Sunday, February 8, 2009

The Annual Oscars And How It All Started

By Danny Hoover

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science started the award ceremony known as the Oscars back in 1929. Also known as the Academy Awards, this annual event quickly grew in popularity and as a result, the balloting for the awards was taken over by PricewaterhouseCoopers who is still handling the balloting today. The infamous secret envelop system that is used today was introduced in 1941 by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Featuring 5 main categories but a total of 15 in all, the Academy Awards annually hands out an award of merit that features a knight with a sword standing un top of a five spoke reel of film which is all sitting on a black base. The statuette itself is 8 pounds and 13.5 inches tall. The members in charge of running the ceremony are selected and invited to join by the Board of Governors to be part of this popular event.

The initial award which has become known simply as Oscar, was initially created by Alex Smith and George Stanley. Today they are seen almost exactly as they were when they were first created other then a single change. Every year there are only 40 of these Oscars that are produced for the ceremony.

When the award were first created, in order for a film to be eligible for an award it had to have been made in the previous 12 month period. Due to the war though, this was changed to 16 months back in 1932 and has yet to have been reversed. Furthermore, no film under 40 minutes in length or with a resolution less then 1280 x 720 can be considered for an Oscar as it would not be considered full-length.

The Academy Awards have shifted venues, days of the week and even months of the year for the annual event. The original ceremony was held on a Thursday and this continued on until 1954 when it would be moved to occurring on a Monday. They would continue being held on Mondays for another 60 years and then in 1999, the Academy Award ceremony was moved to Sundays.

The movie industry has always been surrounded by fantasy and glamour, and Oscar night is the pinnacle of the year. Back in the days it all started, no one would ever imagine a day when that fantasy and magic became available to the average Joe and Jane through the advent of dvd rental.

It is amazing how many venues the Academy Awards have been held at. They started off with the first ceremony being in the Hotel Roosevelt, after which it would rotate between both the Biltmore Hotel and the Ambassador Hotel. It would stay in this rotation until the 1940s when it would be moved to Grauman's Chinese followed by the Shrine Auditorium.

From here the Academy Awards would then be moved to Grauman's Chinese Theater before shifting again to the Shrine Auditorium. Finally in 1949, the Awards would actually be held in the Academy Award Theater but this was not to last as it was then moved to the Pantages Theater for the next 10 years. The Santa Monica Civic Center then became the awards home until 1988 when it was moved again to the Los Angeles Music Center and shifted back and forth to the Shrine Auditorium. Currently Kodak Theater is its home; but for how long?

People all over the world watch the Academy Awards every year. There are more then a billion pairs of eyes tuned into the ceremonies. They all want to see who will in as well as see the action, glamour and glitter that makes Hollywood the place where dreams really do come true.

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