Image Credit: Stephen Vaughan; Laurie Sparham; Lorey Sebastian; Niko Tavernise; Chuck Zlotnick; Merrick Morton; Sebastian Mlynarski; Jojo Whilden; Disney/Pixar; Suzanne Tenner; Oscar statuette: A.M.P.A.S.Academy Award ballots were due Tuesday, and by tonight, PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants Rick Rosas and Brad Oltmanns will have determined this year’s Best Picture winner. But what about your Best Picture winner, EW.com readers? Last week, we asked you to rank the 10 nominees in order from No. 1 to No. 10, just like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. We then counted your ballots using the Academy’s elaborate preferential voting system. Since this method involves sorting — and resorting — each individual ballot, we limited the poll to 1,000 ballots to give us a manageable sample. It was a close race that ultimately required the maximum nine rounds of sorting to resolve. And to prove our math-geek credentials, we’ll present a round-by-round recap of how things played out. But first, your winner. And the EW.com readers’ Oscar goes to…
The Social Network. Although Inception wasn’t far behind, David Fincher’s shrewd retelling of the creation of Facebook led our Best Picture race from beginning to end. Here’s how the nominees ended up ranking, from No. 1 to No. 10: The Social Network, Inception, The King’s Speech, Black Swan, Toy Story 3, The Fighter, 127 Hours, True Grit, Winter’s Bone, and The Kids Are All Right. You can stop here if all you wanted to know was who won, but if you’re curious about the quirky tabulation process itself, read on.
Before last year’s adoption of 10 Best Picture nominees, the winner of every Oscar category, including Best Picture, was simply the nominee that received the most votes. But when the Academy decided to expand the top award to 10 movies, there were a few concerns. “Everybody realized that, in theory, you could have a film win the Oscar with less than 20 percent of the votes,” explains Rosas. To avoid such a scenario, the Academy decided to switch the category to the preferential system, which is also used to determine the Oscar nominations. As the Academy explained to its members in a 2009 report: “The preferential system … allows us to identify the film that our members as a whole admire most, as distinct from one that may be supported almost entirely by a small but passionate minority.”
So how does it work? Academy members rank the Best Picture nominees in order of preference. They can rank any number of films, from all 10 to just one. (Rosas confirmed that a very high percentage of the membership fills out the entire ballot). Then the sorting and counting begins. All of the ballots are sorted into 10 piles based on what each voter selected as his or her No. 1 film. After all the ballots are sorted, each pile is counted, and if any film has received more than 50 percent of the total number of ballots, it’s declared the Best Picture winner. If not, then the film with the least number of ballots is eliminated, and its ballots are redistributed to the remaining nominees based on each ballot’s next selection.
Films with the least support keep getting eliminated, and their ballots keep getting redistributed to other nominees, until one film winds up with more than 50 percent of the ballots still in play. As a result, the Best Picture winner could be quickly determined after one or two rounds of sorting, or in our case, it could require all nine rounds. Here’s how our mock vote played out:
Round 1
With 1,000 ballots, our “magic number” needed to win is 501, since 50 percent of 1,000 is 500, and you need more than 50 percent of the ballots.
After the initial sorting, the Best Picture field looked like this:
127 Hours: 28 ballots
Black Swan: 120 ballots
The Fighter: 28 ballots
Inception: 213 ballots
The Kids Are All Right: 16 ballots
The King’s Speech: 193 ballots
The Social Network: 278 ballots
Toy Story 3: 80 ballots
True Grit: 25 ballots
Winter’s Bone: 19 ballots
Round 2
The Kids Are All Right is eliminated, and its ballots are redistributed:
127 Hours: 28 + 3 = 31
Black Swan: 120 + 3 = 123
The Fighter: 28 + 0 = 28
Inception: 213 + 2 = 215
The King’s Speech: 193 + 0 = 193
The Social Network: 278 + 3 = 281
Toy Story 3: 80 + 3 = 83
True Grit: 25 + 1 = 26
Winter’s Bone: 19 + 0 = 19
Round 3
Winter’s Bone is eliminated, and its ballots are redistributed:
127 Hours: 31 + 0 = 31
Black Swan: 123 + 5 = 128
The Fighter: 28 + 1 = 29
Inception: 215 + 2 = 217
The King’s Speech: 193 + 4 = 197
The Social Network: 281 + 7 = 288
Toy Story 3: 83 + 0 = 83
True Grit: 26 + 0 = 26
Round 4
True Grit is eliminated, and its ballots are redistributed.
127 Hours: 31 + 0 = 31
Black Swan: 128 + 5 = 133
The Fighter: 29 + 4 = 33
Inception: 217 + 5 = 222
The King’s Speech: 197 + 7 = 204
The Social Network: 288 + 3 = 291
Toy Story 3: 83 + 2 = 85
Round 5
127 Hours is eliminated, and its ballots are redistributed:
Black Swan: 133 + 5 = 138
The Fighter: 33 + 2 = 35
Inception: 222 + 12 = 234
The King’s Speech: 204 + 3 = 207
The Social Network: 291 + 4 = 295
Toy Story 3: 85 + 5 = 90
Round 6
The Fighter is eliminated, and its ballots are redistributed:
Black Swan: 138 + 2 = 140
Inception: 234 + 11 = 245
The King’s Speech: 207 + 7 = 214
The Social Network: 295 + 9 = 304
Toy Story 3: 90 + 6 = 96
Round 7
Toy Story 3 is eliminated, and its ballots are redistributed. One ballot is voided (meaning it ran out of eligible choices), so the “magic number” becomes 500, since 999 divided by 2 is 499.5.
Black Swan: 140 + 12 = 152
Inception: 245 + 35 = 280
The King’s Speech: 214 + 23 = 237
The Social Network: 304 + 25 = 329
Round 8
Black Swan is eliminated, and its ballots are redistributed. Three more ballots are voided, decreasing the “magic number” to 499.
Inception: 280 + 54 = 334
The King’s Speech: 237 + 48 = 285
The Social Network: 329 + 47 = 376
Round 9
The King’s Speech is eliminated, and its ballots are redistributed. Four more ballots are voided, decreasing the “magic number” to 497.
Inception: 334 + 128 = 462
The Social Network: 376 + 154 = 530 (winner!)
If you made it this far, you’ll notice that, at least for a few rounds, Inception was gaining ground on The Social Network. But The Social Network was ultimately too far ahead, and when The King’s Speech was eliminated, a larger amount of those ballots were redistributed to The Social Network than to Inception.
So what did we learn from all this? Well, to state the obvious, having the most No. 1 votes is a huge advantage, but it doesn’t guarantee victory. Had The Social Network not started out so far in front of Inception, the latter film could have theoretically caught up in later rounds. We also noticed that, more often than not, a ballot was counted toward one of the voter’s top three choices. Therefore, it’s important for a film to not only receive No. 1 votes, but many No. 2 and No. 3 votes, too. However, that doesn’t mean the bottom portion of your ballot will never matter. For instance, we had five readers who placed The Social Network and Inception as their No. 9 and No. 10 choices (or vice versa). During the final round, each of those ballots was counted toward whichever movie the reader selected as No. 9, since he or she preferred it a smidgen more than the No. 10 choice.
And this concludes our class in Best Picture mathematics. When you watch the Academy Awards on Sunday, just keep in mind how much effort went into determining that Best Picture winner. Of course, the winner is still being determined by the subjective tastes of 5,755 movie-industry professionals. So if you don’t like the outcome, you know who to blame.
You eliminated Toy Story 3 before The Fighter. Toy Story had more votes. I don’t understand.
Er, the Fighter was eliminated in round 6 and the Toy Story 3 was eliminated in round 7.
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The rounds go in order from 1-10
*9
You’re correct Amber. You don’t understand.
My brain hurts.
haha lol. me too…
Wow. I had no idea that the academy was using a preferential voting system. Thats terrible. So the film that most people selected as 2nd or 3rd best may win. The only vote that matters should be the first place selection.
Determining the winner with just first choices would be kind of like a lottery. The film with the most first choices could theoretically be hated by 85% of Oscar voters. Preferential voting will usually elect the film with the most first choices, but not if it can’t defeat another top film one-on-one.
As JB said, you can’t base it just on #1 votes. It could completely undermine what a majority of voters felt about the 10 nominees. If there were 100 voters choosing ONE film out of the 10 nominees, you could win with 11 votes, with the other 89 votes split between the 9 other films. Longshot it would happen that way, but it’s possible. It’s much preferred that they choose the film that was the most supported among all the academy voters, rather than whatever movie got the “majority:” of top votes.
This just proves EW readers do not have a good eye for best picture. No way Inception comes close to Best Picture. I gaurantee the majority of the people that voted haven’t even seen King’s Speech or others like Black Swan, Fighter, True Grit, etc… Thats the only way to explain Inception getting so many votes.
Thankfully the Academy has seen all the movies and Inception will not come close to winning. Nothing against Inception, but it wasn’t even in the top 5 this year.
Way to be elitist, Mike.
Nothing elitist about stating EW’s own box office reports, my little nutMeg.
@Mike
Who are you to decide what’s good and what’s not? I’ve seen all but two of the nominees (those being the two that were eliminated first) and I still have Inception in my top 5. I guess I must have bad taste, then.
I saw Black Swan and The King’s Speech and found them both underwhelming and unoriginal. Inception at least took some imagination on the part of the filmmakers.
Wow. I didn’t know that you’re the person whose opinion matters more than all others. Give the Inception lovers a break. That is their opinion. And you have yours. To belittle their opinion doesn’t make your opinion the right one. Take a step back and realize everyone does have different tastes for movies, and that’s what is great about being individuals. Sorry, but I’m just sick of all the belittling. I love Inception and would put it in my top five. I have seen 7 of the 10 Best Pic Nominees.
Thank you!
Do NOT take a step backwards! Jenz is a pod.
Actually most of the Academy voters probably didn’t watch many, if any of the nominees. Academy voters are just as busy as the rest of us, and most of them take their voting duties not too seriously. Most voters will simply vote by what they’ve heard other groups say was the best, or who they like to work with, or who their friends are, or who they think deserves it for their career, and never bother actually sitting down and watching EVERY nominee. The Oscars are a popularity contest and nothing but political. What happened here is really more representational of the generation gap between EW readers and Oscar voters who like prestige pictures over culturally relevant “now” pictures.
What are you saying, Marten, I can’t read EW because I’m a Communist?
Marten, people in the film indiutry are bigger fans of movies than anyone here, get free screeners, free screenings with tons of perks, and most take it pretty seriously. Plus they love movies and sitting down to watch 10-25 movies for free over an entire winter is not a chore to them. I’ve even spoken to an Academy member who said she loves being somewhere on location this time of year because she can fill a lot of downtime by watching the screeners.
In different years I’d agree with you about “Inception” ranking high because it was very popular with the public.
However, most of the movies you mentioned (The King’s Speech, Black Swan, True Grit) have topped $100 million, and “The Fighter” (at around $90 million) isn’t far off. Add to that, “The Social Network” (a shade under $100 million in the US) and “Toy Story 3″ (roughly a kajillion dollars).
I get your point that more of the people who voted on this have seen “Inception” than the other movies, but it’s not like NO ONE has seen the other movies.
Also, I guarantee you that not every single Academy member has seen every single movie that’s up for an Oscar.
What are you saying Mr. Holloway, I can’t be a Communist because you’re the Communist???
Yes, Hades, that is EXACTLY what I’m saying.
I’ve seen 8 nominated films. (King’s Speech and Winter’s Bone excluded). Most of them are really well made solid films within their respected genres. I assume King’s Speech falls in that category. The films that stuck out to me and are in my top 5 are the bold, game-changing, unique and original ones. Toy Story 3, Inception, Social Network, and 127 Hours are those. True Grit (and I’m a huge Coen fan) and The Fighter were good, but I feel like I’ve seen them both before. Some of the performances were exceptional and stood out, but the films as a whole were not anything special.
Black Swan is another issue. I feel it attempted to be bold, game-changing, and original but failed doing so. It was predictable and pretentious with a terrible script. But that’s just me.
I thought Black Swan succeeded at that. “Game-changing” is hard to tell, since that can only be judged in retrospect, but I really admired that, like with some of the other nominees, you could tell that they did what they wanted to do with the movie. Arguably all of the nominees shouldn’t have worked for one reason or another, but they did, at least for most people.
Actually, no. The King’s Speech doesn’t fit its genre as closely as people who haven’t seen it assume. It has some quirky cinematography for a fairly straight forward talking head movie that has caused a fair amount of debate in the film community. Most DPs I know, either love or hate the chances they took with it. In contrast, The Social Network, which I saw the same week, seemed to be pretty much paint by numbers shooting. Only a couple of scenes really stood out. The one I haven’t seen that I want to is 127 Hours. Boyle is usually pretty inventive and interesting with his choices, too.
Mike’s right, Inception is probably the worst of all 10 nominees this year. If we were in the old format of only 5 nominees, no way it’s nominated at all.
That was pretty much my point… In my opinion, yes I did not like Inception as much as the others, but the point I was making was that Inception being so high on the viewers list is unrealistic since it is NOT that high on the Academy’s list.
As pretty much proven by the Nolan snub. If it truly had a chance to win, he would have DEFINITELY been nominated. That was the Academy’s way of saying they did not think it was one of the 2 or 3 best films of the year.
Sounds like Nathan and Mike were all butt hurt that they didn’t understand Inception and have to make themselves feel better by running it down. Just because you weren’t smart emough to get it doesn’t mean the rest of us, or the Academy, isn’t.
But the purpose of this wasn’t to predict what the Academy would say. It was more about seeing what the winner would be if EW readers were voting, given the actual nominees, unlike the last time they did a similar exercise when poll voters could list any movie from the past year in their list.
The Social Network? Really? This must’ve really been a slow year for Best Picture nominees. TSN was a good movie, but by no means great.
yeah i agree
Finally saw it. It was tremendous. Best film I saw from last year.
I’m with you, Frank. It was amazing. I know it sounds weird to say it, but it reminded me of Shakespeare…you had a lot of basically decent people all making one or two choices that seemed sensible at the time, but in retrospect were really bad moves, motivated by wounded pride…
Agreed. Why people can’t see the Social Network is a moderately bad film is beyond me. Two years from now everyone will wake up and realize how truly bad that film is like they always do. I kind of hope it steals Best Picture at this point, it’ll be one of those decisions we look back on and laugh at.
No, we won’t. I promise.
Bad?! If you were disappointed by all the hype, then sorry. If anything, it was one of the best movies of the last ten years. It contains characters that stand by their convictions and gives an equal side to all of the characters involved. And not to mention the ideas of insecurity and desire to be cool, dealing with failure when your life has been a success after success and hand me downs, cut throat capitalism, narcissism and self promotion that face book and blogs continue to grow. Not to mention, the screenplay juggles two court cases and the facebook back story consecutively. A complete awareness of the time and setting. Leaving nothing excessively flashy but the dialogue, which always had a purpose. And the story leaves you with a sense of moral ambiguity about whether it was wrong for Mark to cut out Edwardo or not or whether he actually stole the idea from the Winklevoss twins.
I completely disagree with you, TSN is a generational milestone and no other director could have pulled the film off as good as Fincher did. 20 years from now it will be regarded alongside other great films like The Godfather and Citizen Kane
You can’t say something is “amazing” or “bad” just to be a contrarian. That’s lazy. Give some reasons why. “Disappointed” above does posting right. What a great post. It was a pleasure to read.
Yeah, so what WAS great in your opinion? Something has to win. Also, I thought The Social Network was amazing, though I personally give Inception the win.
I can’t believe Black Swan got so many votes. I need someone to explain to me what is so special about this movie. And, if you’re just a Star Wars geek in love with Natalie “Free Roman Polanski” Portman, your opinion doesn’t count. What is actually good and original, about this movie?
“I can’t believe Black Swan got so many votes. I need someone to explain to me what is so special about this movie.”
I can’t speak for anyone else but…
I thought Portman probably gave the best performance out of any actor in the last year. (I assure you, I’m not a “Star Wars” geek in love with her…she, along with almost everyone else in those movies, were terrible.) Besides Portman, there was strong work from Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, and a hilariously jerky Vincent Cassel.
I thought the cinematography and music (the way the Swan Lake score was adapted and twisted) were fantastic.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the movie’s storyline from a plot standpoint, but I thought it had interesting things to say about obsession and artistic perfection.
I agree Mr. Holloway. I’m definitely not a Star Wars geek ( I thought Portman was terrible in those films too). Black Swan was my favorite film. All the positive things you mention I completely agree with. The performances (especially Portman’s), the cinematography, the music, etc. And I definitely enjoyed the movie’s storyline. It was interesting. I’m kind of a sucker for stories about someone’s descent into complete madness. I couldn’t stop thinking about Black Swan (and Portman) long after leaving the theater.
Could it be your “special” way of eliminating dissenting points of view before you’ve actually heard any?
Maybe Julie should stick with Twilight, she obviously doesn’t know quality when she sees it.
How is Black Swan a Best Movie contender? It was truly awful. The tortured artist, the ballet sacrificing for your art, give me a break. These themes combined with a terrible, predictable plot and gratuitous gore made for a truly bad movie. Natalie Portman needs to get some acting lessons and work on her range of emotion.
Gratuitous gore? Are you sure you watched Black Swan, or was it one of the Saw movies?
I can’t make you think the movie was good; it was one of those movies that you either love it or hate it. I’m in the “love it” camp because there was just so much artistry behind it. With the campy story-line and dialogue, it should’ve failed miserably as a movie. But Darren Aronofsky and his crew put so much into it, and every element – from the acting and the score to the cinematography, art direction and costumes – just clicked. I’ll admit that for much of the movie, I didn’t love it, but at the end, I just walked out of the theater in a daze. It just stuck with me.
Really interesting article, and I can actually follow the voting procedure broken down like this.
It doesn’t shock me that “The King’s Speech” didn’t come out on top. I can see totally see why the Academy loves it, and when it’s pitted head to head against “The Social Network”, it’s the warmer, more pleasing choice.
However, most people I personally know don’t have it as their favorite (or the best) movie of the year, even though almost everyone I know, myself included, really liked it and admired it. Seems like people are more passionate about “Inception” or more impressed by what Fincher and Co. achieved with “The Social Network” than what Hooper and Co. did with “The King’s Speech.”
Interesting if the rank procedure could work in reverse and acknowledge movies with the least votes in the third round by eliminating the movie with the MOST votes in the seventh; officially, though, the Academy hasen’t loved it yet… but ‘warm, and more pleasing’ does explain the way some people want to be explained.
Thanks to JOHN YOUNG for the compilation.
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Good to feel so much love for INCEPTION (B+) considering the incident around it especially in Best Editing. And good luck to Bale, Bening and all.
I can’t believe “Winter’s Bone” placed ahead of “The Kids Are All Right.”
…or 9/10ths of the nominated films for that matter.
What a bunch of hooey!
True Grit was probably my favorite. Toy Story 3 my second. The Social Network is my third. Then again, they were all really good. All for different reasons.
The Social Network in my opinion is over rated. There are far more better films out there, even that were left on the best film list.
I agree… TSN is overrated. I thought it was good, but not great. I loved The King’s Speech, Black Swan, The Fighter, and Toy Story 3 (still haven’t seen True Grit).
Such as? If you’re going to say that, at least follow T’s example and list a couple of the “far more (?!) better films out there”.
A movie about a sneaky backstabbing brat who built a social network is better than a film about a stuttering monarch thrust into history because his brother loved a gold-digging socialite more than he loved his country? Highly illogical. If Fincher/TSN wins it is because the Academy is giving him gold for a body of work that will far outshine TSN when history writes about him.
Off topic- to say The Kings Speech is unoriginal is downright stupid! What does Roman Polanski have to do with any of this? Hades, your mommy is calling you to come out of the basement, your matey soup and gwilled cheese with the crusts cut off are ready!
At least the movie about the backstabbing brat wasn’t NEARLY as cliche as the Oscar bait that is the movie about the stuttering brat.
TSN doesn’t even crack the Top5 Fincher films. Boring. Can someone make a film about hotmail?
You’re totally right. The “Oscar bait” movie you’re slamming is “Oscar bait” because the Oscars are really loving the indie/arthouse movies with great acting and weird camera work lately…and yeah, the Brits are so consistently good at what they do, that it has become a bit of a cliche’ to see them nominated for directing and cinematography awards. But no worries, those guys usually get robbed in the end for someone the Academy feel is “due”, even if it isn’t his best work, which is even more cliche’ than the little film about the stuttering monarch could ever
come close to being.
Highly illogical? You might want to use a different choice of words. There isn’t a formula to what makes a good movie.
Not in my world.
All these opinions, but no proof.
…come Sunday, laptop prophet.
You mean you serve something besides crow on the wrong Sabbatical???
Sabbatical according to which fairytale????
This system makes intuitive sense. It’s really just like Dancing with the Stars — you knock off the last-place finisher until you have the top two left or someone has majority support.
A useful resource is oscarvotes123.com
Thank you for this feature, EW. I’ve been reading about this new tabulation system for a year, but never fully understood it. “Seeing” it in action finally helps me understand. Very interesting, and makes me feel, for the first time, that something OTHER than a traditional, Oscar-bait movie (this year, The King’s Speech) has a chance to win.