Ankler Preview: The Secret Meaning of AMPAS' Oscar Screening Room
It's Sayonara, Screeners; The Horror! Studios are Scared to Be Scared; Who's Not Taking Any Jeopardy Blame at Sony? Venice on Its Feet
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A little milestone went by last week – maybe just another turn in the bend in the annals of AMPAS' gentle journey over the waterfall. Or maybe something more.
Last week, the screeners era officially came to an end with the opening of the AMPAS online Screening Room, in the first season to be entirely digital, with the great tradition of FYC DVD's now consigned to the ash heap of history.
On one level: why should anyone care about the disappearance of DVD's? This is 2021 if you haven't heard. Who cares about DVDs? What even *are* DVDs?
But on another level, the implications...as with everything AMPAS, it's all in the implications...
• First of all, as has been noted here and there: who are the people who use DVDs? Old people. And you know what the Academy is filled with? Lots of them. But even more interesting, that huge swath of membership is the very swath whose influence has been leadership's blood quest to reduce over the past few years. It’s the Bel-Air Circuit demo you can thank for Green Book taking home Best Picture.
So what happens if some of the more elder members no longer receive their DVDs and can't figure out how to get the Screening Room working (I've heard the complaints many can't) and as a result, the age of actual voters skews a little younger? A win all around?
What would we say about an election mechanism that makes it just that much harder for people to vote? Does it feel a little bit like Texas-on-Wilshire?
Some other thoughts:
• The Screening Room also isn't just a public service to its membership. Every film that wishes to compete for an Oscar must be uploaded at a cost to the filmmakers of $12,500. Multiply $12,500 times every movie that would like an Oscar nomination in any category, and you've got a nice little cottage industry at a time when any cash on deck comes in very handy there. There will be some Oscar shorts where this fee likely would exceed the film’s entire budget.
• The time saved instantly making the films available to everyone also furthers the cause of trying to move up and step on the Globes. Which is yet another great way of quashing the awards race without improving it. The Oscars have had a hard time with the rising-tides-lift-all-boats view of life, much to its detriment. Parsimonious, sanctimonious, inharmonious — the brand continues to cloister itself in efforts to maintain pole position. The culmination is the group’s belated museum whose opening happens to coincide with the full consumer conversion to streaming, and whose centerpiece artifacts are... ruby slippers from a movie made in 1939. The kids are gonna go nuts!
• Who does the Screening Room benefit most immediately? Let's see...hmm….who would a conversion to streaming help the most?
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