Academy's Scientific And Technical Awards

While all eyes were on the Oscar red-carpet last night, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal recently presented the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Scientific and Technical Awards.
Among the awards presented during the ceremony was the Academy's Gordon E. Sawyer Award, an Oscar Statuette, which was bestowed on Ray Feeney for his "lifetime of technological contributions" to the industry.
Segments of the Scientific and Technical Awards presentation were shown during the 79th Academy Awards telecast.
Awards Administration Director Rich Miller said that unlike other Academy Awards, achievements receiving Scientific and Technical Awards do not have to have been developed and introduced during 2006.
"The achievement can be a device or a discovery, a formula or a method, but it must demonstrate a proven record of contributing significant value to the process of making motion pictures," Miller said.
Academy Awards for Scientific and Technical achievements - Technical Achievement Awards (Academy Certificates)

• Joshua Pines and Chris Kutcka of Technicolor Digital Intermediates for the design and development of the TDI process for creating archival separations from digital image data.
• Bill Feightner and Chris Edwards of E-Film for the design and development of the E-Film process for creating archival separations from digital image data.
• Albert Ridilla, Papken Shahbazian, Ronald Belknap and Jay McGarrigle for the design and development of the Hollywood Film Company Brumagic MPST Densitometer.
• Klemens Kehrer, Josef Handler, Thomas Smidek and Marc Shipman Mueller for the design and development of the Arriflex 235 Camera System.
• Florian Kainz for the design and engineering of OpenEXR, a software package implementing 16-bit, floating-point, high dynamic range image files.
• Walter Trauniger and Ernst Tschida for the design and engineering of the Arri WRC wireless remote lens control system.
• Christian Tschida and Martin Waitz of cmotion for the design and engineering of the cmotion Wireless Remote System.
• Peter Litwinowicz and Pierre Jasmin for the design and development of the RE: Vision Effects family of software tools for optical flow-based image manipulation.

Academy Awards for Scientific and Technical achievements - Scientific and Engineering Awards (Academy Plaques:)

• Phillip J. Feiner, Jim Houston, Denis Leconte and Chris Bushman of Pacific Title and Art Studio for the design and development of the Rosetta process for creating digital YCM archival masters for digital film restoration.
• Steve Sullivan, Colin Davidson, Max Chen and Francesco Callari for the design and development of the ILM Image-based Modelling System.
• Dr Bill Collis, Simon Robinson, Ben Kent and Dr. Anil Kokaram for the design and development of the Furnace integrated suite of software tools that robustly utilizes temporal coherence for enhancing visual effects in motion picture sequences.
• Howard Preston and Mirko Kovacevic for the design and engineering of the Preston Cinema Systems FI+Z wireless remote system.

A Special Award - Award of Commendation - was presented to Ioan Allen, J. Wayne Anderson, Mary Ann Anderson, Ted Costas, Paul R. Goldberg, Shawn Jones, Thomas Kuhn, Dr. Alan Masson, Colin Mossman, Martin Richards, Frank Ricotta and Richard C. Sehlin for their contributions to the environmentally responsible industry conversion from silver-based to cyan dye analogue soundtracks.
John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation (Medallion) was presented to Richard Edlund for "outstanding service and dedication in upholding the high standards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences."
The Scientific and Technical Awards are presented by the Academy for devices, methods, formulas, discoveries or inventions of special and outstanding value to the arts and sciences of motion pictures.
(SP)