Please Don’t Call Them ‘Tech’ Oscars - Variety

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Public service announcement to journalists: When discussing Oscars in the next few weeks, please don’t refer to “the technical categories.”

Reminder to Academy/ABC decision-makers: You’ve always stated that all Oscar categories are equal, but the Feb. 22 move was a reminder that some categories are more equal than others.

On that day, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced eight of Oscar’s 23 awards will be handed out before the televised ceremony. That includes five of the nine artisan categories. With the ratings’ steady decline, AMPAS-ABC had to do something. The move seemed to be a reality, but 2022 is full of surprises, so who knows?

I’ve been saying for years that the Oscarcast should devote more time, not less, to the nine artisan races. There’s a perception that the general public is uninterested in categories filled with unfamiliar names. But TV viewers don’t know the contestants on “American Idol” or “American Ninja Warrior,” but short films introducing these people have turned the shows into hits.

Oscar should borrow this idea to introduce the artisans and explain their work. If AMPAS and ABC want to expand on this, give the artisans their own show. I’d watch; it might be more fun than the “main” ceremony. Hollywood has always needed stars, and below-the-line workers are not necessarily glamourous, though frankly they’re often more interesting than stars.

But they’ve always been wrongly considered second-tier. The term “technical” work for artisans has unfortunately persisted since the earliest days of film.

The sound branch is a good metaphor for all BTL work. When talkies began in the late 1920s, the skill needed for a sound person was indeed technical, and the term spread to other categories.

In 1926 — a year before “The Jazz Singer” became the first fully synch-sound movie — Variety published an explanation of how “talking pictures” would work, tied with Warner’s new and only-partly-talkie “Don Juan.”

Variety’s eight-page extra edition, evidently an advertorial, cited Vitaphone’s “electrical system of registering sound waves” and described the ways that electrical currents pass into an amplifier.

Yep, that sounds pretty technical. In those days, the goal was to record voices and sounds without distortion; creativity wasn’t the priority.

The 1952 “Singin’ in the Rain” looks at the upheaval that sound created in Hollywood; it’s played for comedy, but it’s not far from the truth, though it has perpetuated the notion that all sounds are recorded while filming.

On May 4, 1927, Variety reported the brand-new AMPAS would unite “all branches of picture production, actors, directors, writers, technicians …”
That word “technicians” stuck. But compare the basic demands in the 1920s with the Oscar-nominated “Dune” sound team, who told Variety about working with 750 audio channels.

This year has seen stunning work, with 21 films nominated in the nine artisan categories. “Dune” leads with eight bids in those races, followed by “The Power of the Dog,” five; “West Side Story,” four; and “Nightmare Alley,” and “No Time to Die,” three. Six movies got two apiece and 10 received one each.

When you look at the production design of these films or listen to the scores or study the editing, it’s clear that the work involves much more than technical skills.

In early Hollywood, filmmakers regarded these people as technicians; now filmmakers rightfully recognize them as creative collaborators, even if some don’t appreciate that.

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