The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has announced 17 achievements, represented by 55 individual recipients as well as two companies, will be honoured at this year’s Science and Technical Achievement Awards.
The Awards, which were cancelled in 2020, celebrate developments that demonstrate a proven record of contributing significant value to the process of making motion pictures.
This year’s honourees include three women – all of whom work for Disney.
The winners and their developments will be honoured during a virtual ceremony on Saturday 13th February.
Technical Achievement Awards (Academy Certificates) will be presented to:
- Jens-Jorn Stokholm and Ole Moesmann for the DPA lavalier microphones
- Masato Nakashima, Koichi Ueno, Junji Sakuda and Junro Yonemitsu for the EIZO auto-calibrating SDR monitors
- Alejandro Arango, Gary Martinez, Robert Derry and Glenn Derry for the head-mounted camera system used on Avatar and adopted by Technoprops
- Ian Kelly and Dejan Momcilovic for the Standard Deviation head-mounted camera system also used on Avatar
- Babak Beheshti and Scott Robitille for the development of a genlock synchronization and recording module
- Sven Woop, Carsten Benthin, Attila T. Áfra, Manfred Ernst and Ingo Wald for the Intel Embree Ray Tracing Library
- Chris Countryman and Omer T. Inan for Countryman Associates lavalier microphones
- Fredrik Limsäter, Björn Rydahl and Mattias Lagergren for Ftrack Studio tracking software
- Don Parker, Matt Daw, Isaac Reuben, Colin Withers and Neil Brandt for the Shotgun tracking system
- Hayley Iben, Mark Meyer, John Anderson and Andrew Witkin for Pixar’s Taz hair simulation system
- Kelly Ward Hammel, Maryann Simmons, Aleka McAdams, Toby Jones and Andy Milne for the Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Hair Simulation System
- Stephen Bowline, for Industrial Light + Magic’s HairCraft dynamics system
- Niall Ryan, Christoph Sprenger and Gilles Daviet for Weta’s Synapse hair simulation system
Scientific and Engineering Awards, which are Academy plaques, will be presented to:
- Alexey Lukin and iZotope team for iZotope’s RX audio processing system
- Jeff Bloom, Guy McNally and Nick Rose for the Wordfit System for automatic ADR synchronization
- John Ellwood and Jonathan Newland for VocALign and Revoice Pro sound editing software;
- Sanken Microphone Company for its COS-11 series of miniature lavalier microphones.
- Zvi Reznic, Meir Feder, Guy Dorman and Ron Yogev for the Amimon wireless chipset that has found application in digital video monitoring
- Nicolaas Verheem, Greg Smokler and Ilya Issenin for the Teradek Bolt wireless video transmission system for on-set remote monitoring
“In a year of upheaval, some things remain constant: around the world, extremely clever people are striving to push the technology of film to new heights, and the Academy is privileged to be able to recognise and celebrate their accomplishments,” said Doug Roble, chair of the Scientific and Technical Awards Committee. “After a lengthy investigation period, the committee, made up of a diverse group of industry experts, identified 17 different technical achievements that absolutely deserve to be honoured. We congratulate all the inventors for their contributions to our art form.”
