Let’s talk Academy Awards — no, not in regard to dresses and makeup and performances and whatnot but rather in regard to the geeky stuff. Sandwiched somewhere between the Best Costume and Best Original Score awards were the Sci-Tech awards.

Though the recipients of the Best Film or Best Actress awards receive recognition for works completed and delivered within the year, those recognized for their Sci-Tech achievements have often spent numerous years creating and refining their fascinating contributions to the betterment of filmmaking.

This category recognizes individuals in the industry whose scientific and technological contributions have allowed filmmaking and viewing to become more exceptional than ever before. Their technologies, although only gaining recognition now, have enabled the creation of high-caliber films throughout the decade.

One of host James Franco’s most animated and well-received moments of the evening was his address to these recipients. His eloquent remark? ‘Congratulations, nerds.’

The recipients definitely deserved the congratulations, and they are most likely nerds. And I mean that in the most complimentary manner possible. Considering the televised event gave little time to be split among the winners and their developments, I’ll touch on a few of the really cool ones from this year’s awards.

 

Cool Sci-Tech award No. 1: Dr. Mark Sagar’s advances in facial-recognition technology. If you’ve seen ‘Avatar’ or ‘King Kong,’ you’ve seen the fruits of this talented nerd’s labor. At Weta Digital, Sagar developed the Facial Action Coding System up to its current sophistication, which allowed the Na’vi population in ‘Avatar’ to exist and seem so inexplicably real.

The system uses a camera to capture the facial expressions of actors. This footage is interpreted and mapped by software that digests the video feed and quite literally maps it onto the actor’s puppet counterpart. This is nifty for the sheer fact that it allows the portrayal of an actor’s facial expressions to be replicated in virtual form without losing authenticity.

 

Cool Sci-Tech award No. 2: Eric Tabellion and Arnauld Lamorlette’s strides into global illumination practices (also known as bounce lighting) in computer-generated feature animation. For those of you going ‘Huh?’ rewatch ‘Shrek 2,’ and you’ll catch my drift. This technology was first used in that film, and its benefits are quite visible. Global illumination enables lighting in computer-generated films to be more realistic and visually appealing than other common practices have allowed.

Though Tabellion and Lamorlette did not create the global illumination technique, they refined the previously archaic process so it could be practically used in feature-length films. For example, ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ — a personal favorite (who doesn’t like dragons) — was created using Tabellion and Lamorlette’s principles.

 

Cool Sci-Tech award No. 3: Mark Noel’s creation of and John Frazier’s contribution to the NAC Servo Winch System. You probably don’t know what this system is, but if you like big, dramatic movie scenes with adrenaline-pumping manipulation of heavy objects (think helicopters, buses, etc.), you already unknowingly appreciate it.

This system allows heavy objects to be suspended on wires and flown on movie sets, all while being manipulated from a safe distance and with spot-on control. This results in safe but realistic object manipulation, such as those found in ‘Spider-Man 3.’

 

While the aforementioned awards are what I’ve deemed most nifty, the other winners are pretty cool, too. Four recipients were recognized for a variety of developments into render queue management systems. These systems are absolutely crucial to modern filmmaking practices in that they process the massive digital image files.

A quartet of winners was recognized for the creation and development of software dubbed cineSync, which allows remote collaboration of visual effects, letting filmmakers far and wide work together on projects, despite the factor of geographic distance.

Two sets of winners were recognized for advances in volumetric suspended cable camera technologies, resulting in cool establishing shots of cities or hills or special effects.

If you want to see the speeches of the Sci-Tech award recipients, which were omitted from the televised event, they are all posted online. Not to mention very worth watching — as we all know, nerds have the best humor.

 

Jessica Smith is a junior information management and technology and television, radio and film major. If you support her endeavor to have the Sci-Tech category given its own award show, you can e-mail her with your ideas at jlsmit22@syr.edu. Obviously, James Franco will be hosting. 

Published on February 28, 2011 at 12:00 pm