Who votes for the Oscars and how are Academy Awards winners selected? | Explained

Millions of movie buffs will have their eyes glued to the screens on March 13 (IST) to see if their Oscar predictions come true or not. However, not much is known about the elaborate process that is put in place to select the Academy Award winner before the red carpet rolls out. Here is a rundown of everything that needs to fall into place before the Oscar statuette is finally awarded. 

More about The Academy?

The Academy or The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) is the body which orchestrates the Oscars from its first ballot to its last award. It has its own governing body made up of three representative each, from its 17 branches with criteria for membership defined in an elaborate rule book. The Academy originally had 36 founding members consisting of professionals across actors, directors, writers, lawyers, technicians and producers. The Academy, as of today, has over 9000 members.

Who are the members of The Academy?

Membership of The Academy is by invitation only. Each branch has its own list of checks and balances that need to be fulfilled before extending invitation to members. The 17 branches cover actors, casting directors, cinematographers, costume designers, designers, directors, documentary, executives, film editors, makeup artists and hairstylists, music, producers, public relations, short films and feature animation, sound visual effects and writers.

How are films considered for an Oscar nomination?

Films either need to be submitted by the makers through an elaborate application process or be invited by The Academy to be a nominee. Most final nominees are from the latter category. To be considered, a film must have necessarily had a theatrical premiere with three daily screening across a minimum of a 7-day period with three or more daily screenings.

How are the nominations conducted?

The Academy members can only vote for the branch they are a member of with an upper limit of 5 nominations. This means, an actor can vote for only acting categories and so on. The exception to this rule is the Best Picture category for which members from all branches vote and are allowed to submit between 5 to 10 nominations.

The final process

The submitted list of nominees must be ranked by each member. Sorting and tabulation of the same has been handled by PricewaterhouseCoopers for decades. The nominations with a certain number of first-place votes (called the 'magic number') are directly put aside as a final nominee. After this, the nominations with the least number of votes are removed and ballots are counted either till the magic number is continually reached or, there are only 5 final nominees left.

This year, Oscar nominations were announced on January 24. The Oscars are all set to roll out this Monday at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.