What is The VFX Predictinator?

updated Jan 3, 2019

The VFX Predictinator is a formula my wife and I developed to correctly predict the winner of the visual effects Academy Award. Cinefex covered The Predictinator in this nice article in 2014.

We developed the formula in 2010, using historical data from 1989-2008 Academy Award nominees and winners for Best Visual Effects. The formula uses quantifiable data to predict a winner. Since then, The VFX Predictinator has correctly predicted the winners of the subsequent VFX Academy Award Winners (“Avatar”, “Inception”, “Hugo”, “Life of Pi” and "Gravity”). In 2014, The Predictinator incorrectly predicted "Guardians of the Galaxy" to win, the first year it was wrong. But we updated the formula, which fixed that bad prediction. We got it completely wrong when we predicted "The Revenant"; "Ex Machina" won the award. We bounced back, correctly predicting "The Jungle Book". In our final effort, we incorrectly predicted "War for the Planet of the Apes", which was bested by "Blade Runner 2049".

The Predictinator does not make artistic or technical judgments. The discussion isn’t about who ‘deserves’ to win due to aesthetic achievement, technical prowess, or cultural significance; the whole point of the exercise is to prove that Academy voters are remarkably predictable when it comes to determining how they will vote for the visual effects Oscar since 1989. As a reminder, while the visual effects branch of the Academy determines the nominees in a bake-off, the full Academy membership of nearly 6,000 members votes on the winners.

Academy voters ride waves of popularity, acclaim, perceived challenges and their own short memory spans when voting for winners of Academy Awards. Many admit they haven't seen even a majority of nominated films. We designed The Predictinator to account for these things: for example, popularity (box office), acclaim (Rotten Tomatoes score), memory span (month of release), plus other criteria which can affect voters' emotional choices.

With the formula, we break down the way most Academy voters think.  “Is the nominee a sequel? Blech. Has its lead actor won an Oscar before? Oh, well, it’s got my vote! Is the movie filled with robots that destroy things? Meh, no thank you. I just saw this movie two months ago! I remember it!”

The formula used the following criteria:

• Critical Acclaim - as measured by Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer percentage), the higher the better
• Domestic Box Office - measured at the time of Academy voting, the higher the better
• Academy Award Nominations - to gauge Academy acclaim, the higher the better
• Month of Release - the later the film’s release, the greater chance of winning
• Sequel Score - sequels are penalized
• Previous Sequel Was Oscar Winner - previous films that won 
• Primary VFX Are Organic Creatures - organic creature films win more frequently
• Facial Animation Acting - creatures that talk win frequently
• Film Based on Comic Book - If the film is based on a comic book
• Lead Actor Prestige - If the lead actor has won an Oscar, film usually wins VFX Oscar

The 90th Academy Awards prediction represented the last time we ran The VFX Predictinator. There are two main reasons why we retired the formula and this effort. One, that we are clearly living in a post-digital era; the world has changed, and the newness of digital characters is no longer shiny and exciting, which means the assumptions are no longer accurate. I wrote extensively about the post-digital era here. And two.

The full formulas are printed below:

Predictinator 1.0:
(((RT Score/ Sum of all noms' RT Score) X 5)^2) + (BO (millions)/ BO Total of all noms) + (Academy Noms (only if 4 or more) X .25) + (((Month of Release / Total Month of Release) X 2.5)^2)* + (Sequel = -.5) + (Prior Sequel won Oscar = -1) + (Primary FX organic creatures = 1) + (Primary organic creatures include facial acting = .75) + (Lead Actor an Academy Award Winner = 1) = Final VFX Predictinator Score
*value has an upper limit of 1

Predictinator 2.0 (created in January 2016):
(((RT Score/ Sum of all noms' RT Score) X 5)^2) + (BO (millions)/ BO Total of all noms) + (Academy Noms (only if 4 or more) X .25) + (((Month of Release / Total Month of Release) X 2.5)^2)* + (Sequel = -.5) + (Prior Sequel won Oscar = -1) + (Primary FX organic creatures = 1) + (Primary organic creatures include facial acting = .75) + (Lead Actor an Academy Award Winner = 1) + (Film based on comic book = X (-1)) = Final VFX Predictinator Score
*value has an upper limit of 1

For more detailed information, visit these links.

The VFX Predictinator, 90th Academy Awards Edition ("War for the Planet of the Apes")
The VFX Predictinator, 89th Academy Awards Edition ("The Jungle Book")
The VFX Predictinator Was Completely wrong,  ("Ex Machina") and Part 2 ("post-digital")
The VFX Predictinator, 88th Academy Awards Edition ("The Revenant")
Making The Predictinator Right, "Making Predictinator 2.0"
The Predictinator Got It Wrong, "Interstellar" Wins over "Guardians" 
Podcast: The VFX Show - The VFX Precitinator ("Guardians")
The VFX Predictinator, 87th Academy Awards Edition ("Guardians of the Galaxy") 
Cinefex - Predictinating the Oscars with Todd Vaziri
The VFX Predictinator, 86th Academy Awards Edition ("Gravity")
The VFX Predictinator, 85th Academy Awards Edition ("Life of Pi")
The VFX Show Oscar Preview Podcast ("Life of Pi")
The VFX Predictinator, 84th Academy Awards Edition ("Hugo")
Podcast: The VFX Show - The VFX Predictinator ("Hugo")
The VFX Predictinator, 83rd Academy Awards Edition ("Inception")
The VFX Predictinator, 82nd Academy Awards Edition ("Avatar")
The VFX Predictinator, Part 1, The beginning of the formula