Oscars Producers Hint at a ‘Different’ Kind of Awards Show

Oscar telecast co-producer Steven Soderbergh was deliberately imprecise about whether or not nominees, presenters and friends will probably be sporting masks at this 12 months’s ceremony, and that’s only one ingredient of the key sauce that the producers are hoping will make this 12 months’s awards present distinctive and in contrast to any awards present we’ve seen, throughout a pandemic or in any other case.

In a Saturday press convention, Soderbergh joined producing companions Stacey Sher and Jesse Collins to debate how this 12 months’s Oscars will “announce itself as being different” proper from the beginning — each from different Zoom-heavy awards reveals throughout the pandemic and from conventional Oscar ceremonies.

And with out giving freely too many particulars, they clarified that the present will use “satellite hookups” rather than Zoom calls, and that by the top of the present, individuals “will be talking about how they made this happen.”

Soderbergh mentioned the hope for the present is to “get us out of this feeling that we’re trapped at home. We want to see something that does feel like a potential future.”

But as to the query of masks particularly, nicely, you’ll simply have to attend and see. “Masks are going to play a very important role in the story of this evening,” Soderbergh mentioned. “If that sounds cryptic, it’s supposed to be.”

There’s been some hand-wringing these previous couple of weeks when the Oscars requested nominees and friends to attend the ceremony in individual and that awards wouldn’t be handed out over Zoom. Soon, the Academy added European hubs the place worldwide nominees might settle for their prizes, and Soderbergh mentioned merely that satellite tv for pc hookups have been a approach for the producers to higher management the picture, and Zoom “doesn’t really fit” the picture for what the producers try to realize.

The plan launched new technological hurdles that producers have needed to remedy these previous couple of weeks, however Soderbergh mentioned that rejecting Zoom appearances was “never about exclusion” or denying entry to individuals who declined to attend the present. Rather, it was “about making it feel like it was part of a piece.”

Collins and Sher talked about Soderbergh’s “manifesto” to deal with 12 months’s broadcast as much less of an awards present than a film. The present will probably be shot in movie-quality 24 frames per second, for starters but in addition deal with shot composition, completely different over-the-shoulder pictures and digital camera framings that don’t place the individual in the midst of the display screen.

He added that this 12 months’s musical director, Questlove, will make the present sound completely different and really feel extra cinematic.

The producers, talking from downtown L.A.’s Union Station because the set was below development, mentioned the brand new location has no dangerous angles and can present an environment that can invite winners to open up and “tell a story.” “Emotion is up in your grill,” Soderbergh mentioned. “It will be really intense.”

This 12 months’s present will bump Oscar-nominated track performances to the pre-show, which the producers mentioned all of the nominees have been wanting to take part in as a result of it meant the songs could possibly be carried out in full quite than as a part of a medley.

Soderbergh & Co. hope the present will present a “template” for a way different awards reveals and movie productions can return to work because the pandemic winds down: “People will see this show and feel like this is possible.”

The producers admitted that their plans would have been “impossible” had the Academy not shifted the ceremony again greater than two months to April. Because COVID continues to be a actuality, they’re nonetheless cognizant of capability points and conserving the present protected, even when meaning heavy hitters who often are staples of the present received’t be invited. “Bog Iger won’t be there,”…