For Your Consideration: An End To The Academy Awards

Problem

Since the hood was lifted off the campaigning process that Harvey Weinstein and his minions used to partake in order to secure Oscar nominations, the entire rigged electoral process of the Academy Awards has felt off.

Couple these accusations in a climate of heightened mistrust of the electoral process (despite the Oscars being a private, industry-based democratic process) along with a rise in potentially ineligible streaming content fast becoming the audience norm and you find yourself at a fork in the road.

Blunders of misread winners, low ratings year after year, the short memories of the voters who need to select nominees and winners based on release dates that are timed to coincide with the ‘Oscar Season’, and finally continued racial biases don’t help the cause of the Academy.

We may be basking in the shadow of a broken system that serves little to no purpose in an increasingly digital age.

Solution

To solve the purpose of the Oscars, that is — to reward deserving work of a calendar year that served its purpose in inspiring audiences all over the world.

The process needs to be more inclusive, more robust and more competitive.

A new industry award needs to be invented now and a line drawn in the sand to seperate the eras.

Streaming films can no longer be distinguished even if the filmmakers could not extend their distribution budgets to include cinemas in a certain region for ‘award consideration’.

Also, streaming platforms should not be favored over others. If work is worthy, it should be deemed to be worthy, regardless of where it sits in the distribution landscape.

Every year there are thousands of films released online and there is no way the members of the Academy could get around to seeing them all, let alone the ones they are supposedly meant to be watching already.

Therefore, the aggregators and cinemas need to form an alliance where they use their data to submit films of eligibility to a New Academy for consideration. If a film performed well at an independent cinema, or a multiplex, or streamed well on Vimeo, or YouTube, or Netflix, or Disney+, etc — those numbers need to be categorized.

The data collected.

From there a knock-out round could be formed from votes that are procured by the numbers of foot-traffic.

This incentivizes these platforms to produce more in-house content— if they know that the possibility of awards consideration could boost their platforms (yes, even the cinemas. Why not?)

Finally, and this has been debated at length, there needs to be an overhaul in the nomination categories.

Independently produced low-cost films need to be able to compete on a global scale if they are worthy — but they need to compete against the big wigs too.

If they lack the funds for digital effects, this should not be a deterrent.

Instead, there should be a ‘Best film without fx category’ (or words to that effect) to celebrate and expose these under the radar movies that could have the ability to influence and change the cinema landscape for generations to come.

‘Best feature-length smartphone film’ could be another.

Let there be one final category for Best Film, but allow all films to compete.

This dilutes the awards, yes, but we are living in a different cinematic world and the rules need to be re-written. As of right now, they are irrelevant and evidence suggests they do not boost the box office numbers of competing films.

The more corrupting and influencing is removed from supposed democratic organizations, the more fluid a process of excellence is presented which should have a flow-on effect for revenue, longevity and (most importantly) what they’re always chasing…

More prestige.