The Oscars Change for the Better
by Ben Chamberlain

For those that are not aware, just a few months ago it was announced that the Academy had changed its best picture nomination awards to accommodate 10 nominees. This ruling was met with both agreement from the wider film community and anger. Many believe that the new ruling will allow films like The Dark Knight to get nominated for the award. Others think that 10 films is too much, that the best picture nominees should be the crème of the crop and 5 better represents that than 10 does. Whether you do agree or disagree with the new ruling, it has little affect over the Academy or its voters.

Now the Academy has added more fuel to the fire by changing the voting rules. The rule has been that the voters only had to vote for one film and whichever film got the most votes was the film that won the award. It was possible for the winning film to win with only 18% of the final vote. Meaning that pretty much every film that has won the best picture Academy award could have done so with no majority of the vote. Scary.

There are 6000 voters. Each person accounts for one vote, so obviously you have 6000 votes. With the old system a film could win with 601 votes or like I said 18%. The way the new system works is like this. Each voter has to rank the films from 1 to 10. This may seem simple to start with but it isn’t. A film needs 3001 votes to become the winner. If all the votes are tallied and none of the 10 films has 3001 or more votes than this kicks off the round process. Now I’m going to pick 10 random films released this year to help make me point, explaining each round as we go through. Remember this is an example!

The above graph shows the 10 films that the Academy nominated (remember, example!). All the votes add up to 6000 and the top film needs 3001 to be called the winner. Now obviously there is no clear winner so all the people that people that voted Sherlock Holmes the best film of the year have their 2nd best film of year vote added to that film. So the 100 votes for Sherlock Holmes now get split up between all the remaining films. Don’t get it? Well this next graph shows that Sherlock Holmes votes have now been given to the films those people voted for in 2nd place.

This process keeps going until there is a clear winner. Sometimes it will happen in a matter of rounds and sometimes it will come down to 2 films. Below is a graph showing that the race has come down to 2 films. It also shows that the film that got the most first votes will not always win.

As you can see unlike before the film that wins gets 50% of the votes. Also, the film that is the first front runner will not always win. Whilst Adventureland got the most “best of the year” votes, it doesn’t end up as the winner when all first and second are accounted for. Now the reason for the ranking 1 to 10 is because if the second film on that voter’s ballot is a film that has already been killed out of the race, then it goes to the next film on the list that is still available. It is a difficult and annoying process, but it is the best process the Academy could use.

Now you may be wondering how this all affects you and the films you love. In essence it should end up being a more honest representation of the best film of the year. Whilst the Academy is great and what it does is great, it has been known to be a bit bias, well at least its voters have. This could even it all out and a film like District 9, which wouldn’t have any chance of getting nominated in any other years, could actually come away with a surprise win. I’m not saying it will happen, but it very well could. This change is a change for the better and I hope this article gives you an idea on how future best picture voting will be.

01/09/2009 5

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