Two weeks before the glamour of the Oscars, the film academy hosted its annual “night of the nerds” honoring software engineers, digital projection innovators and a former sound guy for Frank Zappa and the Kinks who helped modernize movie audio.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized 58 men and one woman for their behind-the-scenes science and technical work, including creation of a camera rig used in “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and development of software that forms the realistic hair seen in “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.”
Actors Miles Teller and Margot Robbie hosted the ceremony on Saturday night in Beverly Hills with a light comedic touch. Robbie, who just completed filming the effects-heavy “Tarzan,” made a drinking game of the word “voxels.” Teller, starring as Mr. Fantastic in this summer’s “Fantastic Four” reboot, laughed off his inability to pronounce “diodes.”
“I have zero technical ability. I don’t even know how to rent a movie on iTunes,” said Teller, who most recently starred in the music school drama “Whiplash,” a best picture nominee at the Academy Awards on Feb. 22.
The academy handed out two actual Oscar statuettes. One went to Dolby executive David W. Gray, the former rock sound engineer who has led that company’s surround-sound advancements. The other went to Larry Hornbeck, who in the late 1980s helped invent the optical semiconductor at the heart of most digital projectors. The Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) is the core technology that has enabled Texas Instruments’ DLP Cinema projection to become the standard of the motion picture industry.
Gray’s Oscar was the Gordon E. Sawyer Award, presented “to an individual in the motion picture industry whose technological contributions have brought credit to the industry.” Gray’s career has encompassed the design, refinement and implementation of groundbreaking cinema sound technologies, including stereo optical soundtracks, digital sound on film and most recently, Dolby Atmos. He has served for many years on the Academy’s Science and Technology Council and its Theater Standards Committee, among others, as well as chaired the audio study group of SMPTE’s pioneering DC28 technology committee, from which the first two SMPTE Digital Cinema standards were published.
Hornbeck’s Oscar was the Academy Award of Merit. Hornbeck thanked his father, who “with only an eighth grade education taught me to ask the question, ‘Why?’ and to go out and find the answer.”
Love for movies ran deep in the crowd: Two separate honorees gave shout-outs to sons named Oscar. “I’ll thank all the supervillains and giant monsters that like to destroy stuff,” Ron Fedkiw of Industrial Light and Magic said.
Attendees stood at their dinner tables and gave an extended ovation for the lone woman recognized in a predominantly male industry. Colette Mullenhoff of ILM, who helped develop a “shape sculpting” system for quickly modifying character animations, got a hug from Robbie and quickly thanked her husband and parents, startled by the attention.
The visual effects world has faced upheaval in recent years, with globalization and fierce competition for work on Hollywood’s biggest movies leading to high-profile effects houses downsizing or closing altogether.
DreamWorks Animation software engineers, honored for systems that render trees and other foliage in animated movies like Oscar-nominated “How To Train Your Dragon 2,” dedicated their award to PDI, the Northern California-based studio shuttered last month in an effort to save costs.
In total, 21 scientific and technical achievements were honored at the Academy’s annual Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills.
“Our honorees represent an enormous range of technologies, from camera rigs to software systems, with names as colorful as ‘Biscuit Jr.,’ ‘Barbershop’ and ‘PhysBAM,’” said Richard Edlund, Academy Award-winning visual effects artist and chair of the Scientific and Technical Awards Committee. “They exemplify the phenomenal creativity of professionals in the scientific and technical community, and the invaluable contributions they make to what is arguably the most creative industry in the world.”
Unlike other Academy Awards to be presented this year, achievements receiving Scientific and Technical Awards need not have been developed and introduced during 2014. Rather, the achievements must demonstrate a proven record of contributing significant value to the process of making motion pictures.
The Academy Awards for scientific and technical achievements are:
TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS (ACADEMY CERTIFICATES)
To Peter Braun for the concept and development of the MAT-Towercam Twin Peek, a portable, remote-controlled, telescoping column that smoothly positions a camera up to 24 feet vertically. This small cross-section system from Mad About Technology can operate from above or below the camera, achieving nearly impossible shots with repeatable movements through openings no larger than the camera itself.
To Robert Nagle and Allan Padelford for The Biscuit Jr. self-propelled, high-performance, drivable camera and vehicle platform The Biscuit Jr.’s unique chassis and portable driver pod enables traveling photography from a greater range of camera positions than previously possible, while keeping actors safe and the rig out of frame.
To Harold Milligan, Steven Krycho and Reiner Doetzkies for the implementation engineering in the development of the Texas Instruments DLP Cinema digital projection technology. Texas Instruments’ color-accurate, high-resolution, high-quality digital projection system has replaced most film-based projection systems in the theatrical environment.
To Cary Phillips, Nico Popravka, Philip Peterson and Colette Mullenhoff for the architecture, development and creation of the artist-driven interface of the ILM Shape Sculpting System. This comprehensive system allows artists to quickly enhance and modify character animation and simulation performances. It has become a crucial part of ILM’s production workflow over the past decade.
To Tim Cotter, Roger van der Laan, Ken Pearce and Greg LaSalle for the innovative design and development of the MOVA Facial Performance Capture system. The MOVA system provides a robust way to capture highly detailed, topologically consistent, animated meshes of a deforming object. This technology is fundamental to the facial pipeline at many visual effects companies. It allows artists to create character animation of extremely high quality.
To Dan Piponi, Kim Libreri and George Borshukov for their pioneering work in the development of Universal Capture at ESC Entertainment. The Universal Capture system broke new ground in the creation of realistic human facial animation. This technology produced an animated, high-resolution, textured mesh driven by an actor’s performance.
To Marco Revelant for the original concepts and artistic vision, and to Alasdair Coull and Shane Cooper for the original architectural and engineering design, of the Barbershop hair grooming system at Weta Digital. Barbershop’s unique architecture allows direct manipulation of full-density hair using an intuitive, interactive and procedural toolset, resulting in greatly enhanced productivity with finer-grained artistic control than is possible with other existing systems.
To Michael Sechrest for the modeling design and implementation, Chris King for the real-time interactive engineering, and Greg Croft for the user interface design and implementation of SpeedTree Cinema. This software substantially improves an artist’s ability to create specifically designed trees and vegetation by combining a procedural building process with the flexibility of intuitive, direct manipulation of every detail.
To Scott Peterson, Jeff Budsberg and Jonathan Gibbs for the design and implementation of the DreamWorks Animation Foliage System. This toolset has a hierarchical spline system, a core data format and an artist-driven modeling tool, which have been instrumental in creating art-directed vegetation in animated films for nearly two decades.
To Erwin Coumans for the development of the Bullet physics library, and to Nafees Bin Zafar and Stephen Marshall for the separate development of two large-scale destruction simulation systems based on Bullet. These pioneering systems demonstrated that large numbers of constrained rigid bodies could be used to animate visually complex, believable destruction effects with minimal simulation time.
To Brice Criswell and Ron Fedkiw for the development of the ILM PhysBAM Destruction System. This system incorporates innovative research on many algorithms that provide accurate methods for resolving contact, collision and stacking into a mature, robust and extensible production toolset. The PhysBAM Destruction System was one of the earliest toolsets capable of depicting large-scale destruction with a high degree of design control.
To Ben Cole for the design of the Kali Destruction System, to Eric Parker for the development of the Digital Molecular Matter toolkit, and to James O’Brien for his influential research on the finite element methods that served as a foundation for these tools. The combined innovations in Kali and DMM provide artists with an intuitive, art-directable system for the creation of scalable and realistic fracture and deformation simulations. These tools established finite element methods as a new reference point for believable on-screen destruction.
To Magnus Wrenninge for leading the design and development of Field3D. Field3D provides a flexible and open framework for storing and accessing voxel data efficiently. This allows interchange between previously incompatible modeling, simulation and rendering software.
To Robert Bridson for early conceptualization of sparse-tiled voxel data structures and their application to modeling and simulation. Robert Bridson’s pioneering work on voxel data structures and its subsequent validation in fluid simulation tools have had a significant impact on the design of volumetric tools throughout the visual effects industry.
To Ken Museth, Peter Cucka and Mihai Alden for the creation of OpenVDB. OpenVDB is a widely adopted, sparse hierarchical data structure that provides a fast and efficient mechanism for storing and manipulating voxels.
SCIENTIFIC AND ENGINEERING AWARDS (ACADEMY PLAQUES)
To lain Neil for the optical design, and to Andre de Winter for the mechanical design, of the Leica Summilux-C series of lenses. Incorporating novel telecentric multi-element aspherical optics, these camera lenses have delivered unprecedented optical and mechanical performance.
To Brad Walker, D. Scott Dewald, Bill Werner, Greg Pettitt and Frank Poradish for their contributions furthering the design and refinement of the Texas Instruments DLP Cinema projection technology, whose high level of performance enabled color-accurate digital intermediate preview and motion picture theatrical presentation. Working in conjunction with the film industry, Texas Instruments created a high-resolution, high-quality digital projection system that has replaced most film-based projection systems in the theatrical environment.
To Ichiro Tsutsui, Masahiro Take, Mitsuyasu Tamura and Mitsuru Asano for the development of the Sony BVM-E Series Professional OLED Master Monitor. These precise, wide-gamut monitors allow creative image decisions to be made on set with confidence that the desired images can be accurately reproduced in post-production.
To John Frederick, Bob Myers, Karl Rasche and Tom Lianza for the development of the HP DreamColor LP2480zx Professional Display. This cost-effective display offered a stable, wide color gamut, allowing facility-wide adoption in feature animation and visual effects studios.
ACADEMY AWARD OF COMMENDATION (SPECIAL PLAQUE)
To Steven Tiffen, Jeff Cohen and Michael Fecik for their pioneering work in developing dye-based filters that reduce IR contamination when neutral density filters are used with digital cameras. The Tiffen Company identified the problem and rapidly engineered a series of absorptive filters that ameliorated infrared artifacts with lenses of all focal lengths. These widely adopted filters allow cinematographers to work as they have done with film-based technology.
ACADEMY AWARD OF MERIT (OSCAR STATUETTE)
To Dr. Larry Hornbeck for the invention of digital micromirror technology as used in DLP Cinema projection.The Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) is the core technology that has enabled Texas Instruments’ DLP Cinema projection to become the standard of the motion picture industry.
GORDON E. SAWYER AWARD (OSCAR STATUETTE)
David W. Gray
Given to an individual in the motion picture industry whose technological contributions have brought credit to the industry.
Portions of the Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation will be included in the Oscar telecast. Oscars for outstanding film achievements of 2014 will be presented on Oscar Sunday, February 22, at the Dolby Theatre® at Hollywood & Highland Center and televised live on the ABC Television Network at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT. The Oscars, produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, also will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.
