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.
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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…
To echo an earlier sentiment, a simple borda count would be a lot easier, no need to eliminate anything.
It was the system that determined the nominees that caused uproar in the best picture category. It’s totally obvious that the Academy wants to have their cake and eat it to in response to them having a massive brain fart, picking the Reader over the Dark Knight, The Wrestler, Wall-E, and countless others that were WORLDS better.
This is the most absurd idea ever… Hopefully they’ll drop this farce the following year…
I hope they drop this ridiculous 10 nominees idea all together for 2010.
If they really wanted to increase the number 7 would have been enough
I don’t like this. Why should the people who favor the least popular of the 10 nominees see *their* #2 choices counted first?
if they have 10 best pic nominees, shouldn’t there also be 10 best director nominees?
My sentiments exactly! Why not keep the movie nominees to 5 and change the acting categories to 10???? There are always way more actors and actresses that get snubbed than movies.
I think they should install the electoral college system. Kidding.
As long as as a good movie wins this year I’m fine. Not like the crap movies that have won for the past couple years.
Sorry, but in no way you can classify No Country For Old Man as crappy.
Yeah, you can. No Country for Old Men is one of the most overrated movies I’ve ever seen.
Chicks don’t get “No Country for Old Men.” It’s about being a man in the modern world.
Sorry, nm, but I agree with Marie, and I am a “man in the modern world.” While I am glad that “No Country for Old Men’ won over “There Will be Blood” (which I really hated), I did think “No Country….” was overrated.
Stupid oscar what the eff they doing the now for! After snubbing The Dark Knight! Clearly that movie was a masterpiece and Academy effers had Slums win it! Whatever don’t care
If they want to increase the Best Picture nom to 10, why didn’t they just have 2 categories like the Golden Globes: one for drama and one for comedy. So many good comedies have been overlooked in the Oscars, which is a shame.
The problem with having a separate category for Comedy and Dramas at the Oscars is that you would be further devaluing Comedies (not to mention complicating the process as one tries to determine what is a Comedy – the Golden Globes for years have shoved films that should be considered dramas into the Comedy/Musical category simply because they were about famous musicians). While it’s true that only a handful of comedies have been nominated for Best Picture in the past 10 years, can you name any comedy that has been seriously snubbed by the academy?
Yes… “Sideways”
The Oscars has the exact same thing, it’s called the Best Animated Picture award.
Sideways was nominated for best picture in 2004. but it didn’t deserve to win best pic over Million Dollar Baby which won.
So there increasing the Best Picture category to 10 nominations; but in another article I read on this site they said they may not have a Best Song category (depending on a bunch of complicated factors). So why are we taking away the one piece of the Oscars that make it fun to watch and then increasing Best Pic nods which ultimately dilute the honor of the nomination in the first place? Not trying to be a hater, just my opinion… :-/
Oops, I meant “they’re” not “there.”
I participate in an awards program that uses this voting system (The Hugo Awards in Science Fiction Fandom) and it works out more often than not. I hope the press also gets shown the voting and nomination counts. The Hugos always release those within minutes of the awards ceremony to the public and press.
I do like this idea. Now I hope that, afterwards, they release the results of everyone’s original rankings so we can see how close the voting was. It’d be an interesting advertising move for a movie’s DVD release to say “2nd runner-up for Best Picture” haha
The system described is also called “Instant Runoff Voting,” and has been used for more than forty years for determining the results of the top honors in the field of science fiction and fantasy, The Hugo Awards. You can go to their web site and find the detailed voting results for many of the past years as well, not just the lists of winners.
IRV is similar to how you might do several rounds of voting at a mass meeting with lots of nominees. Assume you have a bunch of candidates, and nobody gets a majority after the first round. The least-popular candidate withdraws, and you vote again, then repeat this until someone gets a majority. IRV simply automates this by asking voters to say, “If candidate X wasn’t on the ballot, who would you prefer?”
This system actually encourages people to vote for a “lesser” nominee without worrying that their vote is “wasted” because voters know that if their first preference is eliminated, their vote for one of the other candidates will still count.
what a dumb way to do something so important….convuluted…why not build excitment by eliminating the bottom three or four two weeks before the show….more fun more drama and much more fair…a film does not deserve to win unless it receives the most first place votes
This is not making me feel any better about this change. Nominating 10 films is so whacked. I mean, it is not like it’s 1939 or something. This is going to make the Best Picture more of a joke than it has ever been.