And the Winners Are...

Congratulations to Anthony Dod Mantle who won the Academy Award in cinematography for his work on Slumdog Millionaire.



Here's hoping that Roger Deakins will win before he dies and gets a posthumous award to make Academy members feel good about themselves.

Aside from the award for cinematography, the ceremony last night did not interest me. All the cool cats know that the real action was held back on the 9th of this month when the Scientific and Technical Awards were handed out. The lovely Jessica Biel had the honors this year of presenting the statues to the geeks.



And the winners are:

Christien Tinsley for the creation of the transfer techniques for creating and applying 2D and 3D makeup known as “Tinsley Transfers.” These techniques allow quick and precisely repeatable application of 2D makeup such as tattoos, bruises and birthmarks, as well as 3D prosthetic appliances ranging in size from small wounds to entire torsos. They utilize self-adhesive material that features an unprecedented combination of tissue-thin edges, resilience, flexibility and water resistance, while requiring no dangerous solvents.

Jörg Pöhler and Rüdiger Kleinke of OTTEC Technology GmbH for the design and development of the battery-operated series of fog machines known as “Tiny Foggers.” The operating characteristics of this compact, well-engineered and remote-controllable package make possible a range of safe special effects that would be totally impractical with larger, more conventional fog units.

Sebastian Cramer for the invention and general design, and Andreas Dasser, head of development at P&S Technik GmbH, for the mechanical design of the Skater Dolly and its family of products. This small, portable, camera-only dolly allows low lens positions, movement in restricted places and tight offset circular maneuvers with rapid set-up.

Victor Gonzalez, Ignacio Vargas and Angel Tena for the creation of the RealFlow software application. RealFlow was the first widely adopted, commercially available, easy-to-use system for the simulation of realistic liquids in motion picture visual effects.

Jonathan Cohen, Dr. Jerry Tessendorf, Dr. Jeroen Molemaker and Michael Kowalski for the development of the system of fluid dynamics tools at Rhythm & Hues. This system allows artists to create realistic animation of liquids and gases, using novel simulation techniques for accuracy and speed, as well as a unique scripting language for working with volumetric data.

Duncan Brinsmead, Jos Stam, Julia Pakalns and Martin Werner for the design and implementation of the Maya Fluid Effects system. This system is used to create simulations of gaseous phenomena integrated into the widely available Maya tool suite, using an unconditionally stable semi-Lagrangian solver.

Stephan Trojansky, Thomas Ganshorn and Oliver Pilarski for the development of the Flowline fluid effects system. Flowline is a flexible system that incorporates highly parallel computation, allowing rapid iteration and resulting in detailed, realistic fluid effects.

These are the dorks who help make all those Disney and Pixar films look the way they do. And I'm sure somebody in that list above made that scene in Beowulf where the naked Angelina Joile rises out of the water hyper-realistic. Her breasts parted the water and created those little eddies onscreen just as they do in real life. (Accounting for nipples, mind you.) I'd like to see Brad Pitt try and use an unconditionally stable semi-Lagrangian solver.

Now, exactly what films used these processes? The Academy's site isn't very specific.