Making The Predictinator Right

What is The VFX Predictinator? Start here.

In the last article, we discussed how The Predictinator got it wrong. Before deciding if we should continue predicting the Oscar winning visual effects film with our current formula, alter it, or (gasp!) abandon it, we examined two questions that might help us make a decision:

• Has there been a slow change in how visual effects films are perceived by the Academy, causing members to vote differently?
• Are we missing something that has been in front of our eyes the whole time?

First, let’s take a look at the potential changes that have occurred over the last decade.

WHAT HAS CHANGED?
In the early days of digital visual effects, only a few filmmakers were confident and comfortable in helming multi-million dollar visual effects blockbusters. Oscar winning visual effects films were dominated by directors like Robert Zemeckis, Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and the Wachowski siblings, largely making wondrous, successful crowd-pleasing blockbuster visual effects films.

But as time went on, complicated visual effects became more accessible to a larger pool of filmmakers at greatly reduced costs. In the modern era, visual effects became a tool of art-house, ‘important’ and ‘prestigious’ filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Ang Lee, and Alfonso Cuaron, filmmakers who regularly make Oscar-caliber films.

Incidentally, all three of those directors have directed Oscar-winning visual effects films within the last decade. And six out of the last seven visual effects Oscar winners were also nominated for Best Picture.

With breakthroughs created for films like “The Abyss”, “Terminator 2” and “Jurassic Park”, audiences (and Academy voters) were amazed by the fidelity of digital creatures, something audiences had literally never seen before.  In fact, the reason The Predictinator’s data set begins in 1989 is because that was the year “The Abyss” was released, which ushered in the new era of digital effects.

The next two decades saw films that had a heavy presence of digital creatures win Oscars. Year after year, films featuring Gollum, Davy Jones, King Kong, a talking pig, and talking polar bears were winning Academy Awards. This is why our formula gives so much weight to two criteria: organic creatures and organic creatures that talk. However, the full Academy seems to be valuing these breakthrough digital creatures less each year, particularly noticeable in the disregard of the two recent “Planet of the Apes” films featuring astoundingly realistic all-digital apes. While audiences still make blockbusters out of films with digital creatures, the Academy seems less likely to award a visual effects Oscar to a film solely for the presence of its quality digital characters.

Audiences now expect Gollum-quality digital characters in their films, and the Academy may no longer reward a film solely for hitting this quality standard. The bar for the “wow” factor has been raised. In fact, four out of the last five Oscar winning visual effects films had no significant digital characters.

WAS THERE SOMETHING ESSENTIAL MISSING?
Our formula couldn’t differentiate between “Interstellar” (a prestige-leaning ‘classy’ Oscar film) and the well-reviewed, popular crowd-pleasing comic book film “Guardians”. Were there characteristics of “Interstellar” that could be quantified to boost its point value? Were there essential characteristics of a film like “Guardians” that could be quantified to reduce its point value? And would these be universal truths, correctly impacting past and future contests?

Like we mentioned in the previous article, “Interstellar” had a respected, auteur director (could we quantify that, somehow?). The film was touted as a heavy ‘practical effects’ film (is there a way to quantify miniatures and physical sets?). Are we hurting ourselves by using the Tomatometer as a gauge for critical acclaim, since crowd-pleasing popcorn films can garner higher Tomatometer scores than prestige pictures like “Interstellar”?

As for “Guardians”, it had a strong comedic bent (how on earth does one assign a point value to humor? I mean, even the esteemed Golden Globes doesn’t have any idea how to classify a comedy. Oh, look, “The Martian” just won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy!). “Guardians” is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but isn’t a sequel (so do we just ding it for being a Marvel film? That seems too specific).

WHAT DO WE DO?
We were stuck.

We were not comfortable with abandoning our little formula, just because it broke once. We would not let it die; we’re too proud of it. And we were not ready to accept that it would occasionally be wrong. That’s no fun at all.

We could have fractured the Predictinator into two distinct time periods, breaking it up into two separate formulas, to account for our perceived changes to the industry we outlined above. That option seemed inelegant; our goal was a single, polished formula to rule them all. We could have tinkered with the criteria and how each piece of data is weighted against one another, but, even with the slightest tweak, we quickly realized the entire formula would fall down like a house of cards. This thing is pretty well-calibrated, and can’t withstand much tinkering without destroying itself.

The only option remaining, we thought, was to add a new magic piece of criteria that would solve our problem, without breaking the rest of the formula. And we wanted to add something that had a universal truth, not a statistical hack. For example, we weren’t going to add the criteria “Does the title of the film include the word ‘Guardians’? Minus one point!”

So we thought about it. For nine months. (Hey, we were busy!)

THE “I’VE GOT IT” MOMENT
One day, my wife was in the kitchen, I was in the living room. She just blurted out, “I’ve got it.”

And it was staring us in the face every time we looked at the full spreadsheet of films from 1989-2014. She had figured out a new piece of easily quantifiable criteria that would simultaneously de-emphasize digital characters as well as bolster the power of a ‘prestige’ film.

“Is the film based on a comic book? Minus one point.”

Duh. It seems so obvious now. Historically, and for the foreseeable future, Academy members simply do not give Oscars to films based on comic books. Peering into their headspace, I suspect they consider these films to be pure popcorn and not worthy of the honor of receiving an Academy Award. We posit that subtracting a Predictinator point for films “based on a comic book” will not only slightly de-emphasize digital characters, but will strengthen point values of prestigious films that frequently win visual effects Academy Awards.

My wife executed a simple masterstroke that not only fixed the “Interstellar” year, but also bolstered the historical data. Since 1989, only one film based on a comic book has won the Oscar. “Spider-Man 2” is the lone victor, with 12 comic book films going home empty handed. Even our most difficult year, 1992, was made easier with this tweak. Instead of “Death Becomes Her” squeaking past “Batman Returns” by a narrow margin, it now crushes the caped crusader with the new criteria. (By the way, the single comic book winner, “Spider-Man 2”, still commands its victory over its next contender, “Harry Potter 3”.)

Here is what the data looks like. Again, the only thing that we changed to the formula is a single line item, “Is the film based on a comic book?” If so, one point gets deducted. No other criteria values were changed. “Interstellar” now wins the Academy Award for visual effects. Presenting The VFX Predictinator 2.0.

(((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) + (Film based on comic book = x(-1)) = Final VFX Predictinator Score

*value has an upper limit of 1

click for larger - I dare you

Looking toward the future, the frequency of comic book films is increasing. Marvel films are a cinematic juggernaut- the twelve Marvel movies have grossed over $9 billion worldwide, and every movie studio is building their own universes, flooding the future movie market. The vast majority of these films are aimed at young audiences, consistently hitting explosive levels of risk-averse, family-friendly PG-13 mayhem. These films will continue to earn visual effects Academy Award nominations, because the best visual effects facilities in the world are creating outrageous, spectacles and otherworldly characters for them. The films will continue to perform well at the visual effects bake-offs, and will continue to earn Oscar nominations.

Prestige pictures, however, they are not, and I think the Academy will continue to resist rewarding comic book films.

We’re going to stick with this, The Predictinator 2.0, for a while. Well, at least for this year.

The nominations for the 88th Academy Awards will be announced Thursday, January 14, 2016. We will run the numbers through The VFX Predictinator 2.0 sometime after.

The Predictinator Got It Wrong

What is The VFX Predictinator? Start here.

Last year, we were wrong.

For the first time since we created The VFX Predictinator, a single formula my wife and I created that correctly predicted the winner of the visual effects Academy Award from 1989 to 2013, our formula got it wrong. The algorithm predicted that “Guardians of the Galaxy” would take home the Oscar for visual effects, based on a number of quantifiable data points including its strong box office, overwhelming critical acclaim, and its inclusion of talking creatures as its primary visual effects. Sadly (at least for our formula as well as our egos), “Interstellar” took home last year’s visual effects Oscar.

As I wrote before last year’s Oscars, I was deeply concerned about the accuracy of the Predictinator’s prediction.  One could hear the anxiety in my voice, as I appeared on The VFX Show podcast to talk about our Oscar guesses.  Leading up to the actual ‘running of the numbers’, my gut said that “Interstellar” would be the front runner. My wife even said, just moments after she entered the numbers into the spreadsheet, “Well, I guess this time The Predictinator will be wrong.” She was right about that.

Last year's Predictinator results. Full article.

In the months since the Oscar telecast, we’ve recovered from the initial disappointment of getting it wrong, then looked back at the two films and tried to break down exactly why the Academy membership voted the way it did.

WHY “INTERSTELLAR” WAS DESTINED TO WIN

We built the formula to demystify the core values of the Academy voter. We realized a predominant and consistent value is what we define as the “prestige” factor. Academy members tend to vote for films directed by experienced filmmakers; inventive, beautiful movies that are regarded as “important”. Academy voters want to feel smart and forward-thinking, not just simply rewarding popular, popcorn films.

Critics saw “Interstellar” as flawed but beautiful.  It featured the much-loved Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway (both Oscar winners) and a respected director, Christopher Nolan.  The visual effects were (arguably) not necessarily groundbreaking, but the gorgeous imagery visual effects created by the effects team was one of the reasons the film was highly regarded.  In the abstract, the visual effects in Nolan’s film also had a heavy ‘practical’ emphasis, pushed by the film’s marketing, which ingratiates itself to the Academy’s largely older voter base. The film was certainly considered the most prestigious movie nominated for the Visual Effects Oscar in 2014.

We represent this “prestige” factor in a few ways in The Predictinator: the Rotten Tomatoes score which measures critical acclaim, total number of Academy Award nominations, and Actor Prestige (if the lead actor has previously won an Oscar). By our numbers, “Interstellar” had a lot going for it, but didn’t earn it enough points to beat “Guardians"’s final score. Its Tomatometer value, while a respectable 72%, was the lowest in the category with crowd-pleasing superhits scoring higher. The film earned five Oscar nominations, which are hugely important to the Predictinator score. Even its star, McConaughey, had an Oscar under his belt (Actor Prestige).

The Academy has also historically favored movies with creatures--especially creatures that talk--in the visual effects category.  The Predictinator accounts for that, and in this area Nolan’s film suffered.  On the other hand, the Academy rarely looks kindly on any sort of sequel; a sequel is almost directly at odds with "prestige", since they are routinely looked upon as derivative, unoriginal, and cash-grabby.  In this case, “Interstellar” benefited. 

As you can see, “Interstellar” had the qualities the Academy wants in a winner, but our formula didn’t give it enough points to win.

WHY “GUARDIANS” WAS NEVER GOING TO WIN

We talked about everything on “Interstellar”s side; now let’s discuss why “Guardians” could not win the Oscar, even though The Predictinator gave it a higher score.

At its core, “Guardians” is a crowd pleasing, funny film. The Academy historically ignores comedies. Very rarely do comedies earn Oscars nominations, and even more rare is a comedy win (modern exceptions include Kevin Kline’s Best Supporting Actor win for “A Fish Called Wanda”, and Marisa Tomei's Best Supporting Actress win for "My Cousin Vinny"). The only comedy to win a visual effects Oscar is “Death Becomes Her” which, if you remember, was extremely difficult for the Predictinator to correctly predict. “Guardians” was tied for the highest Tomatometer rating of the year, but that score indicates overwhelming, general positive enthusiasm for the film, not “prestige”. To that point, “Guardians” only had one other Oscar nomination (for makeup), which hurt its Predictinator score.

“Guardians” is also part of a film series, a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Although it’s not strictly a sequel, the film operates thematically and structurally within the confines of an overwhelmingly popular film franchise, and is branded as such. The Marvel name is as prominent as a “2” in the marketing of the film. As we’ve seen, Academy voters regularly avoid rewarding sequels with Oscars; we did not score the film as a sequel, but had we, it would have been dinged ½ point, giving “Interstellar” more of an advantage.

Finally, “Guardians” is regarded as another superhero movie (we will not quibble about the superhero powers--or lack thereof--of the protagonists of the film), which the Academy is also shy of rewarding. The Academy, largely made up of folks older than 60 years old (hey, look, the visual effects branch is the youngest branch, by far!), regards superhero films as childish fare, quite the opposite of important films that deserve to be lauded. Rarely do superhero films like “Batman”, “Superman” or “Iron Man” win Oscars (the lone exception since 1989 is “Spider-Man 2”). Academy voters are less likely reward a genre of film that regularly reboots and restarts itself (for example, Keaton, Kilmer, Clooney, Bale, Affleck... that’s an average of a new Batman every 5.5 years).

All this said, the Predictinator latched onto some key data points: “Guardians”’ extravagant box office haul ($333M), super high Tomatometer score (91%), and, most importantly, got 1.75 points because its primary visual effects consisted of organic creatures that talked. Groot and Rocket Raccoon were extremely impressive and main characters in the film, which usually is a big plus to Academy voters. But in this case “Guardians” was simply not prestigious enough to have this work get noticed.  

There was simply no way that the Academy would award such a film in the Oscars, but our Predictinator had no way to account for the factors mentioned above.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Understanding why “Interstellar” was always going to win, that “Guardians” was always going to go home empty handed, and with all of the potential changes occurring within the visual effects industry, my wife and I asked ourselves the fundamental questions:

Were we missing some key part of the formula all along? Should we alter the formula in some way? Has a changed occurred in the way the Academy votes for visual effects films? Should we just leave the formula as-is, and accept that it could be wrong in certain years? Or just give up and retire the whole stupid thing?

Stay tuned. Here is Part II, "Making The Predicinator Right"

"Interstellar" Wins The Oscar

Congratulations to the entire visual effects team behind "Interstellar", the winner of the visual effects Oscar in the 87th Academy Awards.

INTERSTELLAR

Paul Franklin, Andrew Lockley, Ian Hunter and Scott Fisher

And, as for The VFX Predictinator... well, we got this one wrong. I'll be writing an article in the coming days about how and, perhaps, why we got it wrong.  And here it is.

Oscar Pool Ballot, 87th Academy Awards

It's time for the Awesomest Oscar Pool Ballot In The History Of Oscar Pool Ballots.

Every year I create a special ballot based on a typical Academy Awards printable ballot -- but on my ballot, each category has a different point value. The highest valued category is "Best Picture," while the mainstream films' categories are valued at two points. The non-mainstream categories (like the documentary and short film categories) are valued at one point.

This way, in a tight race for the winner of the pool, the winner most likely would not be determined by the non-mainstream films (in other words, blind guesses).  This year, I started with a ballot from The Gold Knight, since Oscar.com didn't make a pretty, printable ballot this year.

Download the ballot here for the 87th Academy Awards and use it at your Oscar party.

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And if you're wondering why Tom Cruise is on my ballot... he's been on every one of my Oscar ballots. Because he's soooooooooo cool.

Visual Effects, Oscars and the Box Office in 2014

"Guardians of the Galaxy" is the top earner of this year's visual effects Oscar nominees, at $774M global box office.

Just as I did for 2013 films, 2012 films and 2011 films, I thought it would be interesting to track the average global box office grosses from this year's Academy Award nominees, per category.

 click for larger

The 2011 chart - The 2012 chart - The 2013 chart

 The five nominees for this year's visual effects earned a total global box office gross of over $3.6B. All of this year's films were huge hits, unlike other years which usually include at least one monster hit, and a few sub-$200M earners. Unlike the three previous years, no single 2014 visual effects nominee grossed over $1B.

The last four years at a glance:

Average global box office of Best Visual Effects films:
2014 (87th Academy Awards) - $723M
Top Grosser: Guardians of the Galaxy, $774M

2013 (86th Academy Awards) - $698M
Top Grosser: Iron Man 3, $1.2B

2012 (85th Academy Awards) - $763M
Top Grosser: The Avengers, $1.5B

2011 (84th Academy Awards) - $662M
Top Grosser: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, 1.35B

Repeating what I've said in the past, this chart should surprise no one.  I wrote all my caveats and explanations in previous articles, so I won't rehash them here.  Put simply, the average box office earnings from 'the best' visual effects films films far exceeds any other discipline's 'best' work, according to the Academy Awards.

I wrote this concerning the 2011 box office when I charted the box office averages for the 84th Academy Awards, and unfortunately, this still is true.

It also illustrates the sad state of the visual effects community. The average Oscar nominee for visual effects made over $662 million globally, and yet our industry has relatively little power in Hollywood.

All data from boxofficemojo.com .

The VFX Show Podcast, Predicting The VFX Oscar Winner

I had the honor of being a guest on FXGuide's podcast, The VFX Show, along with hosts Mike Seymour and Matt Wallin. We talked about (surprise!) the Academy Awards and our attempts to predict the winner of the visual effects Oscar with The VFX Predictinator.

The VFX Show #194: Predicting the VFX Oscar Winner
Mike Seymour, Matt Wallin and Todd Vaziri discuss the nominees and their picks for the 87th Academy Award for achievement in visual effects.

Show notes and link: http://www.fxguide.com/thevfxshow/the-vfx-show-194-predicting-the-vfx-oscar-winner/

The VFX Predictinator, 87th Academy Awards Edition

 Huh. Ummm, okay. Didn't see that coming.

The VFX Predictinator is a formula my wife and I developed to correctly predict the winner of the visual effects Academy Award. 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”).  Read all about the Predictinator here: What is The VFX Predictinator?

Let's see what the formula says about the 87th Academy Award nominees for Achievement in Visual Effects.

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You read that correctly. The VFX Predictinator predicts “Guardians of the Galaxy” to win the Academy Award for visual effects. To say we were surprised would be an understatement.

“Guardians” certainly earned its VFX Oscar nomination, and is a worthy contender.  But leading up to the bake-off, the conventional wisdom thought the VFX Oscar race was between the exceptional work of "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" and "Interstellar". "Apes 2" advanced upon its predecessor with even more convincing apes made entirely with computer graphics (driven by motion capture and keyframe animation) featured in beautiful effects shots with nuanced and clever shot design. "Interstellar" and its director Christopher Nolan pushed visual storytelling boundaries by insisting on as much practical, real-world techniques as possible. Intense, gorgeous visual design infused the film's wormhole, black hole and tesseract sequences with bold, innovative energy.

Both films were big hits, both films were critically acclaimed ("Apes 2" was more of a crowd-pleaser, while "Interstellar" earned praise for its audaciousness and scorn for its, well, Nolan-ness.)

Personally, I thought “Interstellar” had a slight edge in the race. “Gravity”, like “Interstellar”, also featured large-scale, impressive space visual effects. Like “Gravity” (which was up against big superhero, sci-fi and fantasy blockbusters), “Interstellar” is arguably the most ‘important’, least spectacle-based, thought-provoking film of the nominees, and the film most likely to garner additional Academy Award nominations. “Interstellar” is a vote that would make Academy voters feel ‘good’. It’s the classy choice, versus choosing comic book films or sequels.

Of the ten films nominated for VFX over the last two years, the only films that are not based on other material are “Gravity” and “Interstellar”. Finally, “Interstellar”’s ace-in-the-hole is Matthew McConaughey; a key Predictinator data point is ‘Actor Prestige’, which rewards a film an entire point if its lead actor has won an acting Academy Award. (McConaughey won last year’s Best Actor trophy for “Dallas Buyer’s Club”.) Remember, “Gravity” starred Sandra Bullock, who won an Oscar for “The Blind Side” which earned the film a valuable Predictinator point.

The digital character work in “Apes 2” was beyond magnificent. The filmmakers made a sequel that was even more warmly received than its crowd-pleasing predecessor, and the visual effects work kept pace by adding more characters, more environments, with the apes delivering even more dramatic performances. Even though “Apes 2” would win Predictinator points for organic creatures and facial acting work, it would get dinged for its earlier release date, and for being a sequel.

For weeks, I thought it would be between these two films, and until I could run The Predictinator numbers, I was sweating, since I didn’t know which film the formula would pick. This is why my pre-Predictinator anxiety was so high.

 If only I knew what was about to happen.

From November 2014, before even the bake-off films were announced

So, if the race was really between “Interstellar” and “Apes 2”, why the heck did the The VFX Predictinator choose "Guardians of the Galaxy"?

When running the numbers each year for The Predictinator, my wife and I have our little ritual. I prep all the data (box office tallies, months of release, etc.), and she preps the Excel spreadsheet that contains the formula. I read off each film's data points-- she plugs them into the spreadsheet. She sees each film's score updated in real time, but doesn't give me any hint of the updating point values.

We enter the data for each film in alphabetical order: first "Captain America 2", then "Apes 2", then "Guardians". I noticed after I read through "Guardians" data points, she grunted quietly. I immediately began to sweat. We continued with the data points, without any commentary. "Interstellar" and "X-Men: DOFP" finished up our list. The predicted winner was revealed on her screen.

"Whoa," she said.

"What?" I responded.

“We've got a problem here,” she said.

Running the numbers. Wife: “Hmmm… we’ve got a problem here.” #predictinator
— Todd Vaziri (@tvaziri) January 17, 2015

“Guardians of the Galaxy” was staring us in the face, winning with 6.18 points. It’s not a runaway leader; “Interstellar” is close behind at 5.43 points, and “Apes 2” is at 5.23 points. So at least we were right to think that “Interstellar” and “Apes 2” would be evenly matched.

In terms of Predictinator scores, this year’s race is the closest since 2007, when “The Golden Compass” (4.98 points) beat “Transformers (4.91 points).

One thing sets apart this year’s visual effects Oscar race from previous races: all five films were giant box office hits and were critically acclaimed.

In fact, to illustrate how competitive the five films were, the stunning “Interstellar” was the least critically acclaimed film of the five VFX nominees with an extremely respectable 72% on the Tomatometer; the other four nominees scored at least 89% on the Tomatometer. At the box office, it earned an also respectable $189M, but it was the lowest grossing film amongst the five VFX nominees.

Making matters worse for “Interstellar”, the Predictinator treats box office and critical acclaim as relative to one another. So even though its box office and Tomatometer rating were quite respectable, the forumula heavily penalized the film for being the outlier in both categories.

I also thought “Interstellar” would earn far more than five total Academy Award nominations.

What gave “Guardians of the Galaxy” the advantage this year? The film faired well in several pieces of criteria: 

• "Guardians" tied with “X-Men: DOFP” with the highest critical acclaim (91% Tomatometer score).
• The film had the top box office of the five nominees at $333M— that’s a whopping $73M more than the next film, “Captain America 2”.
• It was not a sequel (unlike “Apes 2” and “X-Men: DOFP”, which both lost points for their sequelness).
• Finally, and most importantly, it earned both sets of points for being a film whose primary visual effects are organic creatures (Rocket Raccoon and Groot) as well for having creatures that performed facial acting.

Confused and frightened, my wife and I walked around the house like zombies. We were stunned by this upset. Dejected, she finally said, “Well, I guess this time The Predictinator will be wrong.”

But I’m not giving up on The Predictinator just yet. And that’s why I’m going to finish this analysis two ways: first, admitting that The Predictinator will be wrong, and the second, arguing that The Predictinator will be right.

THE PREDICTINATOR WILL BE WRONG AND THIS MAKES US SAD
My wife and I always wondered when our little formula turn up with the wrong VFX Oscar winner. We are very proud that the numbers correctly predicted “Avatar”, “Inception”, “Hugo”, “Life of Pi” and "Gravity”. (“Hugo”! No one was predicting “Hugo”!)

For a brief moment, we thought about creating an all-new formula - one that tinkers with the percentages, or adding a new criteria that helps ‘correct’ for what appears to be an unlikely winner.

For example, historically, we know the Academy virtually ignores the entire comedy genre, for whatever reason. Academy voters seemingly want their vote to be ‘classy and important’, rather than rewarding films that simply made them laugh. 

The rare honor of an Oscar for a funny film comes infrequently; Kevin Kline won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor back in 1988 for “A Fish Called Wanda”. And comedic films are rarely represented among the VFX Oscar nominees. However, any points we remove from “Guardians” for being a comedy would also negatively affect the Oscar win for 1992’s “Death Becomes Her”, which was one of the most difficult films in which we had to ‘make’ win, using our formula. The formula change that would help us in 2014 would hurt us in 1992.

(In fact, since 1989, the only VFX Oscar nominees that can remotely be deemed a comedy are “Guardians”, “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” and “Death Becomes Her”.)

But completely revamping the formula to avoid incorrectly predicting this year’s winner seems obtuse and unsportsmanlike. The endeavor would turn into a math problem rather than a philosophy. We gave it our best shot, and revisiting it each year seems like cheating. If we do, in fact, predict incorrectly this year, perhaps it indicates some sort of paradigm shift in Academy voting for which we are not accounting. But we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

THE PREDICTINATOR IS RIGHT - “GUARDIANS” WILL WIN THE VFX OSCAR
“Guardians of the Galaxy” is a crowd-pleasing super blockbuster that critics adored. It was the #1 movie at the U.S. box office by a longshot (the #2 film was $73M away), and it earned $773M worldwide. Its worldwide gross was only behind “Transformers 4” and “Hobbit 3”. Its Tomatometer score was an astonishing 91%.

“Guardians” was, by most Hollywood measures, a genuine risk taken by Marvel Studios. The film is a sci-fi comedy with relatively unknown, non-mainstream characters. It was Marvel’s first film to take place almost entirely off the Earth, featuring a talking raccoon and a talking tree as prominent characters. And, it was the savior of Hollywood’s summer; released in August, Hollywood exhaled after an extremely modest summer at the box office, relieved that James Gunn’s movie became a monster hit. Hollywood might want to reward “Guardians of the Galaxy” in a big way; by giving it a visual effects Oscar.

Most paramount, “Guardians” had two prominent characters in an ensemble cast that were entirely computer generated creatures. Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) was realized by Framestore as a wacky, genetically modified talking raccoon. Rocket cracked jokes, hurled insults, piloted spaceships, right alongside his human castmates. Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) is a walking tree with arms, legs and a face. Like Rocket, Groot (realized by MPC) interacted fully with the people around him. These are two completely synthetic characters sinking into the narrative. Audiences were completely convinced by the authenticity of these beings. The synthetic nature of their existences were not questioned.  Just like the brilliant creatures in Oscar winning films like “Life of Pi”, “Avatar”, “Pirates 2”, “King Kong” and “The Two Towers”, “Guardians” will take the Oscar because of its ability to create fully realized synthetic creatures that help tell the story.

Many might argue that “Apes 2” and “Interstellar” are much more significant films when it comes to the technical and creative innovation that the Academy typically wishes to reward. “Guardians”, however, is similar to 1996’s “Independence Day”, a film whose visual effects were extremely well executed but not necessarily groundbreaking or exceptional. That same year, “Dragonheart” and “Twister”, arguably were far more advanced and risky projects. In addition, back in 2000, “Gladiator” (a crowd-pleasing, critically-lauded film with beautiful matte painting environments and set extensions) defeated two films that were much riskier and forward-thinking, “The Perfect Storm” and “Hollow Man”.

Groot and Rocket Raccoon were animated and rendered so well that audiences completely accepted them as living, breathing characters right alongside Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Drax (Dave Bautista). And the Academy will want to reward the film for achieving this amazing accomplishment.

We will see what happens when the Academy Award winners are announced on February 22.

87th Academy Award Nominees for Visual Effects

The nominees for the 87th Academy Awards have been announced. As always, the nominees were determined by the visual effects branch of the Academy after attending a bake-off of 10 films.  The full Academy membership will vote on the winners of each category.  The awards ceremony will take place on February 22, 2015.

Here are the nominees for Achievement in Visual Effects for the 87th Academy Awards. Congratulations to all who helped bring these images to the screen.  Of course, we will run The VFX Predictinator soon... stay tuned.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

Dan DeLeeuw, Russell Earl, Bryan Grill and Dan Sudick

DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, Daniel Barret and Erik Winquist

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

Stephane Ceretti, Nicolas Aithadi, Jonathan Fawkner and Paul Corobould

INTERSTELLAR

Paul Franklin, Andrew Lockley, Ian Hunter and Scott Fisher

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

Richard Stammers, Lou Pecora, Tim Crosbie and Cameron Waldbauer

The Films Going to the Bake-Off

2:15pm: updated with commentary below

Today, The Academy announced the names of the 10 films that will be competing for this year's Visual Effects Academy Award.  Congratulations to all the people involved with these films. Here is the Academy's statement.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that 10 films remain in the running in the Visual Effects category for the 87th Oscars®.

• Captain America: The Winter Soldier
• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
• Godzilla
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
• Interstellar
• Maleficent
• Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
• Transformers: Age of Extinction
• X-Men: Days of Future Past

The Academy’s Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee determined the shortlist.  All members of the Visual Effects Branch will now be invited to view 10-minute excerpts from each of the shortlisted films on Saturday, January 10, 2015.  Following the screenings, the members will vote to nominate five films for final Oscar consideration.

The 87th Academy Awards® nominations will be announced live on Thursday, January 15, 2015, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

The Oscars will be held on Sunday, February 22, 2015, at the Dolby Theatre® at Hollywood & Highland Center® in Hollywood, and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network.  The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.


Today's visual effects landscape is staggeringly competitive. The quality (and quantity) of work being executed by the world's visual effects facilities is top notch. Not convinced? Just look at the films that didn't make it into the bake-off: "Exodus", "Amazing Spider-Man 2", "Lucy", "Edge of Tomorrow", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "Noah".