11 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENTS TO BE HONORED WITH ACADEMY AWARDS®
11 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENTS TO BE HONORED WITH
ACADEMY AWARDS®
ACADEMY AWARDS®
LOS ANGELES, CA – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
today announced that 10 scientific and technical achievements
represented by 33 individual award recipients will be honored at its
annual Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation on Saturday,
February 13, at the
Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills. In addition, the Society of Motion
Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) will receive a special award
recognizing a century of fundamental contributions to the advancement of
motion picture standards and technology.
“This year’s honorees represent a wide range of new tech,
including a modular inflatable airwall system for composited visual
effects, a ubiquitous 3D digital paint system and a 3D printing
technique for animation,” said Richard Edlund, Academy Award®-winning
visual
effects artist and chair of the Scientific and Technical Awards
Committee. “With their outstanding, innovative work, these
technologists, engineers and inventors have further expanded filmmakers’
creative opportunities on the big screen.”
Unlike other Academy Awards® to be presented this
year, achievements receiving Scientific and Technical Awards need not
have been developed and introduced during 2015. 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 Michael John Keesling for the design and
development of Image Shaker, an optical system that convincingly creates
the illusion of the camera shaking in a variable and repeatable manner.
The Image Shaker was unique and superior to alternatives in
use when it was invented two decades ago, and it continues to be used
today.
To David McIntosh, Steve Marshall Smith, Mike Branham and Mike Kirilenko for the engineering and development of the Aircover Inflatables Airwall.
This system of modular inflatable panels can be erected on
location, at lengths reaching hundreds of feet, with exceptional speed
and safety. When used to support blue or green screens, the Airwall
permits composite shots of unprecedented scale.
To Trevor Davies, Thomas Wan, Jon Scott Miller, Jared Smith and Matthew Robinson for the development of the Dolby Laboratories PRM Series Reference Color Monitors.
The PRM’s pioneering and innovative design allows the stable,
accurate representation of images with the entire luminance range and
color gamut used in contemporary theatrical feature presentation.
To Ronald Mallet and Christoph Bregler
for the design and engineering of the Industrial Light & Magic
Geometry Tracker, a novel, general-purpose tracker and solver.
Geometry Tracker facilitates convincing interaction of
digital and live-action elements within a scene. Its precise results and
tight integration with other ILM animation technologies solve a wider
range of match-animation challenges than was previously possible.
To Jim Hourihan, Alan Trombla and Seth Rosenthal for the design and development of the Tweak Software RV system, a highly extensible media player system.
RV’s multi-platform toolset for review and playback, with
comprehensive APIs, has allowed studios of all sizes to take advantage
of a state-of-the-art workflow and has achieved widespread adoption in
the motion picture industry.
To Richard Chuang and Rahul Thakkar for the groundbreaking design, and to Andrew Pilgrim, Stewart Birnam and Mark Kirk for the review workflows and advanced playback features, of the DreamWorks Animation Media Review
System.
Over its nearly two decades of development, this pioneering
system enabled desktop and digital theater review. It continues to
provide artist-driven, integrated, consistent and highly scalable
studio-wide playback and interactive reviews.
To Keith Goldfarb, Steve Linn, Brian Green and Raymond Chih for the development of the Rhythm & Hues Global DDR System.
This consistent, integrated, production database-backed
review system enables a recordable workflow and an efficient,
collaborative content review process across multiple sites and time
zones.
To J Robert Ray, Cottalango Leon and Sam Richards for the design, engineering and continuous development of Sony Pictures Imageworks Itview.
With an extensive plugin API and comprehensive facility
integration including editorial functions, Itview provides an intuitive
and flexible creative review environment that can be deployed globally
for highly efficient collaboration.
SCIENTIFIC AND ENGINEERING AWARDS (ACADEMY PLAQUES)
To Brian McLean and Martin Meunier for pioneering the use of rapid prototyping for character animation in stop-motion film production.
LAIKA’s inventive use of rapid prototyping has enabled
artistic leaps in character expressiveness, facial animation, motion
blur and effects animation. Through highly specialized pipelines and
techniques, 3D printing capabilities have been harnessed with color
uniformity, mechanical
repeatability, and the scale required to significantly enhance
stop-motion animated feature films.
To Jack Greasley, Kiyoyuki Nakagaki, Duncan Hopkins and Carl Rand for the design and engineering of the MARI 3D texture painting system.
Combining powerful, multilayer painting tools and a unique
texture-management system, MARI simplifies working with large,
high-resolution texture sets. It has achieved broad adoption in the
visual effects industry, often supplanting long-term in-house systems.
SPECIAL AWARD (PLAQUE)
To the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers
For one hundred years, the Society’s members have nurtured
technology, provided essential standards, and offered the expertise,
support, tools and infrastructure for the creation and post-production
of motion pictures.
Portions of the Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation will be included in the Oscar® telecast.
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