We’re in the midst of Oscar season* now with Academy ballots already out and the nomination announcements a mere month away, so I thought I’d organize…
The 1st Annual SDMB Academy Award Prediction Contest[sup]**[/sup]* (with real prizes!)*
The Contest will be in 2 parts:
- Predicting the Nominees
- Predicting the Winners
Separate prizes will be given for parts 1 & 2: The first part starts today: submitting your tallies for who will be nominated in the following categories:
Picture
Actor
Actress
Supporting Actor
Supporting Actress
Director
Original Screenplay
Adapted Screenplay
Cinematography
Art Direction
Costume Design
Editing
Sound
Sound Editing
Original Score
Original Song
Visual Effects
Make-up
Animated Feature
Foreign-Language Film
That’s 20 categories. In all but 4 of the categories, submit the 5 films you believe will be on the final nomination slate. For Sound Editing, Visual Effects, Make-up, and Animated Feature, only submit 3 film titles. For the acting categories, you must specify the actor and the film (Ex: Leonardo di Caprio is insufficient; you must put the film as well).
Scoring
The winner of this phase will be determined from a combination of 2 scores: correct guesses (straight) and correct guesses (weighted). The weighting will be based on the number of other people who did not guess your correct prediction. Example:
You guess both Jack Nicholson and Eddie Murphy as Best Actor nominees. You are one of 30 submissions. 27 other people guess Nicholson, but nobody else guesses Murphy. Nicholson & Murphy both get nominated, so you get 2 points for Nicholson but 29 points for Murphy. Thus, you are rewarded for taking risks. A risk can pay off big, but if it doesn’t, then you suffer because you wasted a prediction on a risk at the expense of a “safer bet” that would have possibly improved your overall straight correct guess score.
One week before the nominations (Feb. 4), I will supply a tally of all the predictions thus far (as well as my own ballot). After that time, all entrants may submit one post to change their ballot. This way, nobody is penalized in the weighted scoring for posting their predictions before others.
Now, a few rules:
- All prediction ballots must be posted in this thread (no personal e-mails to me).
- All predictions must be on a single post.
- If Opal or anyone else posts more than 5 (or 3 in the aforementioned cases) predictions in any category, only the first 5 (3) listed will be considered.
- Only one post will be accepted after Feb. 4. You may use this post to add categories that you omitted in the first post. All subsequent “change” posts will be invalid.
- If your first prediction ballot is submitted after Feb. 4, you may not have a second “change” post.
- All posts must be submitted by 12:01 am PST, Tuesday, February 11.
Some helpful links:
This is a list of the films submitted for Foreign Language film. Quite a number of high-profile foreign films from 2002 are not eligible in this category because their countries failed to submit them. All nominees will come exclusively from this list.
This is a list of the semi-finalists for Visual Effects and Sound Editing. The final 3 will come from these lists of 7.
This is a list of the films eligible for the Animated Feature category
Here are lists of this year’s Golden Globe, Broadcast Film Critics, Independent Spirit Awards, Golden Satellite, and Chicago Film Critics nominees. Here are the winners of awards from this year’s National Board of Review, National Society of Film Critics, and the critics associations from New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Toronto, San Diego, San Francisco, Washington DC, Kansas City, Las
Vegas, Seattle, Dallas-Ft. Worth,and the Southeast.
Some important dates coming up:
January 12: Golden Satellite winners announced
January 17: Broadcast Film Critics winners announced
January 19: Golden Globe winners announced
January 21: Director’s Guild of American nominees announced
January 28: Screen Actor’s Guild nominees announced
And yes, I meant it: I will be putting up a prize for whoever wins either Part I or Part II.
Good Luck!
AG
*[sub]yes, yes, I know the Oscars are a load of crap, but irresistible crap–plus, every once in a while, they do get something right.[/sub]
**[sub]it should be noted Joey Hemlock tried this before through Yahoo, but I’m hoping for a bigger response[/sub]
