Academy (AMPAS) News: Academy expands Special or "Visual" Effects category to five

The AMPAS Building

For decades the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has presented three films for consideration for Best Special or "Visual" Effects at the Academy Awards. But that will change for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards; now there will be five nominees.

In finalizing the rules for the 2011 Oscar event and telecast at its June 22nd meeting, the AMPAS Board of Governors elected to expand the list from three to five, the most significant rule change to come out of that meeting.

Even when it was possible to have up to five Oscar nominees for Visual Effects between 1977 and 1979, only once, in 1979, were five movies actually recognized. Between 1980 and 1995, two or three films could be nominated. But by 1996, rules were changed so that exactly three could be nominated.

Why the change now? While that was not determined as of this writing, Leslie Unger, The Academy's Director of Communications, explained the process:

Each year, the various branch executive committees review the rules that govern the relevant categories. So in this case, that would be the Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee. The discussion within that committee led to a recommendation to the Awards Rules Committee, which endorsed the change and subsequently recommended it to the Board of Governors.

But the new Visual Effects nomination number is not the only change to come out of the June 22nd meeting. AMPAS also elected to make the rules for for entries in the Animated Feature Film category uniform with the "greater than 40 minutes" rule that applies to the other film award areas, and the overall language was changed to read as follows:

An animated feature film is defined as a motion picture with a running time of greater than 40 minutes, in which movement and characters’ performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique. Motion capture by itself is not an animation technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture’s running time.

Unger says the other rules changes added up to "housekeeping." The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 83rd Annual Academy Awards will be presented on Sunday, February 27, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, and televised live on the ABC Television Network.