The organizers of the Oscars announced Tuesday that the presentation of certain trophies, on March 27 in Hollywood, would be pre-recorded in order to make the television broadcast of this evening more dynamic and more attractive for spectators. The audience for the Oscars has been in free fall for the past few years. The last edition, admittedly disrupted by the health restrictions linked to the pandemic, had attracted barely ten million spectators, a drop of 56% compared to the previous year which was already at a historically low level.
The decision, which concerns eight Oscars in technical categories or for short formats, will free up more airtime for musical, humorous and tribute numbers, explains the president of the Academy of Oscars, David Rubin, in an e-mail addressed to its members and to the candidates. The eight Oscars concerned (sound, sets, short documentary, etc.) will be awarded “during the hour preceding the start of the television broadcast” and the sequences will be edited so as to be “inserted in the show broadcast live”specifies the e-mail that AFP was able to consult.
The Oscar-winning Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently merged the “sound mixing” and “sound editing” categories into one. But ideas to reduce the number of Oscars to beef up the evening have so far been wildly unpopular, particularly among the Academy’s technical colleges who work behind the scenes (editors, make-up artists, hairstylists, etc.) and for which this evening represents the only moment of glory.
In his message, President Rubin takes great care to emphasize that “every filmmaker and artist in every category will be able to have their celebratory ‘moment’ at the Oscars” in public on the stage of the traditional Dolby Theater in Hollywood. And “for viewers at home, the course of the show does not change, even if it will be more collected and more electric with this new rhythm”insists the president of the Academy.
The broadcast of the 94th edition of the Oscars will also include a novelty, the public prize which will be awarded following a vote organized via Twitter. The Oscars will have three hosts on March 27: actresses Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes. It will be the first time since 2018 that the Oscars will have one host, and the first time since 1987 that they will have three.