What 2024’s Oscar-nominated films taught us about Hollywood
After a few very tough years throughout the pandemic and the rise of streaming services, the past 12 months have actually looked pretty bright for Hollywood. And now, it’s that time of year again. With nominations announced and locked in, the 2024 Oscars are upon us. The Oscars have always been the pinnacle of awards in Hollywood and as such, they tend to reveal a thing or two about the industry. So, what can we learn from 2023’s memorable batch of Oscar-nominated films?
Cinema ain’t dead
There’s no doubt that the cinema industry has been through utter turmoil in recent years. The combination of the Covid-19 pandemic, which kept cinemas closed nationwide for years and halted productions, alongside the continued rise of various streaming rivals (which were, of course, buoyed by the stay-at-home nature of lockdown), has meant that the industry was hanging on by a thread.
Then comes along a special, culturally significant moment – Barbenheimer. This meme that grew legs and snowballed uncontrollably ensured that the two filmsBarbie and Oppenheimer grossed over $2 billion worldwide. To have this many people visiting cinemas and paying for tickets again was a huge moment for Hollywood. It’s clear that when the films are good and they’re marketed right, cinema ain’t dead. There is still hope for the industry.
In the hyper-competitive, over-saturated world of unlimited content on social media, there’s often the notion that audience attention spans are getting worse. While there may be truth and science in that, Hollywood hasn’t been afraid to go big with their runtimes and clearly, this hasn’t been a detriment to the success of the films.
Six of the ten nominations for best picture run over the 2-hour mark, with Oppenheimer touching 3 and Killers of the Flower Moon running for a colossal 3 hours and 26 minutes:
Anatomy of a Fall – 2 hrs 36 mins
The Holdovers – 2 hrs 13 mins
Killers of the Flower Moon – 2 hrs 26 mins
Oppenheimer – 3 hrs
Maestro – 2 hrs 9 mins
Poor Things – 2 hrs 21 mins
It appears that audiences aren’t particularly dissuaded by longer runtimes and increasingly, directors and editors aren’t shy of them either. If a story needs three hours to be told, then so be it.
Film is alive and well
You’d be forgiven for thinking shooting Hollywood blockbusters on analog film was a thing of the past. While digital does remain the overall format of choice, more and more filmmakers are reverting back to film. This has been well reflected in this year’s Oscar nominations for best cinematography. Four out of the five nominees (Oppenheimer, Maestro, Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon) were shot on Kodak film.
This is the first time this has been the case since 2010, marking the revival of the medium. Some filmmakers feel so strongly about this they’ve gone as far as creating brand-new film stocks, as was the case for Oppenheimer. “Film, I think, is uniquely suited to pulling an audience into a subjective experience…the way a film camera records light onto its emulsions – that’s as close as you can get to the way the eye sees,” gushes director Christopher Nolan to Kodak.
Going forward, expect to see more and more cinematographers opting to shoot film rather than digital.
A masterclass in cinematography
To be nominated at the Oscars for best cinematography, you have to do something pretty special. With Oppenheimer, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema really did pull out all the stops. As mentioned above, he shot the film using 65mm KODAK VISION3 250D Color Negative Film 5207 for exteriors and brighter day interiors and KODAK VISION3 500T Color Negative Film 5219 for low-light and night scenes.
But in order to support the different storylines, they also shot in EASTMAN DOUBLE-X Black & White Negative Film 5222 – a film stock created explicitly for this film. The nominated DP tells Kodak “that filmstock was unfamiliar to everyone, had never been run through IMAX or System 65 cameras, and required the reconfiguration of a 65mm film processor at the lab…It became quite a complex engineering process – encompassing things like the thickness of the backing for the film emulsion and making new gates and pressure plates in the cameras so as to avoid scratches.”
As if the careful handling and creation of film stocks from scratch wasn’t enough, Van Hoytema was also juggling a complex lens equation. Having established that 50mm and 80mm are the sweet spots when shooting in IMAX, but not wanting to be stood so far away from actors and needing to shoot in low-light situations, the cinematographer had a problem. These kinds of lenses don’t really exist.
He turned to Panasonic’s “lens guru,” Dan Sasaki, for help. “He tweaked existing lenses or re-engineered others from the ground up…he even built a special, waterproof snorkel lens for use with the IMAX cameras that didn’t exist before”. A range of different lenses from Hasselblad and Panavision were eventually used on the IMAX MKIV, IMAX MSM 9802 and Panavision Panaflex System 65 Studio cameras.
Hoyte Van Hoytema’s dedication to his craft is exceptional. Rather than simply accepting the answer “no,” he found ways to engineer brand-new film stocks and lenses to suit his specific needs. It’s a worthy winner if we’ve ever seen one.
Game changers
The VFX category is a really exciting one this year because it contains game-changers that potentially alter how Hollywood does things. Great VFX doesn’t necessarily mean huge budgets. Who knew?
The Creator, directed by Gareth Edwards, is the shining beacon for run-and-gun filmmakers. Looking at the stunning nature of the VFX in this beautifully crafted sci-fi world, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the budget for this thing was eye-wateringly large. Astonishingly, the film cost just $80m to make.
Typically, with VFX on this scale, you’d need to build it all from scratch. Green screens and studios would be the order of the day, costing a lot of money in the process. Gareth Edwards and the team went about things differently, opting to first shoot everything in real-world locations, edit the footage into the story they wanted, and then send it to ILM (Industrial Light & Magic). ILM was then tasked with effectively “painting over” the frames, adding in sci-fi aspects afterward. The fact that they could integrate the CGI so seamlessly is phenomenal work and saved a lot of money in the process.
The Japanese film industry has made similar inroads. Godzilla: Minus One rightly received a nomination for best VFX, too. The stats speak for themselves: just 35 VFX artists, 610 shots, 8 months and a total film budget of just $15m. It’s hard to call who ends up winning this category, but it’s an exciting landmark moment for the VFX industry.
Less can be more
Though often overlooked, sound is absolutely critical to the success and quality of a film. James Mather (already an Oscar winner for his sound supervising work on the excellent Top Gun: Maverick) has earned another nomination for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. What caught our ear here was that, in many cases, Mather found that less sound can actually be more impactful.
Speaking with A Sound Effect, Mather admits that nowadays, the audio for most films has every little detail filled in, but for this production, he and Tom Cruise decided to go in a different direction… “it’s a distraction if there’s so much sound in a piece, whether it’s percussion in the music or footsteps in the sound design. If there’s no need for it, then don’t have it.”
How far to take this theory was up to the talents of the sound designer, who revealed that, more often than not, “we started with an awful lot more sound, which we then peeled away until we were in a place where we recognized what was happening.”
Masterfully, Mather and his team also used sound design as a way of aiding the story. “They wanted to highlight the fact that the train was out of control. They wanted these big bangs and jolts to remind the audience that they were on a runaway train. Earlier on, when you are with The White Widow, it’s very quiet. They wanted the train to sound very luxurious and smooth. So there’s quite a lot of work in the train sounds to subliminally remind the audience of where we are in the arc of the storyline for that section.”
Black and white as a storytelling tool
The category for best editing is a tough one to call this year, but one thing stands out in two of the nominations.
In Oppenheimer, first-time nominee Jennifer Lame masterfully balances interlocking subjective points of view from both Oppenheimer himself and antagonist Admiral Lewis Strauss. Despite the film effectively having a lot of people talking in rooms, the tension and pacing are handled beautifully by Lame, who reaps the benefits of using black and white to cover and differentiate Strauss’ storyline.
Similarly, in Poor Things, editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis manages the sudden shifts in style and tone by using black and white, then various shades of color that mark out and define Bella’s journey. Color isn’t the be-all and end-all of editing, but it certainly makes its presence known in this year’s category.
Interestingly, Maestro (nominated for categories including best picture and best cinematography) also adopted the use of black and white to showcase the different time periods and storylines, as well as going even further in switching up aspect ratios. It did not get the nomination for best editing, which may reflect the feedback from some audience members that the aspect ratio change was actually quite jarring.
Subtitles? No problem
This was a big year for non-English-speaking films. Through previous nominations, we’ve seen the likes of Roma, Parasite, Minari, Triangle of Sadness and All Quiet on the Western Front all win big (and rightly so). In 2024, for the first time, there’s more than one movie nominated for best picture that is primarily not spoken in English (Anatomy of a Fall, Past Lives, The Zone of Interest).
While many movie-goers may have turned their nose up at foreign language films and the idea of having to read subtitles not so long ago, that trend appears to be less and less existent. Nowadays, perhaps in part thanks to global streaming services such as Netflix, it seems that audiences are much more willing to watch a film from any part of the world, and they don’t mind at all if it isn’t spoken in their native language.
This appetite for non-English speaking films has ensured a fairer distribution of budget, consequently unearthing plenty of gems that may have yet to see the light of day ten or twenty years ago. Long may it continue.
All hail the king
You have to appreciate greatness while you have it. At 81, Martin Scorsese has made history by becoming the oldest nominee for best director. He’s now overtaken fellow legendary director Steven Spielberg as the most Oscar-nominated director with 10 nominations overall.
Like a fine bottle of wine that gets better with age, Marty appears to be at the height of his powers. Killers of the Flower Moon is being hailed by some as his best picture to date, and he certainly considers this his most important thus far. To undertake such large, influential and important projects at his age is phenomenal and worthy of the highest praise. We can only hope he has a few more left in him.
A wealth of talent
When you take a moment to scroll through all of the nominations, what you’re looking at is an astonishing wealth of talent. These awards are about celebrating and recognizing that talent because, without them, we simply wouldn’t get these amazing movies.
Recognized for Cloud-Enabled Remote Editing and Project Management
Boston, MA – February 2, 2022–EditShare®, the technology leader that enables storytellers to create and manage collaborative media workflows, announced today that it has won a prestigious 2021 Emmy® Award for Technology and Engineering from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS). The Technology & Engineering Emmy® Awards are awarded for developments and/or standardization involved in engineering technologies that either represent so extensive an improvement on existing methods or are so innovative in nature that they materially have affected television.
Stephen Tallamy, Chief Technology Officer for EditShare and an expert in cloud technology, comments, “It is fantastic to be recognized for EditShare’s ongoing innovation and a testament to our incredible engineering, product and support teams who go the extra mile to create solutions for the media industry.
“We have pioneered open solutions that allow our customers to realize powerful remote workflows using the creative tools and cloud services of their choice. Our integrations with leading editorial tools including Adobe® Premiere® Pro and DaVinci Resolve along with cloud-native storage management options such as AWS S3 and EBS, and robust open APIs ensure our customers can pivot quickly to take advantage of emerging technologies and new business opportunities that arise during the journey to the cloud.”
EditShare’s remote editing technology, which is a core part of the FLOW media management and EFSshared video storage solution, makes use of lower resolution proxy video files to enable post-production workflows, even when connectivity is weak and/or systems lack the power to support editing high resolution files. EditShare’s open environment supports a wide range of cloud providers and enables seamless integration of a diverse range of post-production tools within the remote editing workflow. EditShare customers can participate in the post-production process, regardless of where they are located and using the creative tool of their choice.
“We continue to see our customers embrace new and innovative ways of telling their stories but one thing that hasn’t changed is the desire for teams to collaborate,” states Conrad Clemson, CEO, EditShare. “Whether production happens in one place or is spread remotely around the world, EditShare offers world-class solutions to help customers create amazing content together. It is an honor to be recognized with this prestigious Emmy® Awardfor our ongoing investment in technology to simplify storytelling.”
EditShare will receive its Emmy® Award on Monday, April 25th, 2022 at the annual National Association of Broadcasters Show (NAB) in Las Vegas, NV.
About EditShare EditShare is a technology leader that enables collaborative media workflows on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid configuration. With customer and partner success at the heart of EditShare’s core values, our open software solutions and robust APIs improve workflow collaboration and third-party integrations across the entire production chain, ensuring a world-class experience that is second to none. The high-performance software lineup includes media optimized shared storage management, archiving and backup, and media management, all supported with open APIs for extensible integration.
Boston, MA – November 16, 2021 – EditShare, the technology leader that enables storytellers to create and manage collaborative media workflows, has been selected as a winner in the 2021 NAB Show Product of the Year Award competition Cloud Computing and Virtualization category for its innovation in remote workflows for mixed editing environments. The NAB Show Product of the Year Awards recognizes the most significant and promising new products and technologies being showcased by exhibitors. EditShare has landed in the sought after NAB Product of the Year winners circle three years in a row: in 2019 for its EFS storage security capabilities and again in 2020 for its editing in the cloud solution EFSv. The 2021 winning submission, Universal Media Projects which ships as part of the FLOW media management solution, brings together Premiere Pro, Media Composer and DaVinci Resolve to enable a frictionless remote workflow. From anywhere, editors have real time access to assets and can collaborate freely in a mixed editing environment. Universal Media Projects seamlessly manages behind the scenes all the necessary project data – sequences, clips, bin, and markers – between the various editorial tools.
“Pulling together a workflow that fits any particular production can be complex, especially with the varying openness of these editing applications,” states Stephen Tallamy, CTO, EditShare. “EditShare has developed a universal view of media projects that can be interacted with in real time yet still work within the constraints of the various tools.We are thrilled that NAB has recognized the benefit this new innovation brings to remote collaboration and look forward to bringing Universal Media Project to our customers soon.”
FLOW Universal Media Projects is currently in early field trials and intended to launch in beta in early 2022 followed by general availability. To learn more about, please visit https://editshare.com/products/flow-media-management/.
About EditShare EditShare is a technology leader in networked shared storage and smart workflow solutions for the production, post-production, new media, sports, and education markets. Whether you need on-premise, cloud, or hybrid solutions, our products improve efficiency and workflow collaboration every step of the way. They include media optimized high-performance shared storage, archiving and backup software, a suite of media management tools and a robust set of open APIs that enable integration throughout the workflow. Customer and partner success are at the heart of EditShare’s core values ensuring a world-class experience that is second to none.
Boston, MA – October 21, 2020 – EditShare®, a technology leader that specializes in collaboration, security, and intelligent storage solutions for media creation and management, has been selected as a winner in the 2020 NAB Show Product of the Year Award competition. EditShare’s EFSv cloud platform has been recognized in the Cloud Computing and Virtualization category for its seamless proxy editing capabilities, which have transformed the economics and user experience of editing in the cloud.
The NAB Show Product of the Year Awards recognizes the most significant and promising new products and technologies being showcased by exhibitors at the Show; this year’s show, while digital, was no different. Enabling true seamless proxy editing – EFSv is the first cost-effective cloud editing platform, overcoming one of the primary objections of migrating media workflows to the cloud.
“EditShare is honored to be recognized by NAB for our innovations in the cloud and the impact it has in moving our industry forward,” states Tracy Geist, CMO, EditShare. “EFSv seamless proxy editing brings the user experience, economics, and business continuity that our customers need to be successful working in the cloud. Our open platform is designed to enable our customers to stay focused on creative production, while enhancing workflows and growing their business. EFSv is how we win together.”
About Seamless Proxy Editing in the Cloud EFSv optimizes the use of both object and block storage located in the cloud to allow for savings up to 75% compared to the existing costs of cloud storage and workstations, enabling cloud editing for any size project.
A solution that solves the work arounds associated with proxy editing and conforming, EFSv facilitates a true seamless proxy editing experience for all editors including Adobe, Avid, Blackmagic Design and Grass Valley. Costs savings through better cloud storage management allows facilities to keep production content and archives online and available at all times.
About EFSv Cloud Platform
The EFSv platform supports industry-standard third-party creative tools for editing, audio mixing, and grading with best-in-class security capabilities such as file auditing to propel secure, end-to-end editorial workflows in the cloud. EFSv native drivers eliminate traditional IT bottlenecks and deliver superior performance in virtual environments. The RESTful API lets customers and technology partners easily automate advanced storage management workflows.
About EditShare EditShare is a technology leader in networked shared storage and smart workflow solutions for the production, post-production, new media, sports, and education markets. Whether you need on-prem, cloud, or hybrid solutions, our products improve efficiency and workflow collaboration every step of the way. They include media optimized high-performance shared storage, archiving and backup software, a suite of media management tools and a robust set of open APIs that enable integration throughout the workflow. Customer and partner success are at the heart of EditShare’s core values ensuring a world-class experience that is second to none.
