New Oscar Awards.
Two Indian Americans are among those to be honored with an Oscar for Technical Achievement – for the first time in the history of the awards: Parag Havaldar, for the facial-performance-capture technology at Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Kiran Bhat who shares it with others, for ILM’s facial-performance-capture solving system.
For the first time, five digital cinematography cameras are among the technical achievements that will be honored, reported The Hollywood Reporter.
As digital cinema becomes a mature technology, five pioneering digital cinematography cameras — from Arri, Red, Sony, Panavision and the formerly named Thomson Grass Valley — have been chosen to become the first major digital cameras to be honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
They are among the 18 scientific and technical achievements, representing 34 individual awards recipients and five organizations, that will be honored Feb. 11 at the Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards presentation at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, it was announced Wednesday.
“This year we are particularly pleased to be able to honor not only a wide range of new technologies, but also the pioneering digital cinema cameras that helped facilitate the widespread conversion to electronic image capture for motion picture production,†Ray Feeney, Academy Award recipient and chair of the Scientific and Technical Awards Committee, said in a statement. “With their outstanding, innovative work, these technologists, engineers and inventors have significantly expanded filmmakers’ creative choices for moving image storytelling.â€
Honored achievements must demonstrate a proven record of contributing significant value to the process of making motion pictures. In addition to the cameras, technologies that will be honored during the ceremony include the areas of rendering, facial performance capture and microphones.
Technical Achievement Awards will be given to Parag Havaldar, for the facial-performance-capture technology at Sony Pictures Imageworks; Nicholas Apostoloff and Geoff Wedig, for the facial-performance-capture systems at ImageMovers Digital and Digital Domain; and Kiran Bhat, Michael Koperwas, Brian Cantwell and Paige Warner, for ILM’s facial-performance-capture solving system.
Scientific and Engineering Awards (Academy Plaques) will be presented to Arri, for its Super 35 format Alexa digital camera system; Red Digital Cinema, for its Red Epic digital cinema cameras; Sony, for its F65 CineAlta camera; and Panavision and Sony, for the Genesis digital motion picture camera.
Also receiving Scientific and Engineering Awards are Marcos Fajardo, for the Arnold renderer; Chris Kulla, Alan King, Thiago Ize and Clifford Stein for their geometry engine and ray-tracing algorithms as developed at Sony Pictures Imageworks and Solid Angle; Vladimir Koylazov, for the V-Ray rendering system from Chaos Group; Luca Fascione, J.P. Lewis and Iain Matthews, for the Facets facial performance capture and solving system at Weta Digital; and Steven Rosenbluth, Joshua Barratt, Robert Nolty and Archie Te, for the Concept Overdrive motion control system.
During the evening, Technical Achievement Awards (Academy Certificates) will be presented to Thomson Grass Valley, for the early Viper FilmStream digital camera system; Larry Gritz, for Open Shading Language; Carl Ludwig, Eugene Troubetzkoy and Maurice van Swaaij, for the CGI Studio renderer at Blue Sky Studios; Brian Whited, for the Meander drawing system at Walt Disney Animation Studios; Mark Rappaport, Scott Oshita, Jeff Cruts and Todd Minobe, for the Creature Effects Animatronic Horse Puppet; Glenn Sanders and Howard Stark for the Zaxcom digital wireless microphone system; and David Thomas, Lawrence E. Fisher and David Bundy, for the Lectrosonics digital hybrid wireless microphone system, according to the Hollywood Reporter.