The industry awards season is coming fast upon us. While the Cannes International Advertising Festival and the AICP Show are among those that cast a large shadow, there are some smaller yet well-established specialty competitions that merit attention and have some pre-show coverage in this week’s issue: namely the Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE) Awards, and the Association of Music Producers (AMP) Awards.
The fifth annual AICE Awards ceremony is scheduled for May 25 in Los Angeles. The competition raises awareness of the creative contributions made by editors to the art of commercialmaking.
Nominations for the AICE Awards were just announced in this week’s edition, with Chris Franklin of Big Sky Editorial, New York, topping the field with five noms. Next is Paul Martinez of bicoastal Lost Planet with four.
In the ’06 competition, there are a total of 56 finalists in 18 categories including, for the first time, eight “best of chapter” categories. The AICE chapters in New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Toronto each have “best of” nominees. These kudos help to gain recognition for the depth and scope of talent in each AICE regional chapter.
Meanwhile, after its first four years in Los Angeles, the annual AMP Awards ceremony will shift to New York in ’06. (See story in this week’s Music Series section.) The gala evening will also shift from the spring to the fall as AMP looks to broaden the scope of the awards while maintaining its core honors. The move to New York is to in part underscore the national reach of the competition, which is already firmly established on the West Coast.
The AMP Decibelle trophy for Mixer of the Year will continue to be bestowed, as will certificates for the two other finalists vying for the honor. Also returning is the Spotted Excellence Award, which enables the industry at large to log onto www.ampnow.com, watch and listen to three finalist commercials, and then decide which sounds the best.
And ’06 will also see the continuation of the annual Special Merit Award in recognition of the best newcomer to the audio mixing discipline.
AMP is considering the launch of other awards competition honors, including the best marriage of an artist or licensed piece of music with a brand.
What’s particularly refreshing about the AMP competition is that it’s not self congratulatory in nature. Instead of saluting composers and sound designers, the awards were born out of honoring audio post mixers.
In explaining the rationale for initially centering on mixers, several years ago Jan Horowitz, now AMP president, explained, “A lot of expertise goes into making a great television commercial, and the sound mix is the critical last step.”
Horowitz, who is VP/business manager at David Horowitz Music Associates, New York, continued, “Pulling all the audio elements–the music, dialogue, voiceover and sound effects–into perfect balance supports both the visual image and the advertiser’s message. That’s what the very best postproduction mixers do, and we think they deserve recognition.”
The Oscars Are More International Than Ever. But Is The International Film Category Broken?
For many filmmakers, the Oscars are a pipe dream. But not because they think their movies aren't good enough.
The Iranian director, Mohammad Rasoulof, for instance, knew his native country was more likely to jail him than submit his film for the Academy Awards. Iran, like some other countries including Russia, has an official government body that selects its Oscar submission. For a filmmaker like Rasoulof, who has brazenly tested his country's censorship restrictions, that made the Oscars out of the question.
"A lot of independent filmmakers in Iran think that we would never be able to make it to the Oscars," Rasoulof said in an interview through an interpreter. "The Oscars were never part of my imagination because I was always at war with the Iranian government."
Unlike other categories at the Academy Awards, the initial selection for the best international film category is outsourced. Individual countries make their submission, one movie per country.
Sometimes that's an easy call. When the category — then "best foreign language film" — was established, it would have been hard to quibble with Italy's pick: Federico Fellini's "La Strada," the category's first winner in 1957.
But, often, there's great debate about which movie a country ought to submit — especially when undemocratic governments do the selecting. Rasoulof's fellow Iranian New Wave director Jafar Panahi likewise had no hopes of Iran selecting his 2022 film "No Bears" for the Oscars. At the time, Panahi was imprisoned by Iran, which didn't release him until he went on a hunger strike.
Rasoulof's film, "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" — a movie shot clandestinely in Iran before its director and cast fled the country — ultimately was nominated for best... Read More