The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Friday evening will pay tribute to the people behind more than a dozen scientific and technical achievements that have advanced the art of movie-making.
“The Academy recognizes and celebrates all aspects of the film industry and the diverse, talented people who make movies,” Academy CEO Bill Kramer said in a statement when the honorees were announced. “Our Scientific and Technical Awards are a critical part of this mission, as they honor the individuals and companies whose discoveries and innovations have contributed in significant and lasting ways to our motion picture industry.”
The Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony will be hosted by actress/director/writer/producer Natasha Lyonne. The event will be at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
The honorees are the brains behind innovations such as laser projection systems, sound systems and other achievements that are likely unfamiliar to the average moviegoer, but that have advanced the film-making process.
Advancements being honored were not necessarily developed in the past year, but they are recognized for demonstrating “a proven record of contributing significant value to the process of making motion pictures,” according to the Academy.
Set to be honored at the event are:
Technical Achievement Awards (Academy Certificates)
— Bill Beck for his use of semiconductor lasers for theatrical laser projection systems
— Gregory T. Niven for his work in using laser diodes for theatrical laser projection systems
— Yoshitaka Nakatsu, Yoji Nagao, Tsuyoshi Hirao, Tomonori Morizumi and Kazuma Kozuru for the development of laser diodes for theatrical laser projection systems
— Arnold Peterson and Elia P. Popov for design and engineering work, and John Frazier for the initial concept of the Blind Driver Roof Pod, which is aimed at boosting safety in stunt driving
— Jon G. Belyeu for the design and engineering of Movie Works Cable Cutter devices
— James Eggleton and Delwyn Holroyd for the design and implementation of the “High-Density Encoding lossless compression algorithm within the Codex recording toolset”
— Jeff Lait, Dan Bailey and Nick Avramoussis for the expansion of the feature set of OpenVDB to improve the quality of film visual effects
— Oliver Castle and Marcus Schoo for the design and engineering of Atlas, and to Keith Lackey for the prototype creation and early development of Atlas and its “scene description and evaluation framework”
— Lucas Miller, Christopher Jon Horvath, Steve LaVietes and Joe Ardent for the creation of the Alembic Caching and Interchange system
Scientific and Engineering Awards (Academy Plaques)
— Charles Q. Robinson, Nicolas Tsingos, Christophe Chabanne, Mark Vinton and the team of software, hardware and implementation engineers of the Cinema Audio Group at Dolby Laboratories for the creation of the Dolby Atmos Cinema Sound System
— Steve Read and Barry Silverstein for their contributions to the development of the IMAX Prismless Laser Projector
— Peter Janssens, Goran Stojmenovik and Wouter D’Oosterlinck for the design and development of the Barco RGB Laser Projector
— Michael Perkins, Gerwin Damberg, Trevor Davies and Martin J. Richards for the design and development of the Christie E3LH Dolby Vision Cinema Projection System
— Ken Museth, Peter Cucka and Mihai Aldén for the creation of OpenVDB
— Jaden Oh for the concept and development of the Marvelous Designer clothing creation system
— F. Sebastian Grassia, Alex Mohr, Sunya Boonyatera, Brett Levin and Jeremy Cowles for the design and engineering of Pixar’s Universal Scene Description