They had to do this because you don’t want a film winning with 11%. Not that it would actually happen that way, but this is probably a good plan. This probably won’t result in different winners if it was under the old system unless it is a really tight year.
I’m trying to imagine the worst-case scenario. Like which film would have to win for the AMPAS to drop this 10 nonsense and go back to 5.
It would have to be a massive outcry, not just fans or critics but the industry itself.
So Ryan what you are saying is that Weinsteins are now changing all titles of their movies to something that begins with A, B orC?
i find this quite interesting, i think this system will award in a strong year a film that we will all find shocking to win, and in a weak year [but with a clear frontrunner] we will know what will win way in advance
looking back i think [just from the back of my mind] in 2001 o 2006 any of the nominees would have had a shot at winning, it’s kind of a like a coin toss
ha, dunno Amanda, but James Cameron must be clairvoyant.
Guess I’ll dust off my first draft of Aardvark Mountain.
I like this, I think. Maybe it’ll keep things interesting. We’ll see:)
I think this will make the the guild awards even stronger as precursors for Oscar BP…. fewer upsets.
I’m still confused…am I the only one??
I was told there would be no math.
Ryan,
Math is everywhere.
Rob
ha, Rob Y
Math is everywhere.
Like Elvis. And Apple.
And 3-D.
I avoided math at all costs. That’s why I’m not an accountant
I don’t like this. Why should the people who favor the least popular film of the top 10 see *their* #2 choices count more than the next person’s? The Best Picture almost always is a “consensus choice,” but at least in the past it was the popular choice. Now this allows for a major upset.
Who cares if the BP only had 11% of the popular vote? In reality that would never happen. There could have been 10 nominees last year, including The Dark Knight, and I’m sure Slumdog Millionaire still would have won and with more than a paltry 11%.
I haven’t forgotten it!
The ten best picture nominations really enhances the prospect of upsets and fudges, I think. Votes will get split to let in less fancied movies, ‘favorites’ can never be sure anymore. I would say you need to give it at least 3 years before we get a sense of how this is going to impact and work itself out.
I wish that they would do this for all categories.
Think 1950 Best Actress.
Bette Davis – All About Eve
Anne Baxter – All About Eve
Gloria Swanson – Sunset Blvd.
Judy Holliday – Born Yesterday (Original Winner)
Eleanor Parker – Caged
I can’t imagine that Judy Holliday had over 50%, so I will assume that the process continued.
Let’s assume that Eleanor Parker had the lowest (not a stretch here). Her votes would be recounted.
Would the second place votes have gone for Judy Holliday to push her over 50%? Probably not.
So the next one would most likely have been Anne Baxter, as Swanson and Davis were considered the leaders and Holliday had at least 20%.
Anne Baxter’s votes would have been recounted, most likely to Davis. What would have happened here, I can’t say, except that I doubt that Judy Holliday would have pulled off the awards coup of the decade, over a much deserving Gloria Swanson or Bette Davis, or even Anne Baxter.
Antichrist isn’t eligible it’s being released on VOD 2 days before its theatrical release.
Isn’t this what kept “Hoop Dreams” from an Oscar. The voters who didnt think it should win put it at the bottom of their ballots and then it ended up not even being nominated.
Someone on another site made a great point. What if they get lazy and just put in 3 or 5? Or what if they put in the first and bullshit the other 9?
The more I think of this, the more I like it. Yes, it makes it more complicated, but I would have to agree with the logic of it. Polarizing films would need to have a lot of support. Instead of 25% or 30%, the film would need to have more rankings in the towards top of the list. The the film needs to be universally liked in order to win.
If this had been done in previous years I wonder which of the following lineups would have had the same results where inferior films have won (according to several people, . . . ok, me) over better films which were serious contenders:
2005 Crash/Brokeback Mountain
2000 Gladiator/Crouching Tiger/Traffic
1981 Chariots of Fire/Reds/Raiders of the Lost Ark/On Golden Pond
1980 Ordinary People/Raging Bull
1977 Annie Hall/Star Wars
1975 Rocky/All the President’s Men/Network/Taxi Driver
1967 In the Heat of the Night/The Graduate
1966 A Man for All Seasons/Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
1952 Greatest Show on Earth/High Noon/The Searchers
And what about ties?
Rob Y,
Annie Hall > Star Wars.
Get it straight.
A winning film will have to be universally liked but not necessarily universally loved.
This is likely to mean that the films with polarizing opinions are less likely to win – that is not to say that voters will deliberately put the films they don’t like with high chances of winning at number 10 (they are adult members of the profession not imdb voters). It’s more that the respected films with no real love will find a way to squeeze to the front.
For the record there’s nothing wrong with stopping at number 3, in many ways that’s a far better thing to do that go to 5 then put the rest in alphabetical order. Essentially if the first second and third films of choice do not make the required 50% before they hit the bottom pile then the vote for that member is lost. This reduces the total number of votes needed to win. And remember the number 10 vote will never be counted so it’s never worth writing that down.
Overall I’d say it’s an interesting move, but don’t expect a massive shake up in the results. Do expect the bland nominee to pip the others. Frost/Nixon as best picture, anyone?
If Brokeback couldn’t win with the last system, I doubt it would have won with this system (where presumably lots of people would have given it a 10 for political reasons). We can never know of course.
I do think that this does put Nine at a disadvantage for the reasons Loyal mentioned. It may also make momentum in awards season less important, as winners at Globes etc may encourage more #10 placements to prevent a win at the Oscars.
Para nada seguro de que esto vaya a ser una buena medida, pero que nada…
Guany,
I stuggled with that one. I like Annie Hall. It is a great movie. But, I think Star Wars was better. It had a greater impact on cinema than Annie Hall. (Manhattan was better). If I had to remove one from my list it would be 1977.
But using the preferential ballot, I would wonder about 1977.
That´s not only a great idee, but it´s also fair. A movie that is loved by the great majority, but for the most members the second best movie of the year, now has the chance to win the big prize!
A far better change than to move to ten noms, IMO.
I’m a fan!
If they used this in 2006, I’m sure Brokeback Mountain woulld have won instead of Crash!
This is the right way to manage the 10 best pic list. the only reasonable way. I was afraid that with 10 best pic nominees the risk of ex-aequo would be huge and that a film could win with just a fifth of the academy voting for it.
“Great news for Agora, Amelia and Antichrist because a good percentage of voters won’t grasp these rules and they’ll just tick off titles in alphabetical order. Go Bandslam!”
Nice to see your confidence in the AMPAS members skills to fill in a ballot remains untouched, in spite of the changes. It has made me picture the average voter as a Paris Hilton clone, in front of the drawers trying to decide what underpants to wear and making her brain explode in the process.
As some have mentioned, there will be people who’ll put the top favorite last to push their own favorite (IMDb top 250 anyone?). Also, this forces people to rank movies they might not even have seen, which, with ten nominees, is now highly likely. Remember Hugh Jackman’s joke at the Oscars ‘I haven’t seen The Reader’? You heard about the cases where the kid/maid/mistress fills in the ballot. Everyone on websites like these takes the awards very seriously, but a lot of the actual voters simply… have other things to do (like MAKING movies). I’m pretty sure a lot of the members won’t have seen all ten nominees, reducing the last places on their ballots to a load of nonsense.
I like this. It seems (if I’m grasping by the wording above) that the film that is on the most 1st & 2nd place ballot gets the Oscar. No complaints there. But seeing the 10 nomination process it gives more options which I think will produce more similar films. Let’s say 2 or 3 (at the most) genre films like Up (animated), Avatar (sci-fi), District 9 (sci-fi), Star Trek (sci-fi), Up in the Air (comedy). Most likely we’ll get two Best Picture nominees from these guys.
I think the voting is going to be very close in 10 nomination years. I like the emphasis on 1st & 2nd place votes. If a film gets 10-25% of its votes from 1st & 2nd place shouldn’t that win over a film that gets 25% of its votes from 4th, 5th, & 6th place. I’m sure Crash had the bulk of its votes from 3rd place votes and Brokeback higher on 1st place ballots.
I really wish I understood it better. My brain is incapable of grasping it.
I really think they’re doing all this too complicated…
Why don’t they just do this?:
Each voter ranks the nominees:
A #1 means 10 points
A #2 means 9 points
…
And #10 means only 1 point
Then it’s just adding, and the film that has the highest score wins, that simple. At the end, it’s the same result (a film needs to be high in every list to win), but the process in much easier, IMO
Best write up on the new system I’ve seen (with sample ballots no less)
http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/news/making-sense-of-the-academys-new-best-picture-voting-rules-colea.php
I still think a 1=10, 2=9, 3=8 point system works better.
@Miguel: Your suggestion will often not lead to the same result, especially since you’ve put no emphasis on the highest ranks. There’re basically infinite possibilities of how to arrange the weights. In a scientific project, one could look at massive amounts of training data to estimate the general vote distribution, and derive the weights from what would lead to the best result. But what is the best result? In this case, assuming PwC has voting data from the past years, they could ‘mold’ the weights to lead to the same result as previous BP winners.
Though it’s true the proposed method is pretty complicated, it’s highly non-linear, which is probably what they want. You can’t decide the contribution of a filled ballot without knowing all the others, which creates a kind of interdependability.
Actually it makes me think of what happened at a NYFCC voting a few years ago when a voter didn’t want to name a runner-up in the category they voted in order to boost the chances for his favorite.
I’ve heard that it’s what the foreign language film committee was doing all the time. Anyway, these are just rumors… But anyway… Let’s take last year’s nominees and expand the field to ten. I’d say GRAN TORINO, WALL-E, THE DARK KNIGHT, FROZEN RIVER and THE CLASS (wishful thinking, but anyway, just a filler).
Of course, it’s possible that a voter HATES Slumdog Millionaire. Such a voter won’t just put it on # 1. He/she is likely to put it on # 9 or # 10, trying to eliminate its chances.
THEREFORE A FILM NOBODY IS PASSIONATE ABOUT, BUT PEOPLE THINK THEY COULD LIVE WITH, COULD WIN.
Wait a second, it’s what happens with NYFCC voters. And knowing Oscar voters’ taste, we could expect films like THE READER prevailing, because they’ll get a lot of # 2 and # 3 votes.
My problem with the rule is that it doesn’t work for the films people are passionate about. It works against the divisive films. It works for the politically correct. It doesn’t work for the difference, for the change. If a film is about a taboo subject, expect it to lose no matter how many awards it’s won. It could win directing, writing, acting Oscars, but while it’ll get a lot of # 1 slots, but not enough for the win and people who didn’t vote for it (most of them) are likely to put it so low on their ballots that its chances of winning would drop significantly.
Even if blacklash against a certain nominee doesn’t occur, still we’ll have the compromise winner. I don’t think it works for the best. It could provide surprises, but I think it isn’t a fair vote.
@ Sijmen,
I THINK YOU’RE WRONG. CRASH WOULD HAVE HAD AN EASIER VICTORY, because voters who disliked BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN wouldn’t put it second. It would have been their # 5!
Sasha,
Let me give an analogy that might help. Let’s kinda think of this like American Idol, except that the voting process is conducted one time and the members can’t vote repeatedly.
After watching the ten films, you had to rank them to who you thought was best, second best, third best, etc. You submit your list to the AMPAS voting system. Now your vote is locked in. Now the tabulators know at time what your favorite is. So in Round 5 when there are 6 finalists, they know who you think is best based solely on your ranking. Any of the ones that have been voted off would be removed from your list. The top name would be your favorite of the films that remain. There is no changing of the mind during the competition.
So how does the preferential ballot work in this case? Round 1, the title with the least amount of favorite votes of the 10 is sent home. If your favorite was sent home, then your #2 becomes your favorite (because it is your favorite of the 9 names that remain).
Round 2, they use your list submitted to rank the top 9. The title with the least amount of favorite votes of the 9 is sent home. If your favorite was sent home, on to the next one on your list.
The process continues until a 50%+1 majority is reached and a winner is declared.
As I did the preferential nomination process for AD at the beginning of the year, let me say, not much movement in rankings as the rounds continued. My guess is that a winner will be declared when they are down to the top 3 or 4 finalists.
My thoughts to how PWC will deal with those situations people have brought up? First, if they were smart–and I think they are–they would ask the members to list on ten lines the order of the titles; they would have to list the names of the films in order on ten lines. So the title at the top is the favorite; second on the list is the second favorite; etc. They wouldn’t put “1″ next to their favorite, “2″ next to their second favorite, etc. This would address the situation that someone brought up where a voter would give two “third best votes” by accidentally awarding two 3’s. It is explicitly clear what the preference is at this point. Second, if someone only lists 5 titles, then that’s the ranking. If those fivee titles go out in the first fivee rounds, then so does the ballot.
Does this help?
What’s strange is that this is the exact same system I used to tally up my favorite songs when I was 13 years old and jotted them down from Casey Kasem’s top 40.
I’m on the ‘nay’ side of this whole debate.
Any word on whether the academy will actually require members to see all the best picture niminees? If voters must do so in the documentary/foreign categories, they should also be forced to see all the heavy hitters. That would be the first step towards improving the voting process.
“nominees”. my bad.
Something that really scares me is what will happen with controversial movies?
If, based on the previous system, Crash still won over Brokeback Mountain… What happens now that every homophobe in AMPAS (and there’s probably many as 2005 showed us) votes and puts BM at number 10?
It wouldn’t change anything, Bernardo S. Number 10 isn’t important at all. Day can use only numbers 2 to 9 and then there must be a picture (in the group of the last two) with more than 50 %.
I have a problem with this.
Okay suppose I really hate three of the films. They’re gonna get points from me even though I think they’re worthless. What if those minuscule points add somehow up to edge out a love it/or hate it film that is clearly better but divides audiences. Something controversial but brilliant could lose out that way. They should have just let everyone pick their top 3. Giving them 30, 20, and 10 points respectively. I think something like that would work out better.
I’m not sure if you have to rank all 10 films on the final ballot, Antoinette. I can’t see the accountants throwing out ballots for leaving blank spaces or being flexible with the voting process. This isn’t Minnesota
@Antoinette: This isn’t a point system, that’s what makes it so complicated. The places at the end almost never are going to be looked at, only if you put all of the top contenders at the end, an anti-vote if you will.
I want to come back on my previous remark on putting the favorites at the end. Putting the favorite second or last doesn’t make a difference when wanting to push your first pick. Since it’s only going to be looked at when your pick has already fallen. So I was a bit wrong there.
Oh. Now I get it. I had to have that system explained to me before.
You know, if this doesn’t work I think they could try doing it like a cowpie raffle next. Just put all the names of the eligible movies on the field and let Bessie choose.
I say they get a mud pit and some boxing gloves and let the producers fight to the finish!
Leave a reply
All comments should respect the Awards Daily House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please let us know, quoting the comment in question.