I’m now starting to feel a little better about the 10 Best Picture nominees thing. In the wake of its decision to double the number of films that earn the Oscars’ biggest nod from five to 10, the Academy has decided to change the way it determines the Best Picture winner, according to the veteran Oscar journalist Steve Pond over at The Wrap. And I have to say, I’m totally on board with this move. It’s a little complicated, but let me try to explain: In the past, once the nominees were announced, Academy members voted only for the one film they thought should win the award, and the film with the most votes won. But with so many nominees next year, it’s feasible that a movie could have won Best Picture with only 11 percent of the vote, which seems crazy. So now, once the 10 nominees are named, voters will rank the films from 1 to 10. All the No. 1 votes will be counted, and if no film has more than 50 percent of the vote (which will certainly be the case), the last-place film will be eliminated and the voters who voted for that film will have their No. 2 votes counted instead. That process will continue until one film has a majority of the votes. As Pond points out, there is a chance that the film that ends up winning won’t actually have the most No. 1 votes, but will instead emerge the victor in the second, third, or fourth rounds. But I’d rather see that happen than have a Best Picture with a paltry 11 percent of the vote.
The upshot here is that Oscar campaigners who used to try to cultivate a small cult of fans for their films will now need to canvass more broadly to snag those all-important No. 2 and No. 3 rankings as well. In other words, when it comes to individual Oscar ballots, winning is no longer everything.
I’m sure PwC will love figuring this out come next February. I hope they drop this ridiculous idea all together for 2010.
I’m with this move! I was really wondering how the Academy was going to balance things out…
Silly way of counting.
If they were going to change it they might as well have used a Borda count.
Isn’t that similar to the way the olympic committee picks the city that will host the next olympics? In addition to the oscar, maybe we should give the highest rated film a gold medal.
My head hurts.
I thought that’s how they were counted today! Is it only the acting/directing/technical etc categories that are on STV?
As I understand, that’s almost the way the nominees are determined.
Couldn’t this backfire in some weird way, with people less willing to put the underdog 1st because they know their votes will just get thrown out?
Just the opposite. If you know that if your first vote gets thrown out then your second or third vote gets counted, then you would feel more confident voting for an underdog.
I’m with David; I thought that’s how the winners in most if not all of the categories were already chosen.
That’s not right. This process is similar to how nominees are determined. All winners are based solely on popular vote.
Why don’t they do a point system where a voter’s #1 rank gets 10 points, #2 gets 9, etc; then whichever film has the most “points” is the winner?
That’s what I was thinking.
This is called a “Borda count.”
I still don’t know how thrilled I am about there being 10 nominees. It’s great that more films will be recognized, but I think that slightly diminishes the honor of getting a nomination. At least this system makes it seem a little more fair.
Makes sense.
I also think with 10 Best Picture nominees, the five Best Director nominees take on added importance. That category suddenly becomes the “de facto” finalists for Best Picture.
That’s exactly what’s going to happen, Tony. Right now, in a typical year, four (sometimes three) of the five Best Picture nominees have a corresponding Best Director nod, which means there are four (sometimes three) serious contenders and one long shot. From now on, there will simply be four (sometimes three) serious contenders, and six (or seven) long shots. Such a great improvement!
I was totally against the 10 nominee idea anyway because that is almost guaranteeing a five hour broadcast, but I think this is just silly now. And I think K has a point. Unwillingness to vote for the underdog might skew the results anyway.
Yeah, it makes complete sense that by including 5 more nominees, the telecast will increase by ONE HOUR. Including 5 more nominees will not take up much more time and I’m sure they will keep the running time normal. I’m sick of all the whining about it being so long, it airs ONCE A YEAR.
Thank you, Ryan. I think it’s ridiculous how people think naming five extra nominees in ONE category would tack on so much time.
This is a year late. The Dark Knight should have won last year, and with this system it is feasible that it could have.
This is the same Preferential Balloting system used to determine the nominees in the first place. This voting system is widely thought to be the REAL problem with the terrible nominees the last few years. I wish they would change the voting process that determines the nominees in the first place and get rid of this awful preferential ballot. Instead, they are now doubling the usage of this horrible system. Awful.
I guess so…