12 May Has movie genre affected Oscar wins of the past 10 years?
Each year filmmakers produce creative and artistic content to show off their talent in hopes to receive the coveted best picture award at the Oscars. Are the efforts to impress the public all in vein? If you are not making a particular genre of film will you ever be given the award?
First we looked at the data over the past 10 years and identified the genre of film that received the most “best picture” awards at the Oscars. 40% of Biographical films won the best film award at the Oscar although (this genre) was produced the most.
The Oscars began on May 16th, 1929 honouring the films of 1927 and 1928. The entirety of the show lasted 15 minutes and was not broadcasted on television or radio. An announcement took place three months prior to the show so everyone was made aware. Unlike the modern-day event, awards could be given out more than once for the same category.
Winning the best picture award has always been the highest of privileges. In the original show, it shared joint first place with the “Unique and Artistic Picture” category. Although the category was later dropped, those who received it are still respected and acknowledged for their artistic contributions.
I delved deeper into the issue of film genre and found out how many nominations each genre received for the best picture category. From 2007 onwards films classed as a “drama” we nominated drastically more than others. In 2010 and again in 2014 there seemed to be a shift in nominations. 2014 there were 5 biographical films nominated with “Django Unchained” ultimately winning.
The original ceremony was known as the “Academy Awards” whereas now it is more commonly known as the Oscars, but that isn’t the only thing that has changed.
In 2016 many a-list stars boycotted the Oscars, as there was a lack of diversity in nominees. In June later that year 683 new members were added to the academy to help improve diversity, of which 41% were of colour and 46% were women.Nominations are not on a public forum and are done within the academy which is why it was so interesting to find out what they look for in movies. Assuming the academy was made up of entire old, white men their interest in biographical films seems strangely appropriate.
When taking this information into account to build an infographic you have to first see what interests you about the subject. Once researched you must decide upon a question you feel needs to be answered and progress from there. As my question is about genre I had to see what stood out for me in that category. I looked at the research for the past 10 years to see if there was a trend. Once you have surface information you can delve into a more specific are for example how many films in a certain genre get nominated for an award category. Once done you show the information through graphs.
http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/oscars/feature/a621921/who-votes-for-the-oscars/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Awards#Voters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Academy_Awards
