Marlee Matlin accepted an Academy Award of Merit – an Oscar statuette – that was created to broadly recognize “all the individuals who have developed and supported captioning technology, whether open or closed, for film,” Tuesday evening at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ annual Scientific and Technical Awards, which were presented at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
Oscar-winning actress Matin has long championed captioning, and on stage she shared her hope that the Oscar statuette, which will reside at the Academy Museum, will bring further awareness of captioning technology and serve as a reminder of the Academy’s “commitment to accessibility and inclusion.”
Calling the Academy the “deaf community’s biggest ally” in a conversation with Variety, Matlin saluted it for being at the forefront of new technologies in film, but suggested that there’s more work that can be done to advance captioning tech and have it used more broadly, including for classic films as well as new movies. “We’re still on a path towards full accessibility, and the Academy recognizes that equality is very important, that all audiences are welcome in the film going experience and all audiences should be able to watch films together.”
Also during the ceremony, which was originally slated to be held on Feb 18 but was postponed amid the L.A. fires, Technical Achievement Awards (Academy Certificates) and Scientific and Engineering Awards (Academy Plaques) were presented to innovators behind advancements ranging from tech that addresses fire stunt safety to camera stabilization and character realism.
“You are the unsung heroes, but tonight, we sing your praises,” host Diego Luna (“Andor”) told the honorees “who make cinema the global force that it is today.”
Highlighted areas of advancement included work in denoising, meaning tools for fixing imperfections in CG rendered images. Among them was Wētā FX’s ML Denoiser, for which Javor Kalojanov and Kimball Thurston were presented Technical Achievement Awards. This Denoiser has been used on Weta projects including, most recently, Oscar nominated “Better Man” and “A Minecraft Movie.” The term ML, or machine learning, is a subset of AI. Of such applications of the technology, Thurston said it “empowers creativity,” explaining “it’s not Gen AI; it’s not transforming text to an image. It’s a tool to improve the quality of an image, and in doing so, save time and enhance [an artists] creativity.”
Also in this area, Thijs Vogels, Fabrice Rousselle, David Adler, Gerhard Röthlin and Mark Meyer received Scientific and Engineering Awards for the creation of Disney’s ML Denoiser. Technical Achievement Awards were awarded to Attila T. Áfra for the Intel Open Image Denoise, and Timo Aila for his work at NVIDIA applying U-Nets to denoising.
On-set safety developments including gels that allow fire to burn safety on the skin of stunt performers. In this area, Jayson Dumenigo received a Scientific and Engineering Award for the Action Factory Hydrogels, while Technical Achievement Awards were presented to Neeme Vaino for the development of Fireskin360 Naked Burn Gel, and Dustin Brooks and Colin Decker for Fire for Hire’s naked burn gel.
Scientific and Engineering Award recipients that adressed camera stabilization included Curt Schaller for the concept, design and development of the Trinity 2 camera stabilization system, and Roman Foltyn for the software and hardware design of its motorized stabilized head; Steve Wagner, Garrett Brown, Jerry Holway and Robert Orf for Tiffen’s Steadicam Volt stabilization system; and Dave Freeth hand-held Stabileye three-axis motorized camera stabilization system.
In sound, Scientific and Engineering Award honorees included Nir Averbuch, Yair Chuchem and Dan Raviv for Sound Radix’s Auto Align Post 2, used by dialogue editors to blend multiple moving microphones during postproduction.
Technical Aceivement Awards were presented to Mark Noel for contributions to the NACMO series of transportable six-degrees-of-freedom motion base technology; Su Tie, Bei Shimen and Zhao Yanchong for the Ronin 2 gimbal system; and Tabb Firchau, John Ellison, Steve Webb, David Bloomfield and Shane Colton for Freefly Systems’ handheld Mōvi gimbals.
Technical Achievement Awards were additionally bestowed on Essex Edwards, James Jacobs, Jernej Barbic, Crawford Doran and Andrew van Straten for the Ziva VFX system, aiding VFX practitioners in create muscles and skin for digital characters.
