Oscar nominations 2023: As India awaits victory for 'RRR', take a look at how campaigning works

Now, Telugu film RRR is under the spotlight as movie lovers across the globe are expecting at least one award for the film in any of the categories

Update:2023-01-20 16:09 IST

HYDERABAD: On May 16th 1929, the first Academy Award for the Best Film was awarded to “Wings” by William A.Wellman. Since then, the Oscars have been known to be the most prestigious award any film can ever achieve. Now, Telugu film RRR is under the spotlight as movie lovers across the globe are expecting at least one award for the film in any of the categories. Although the nominations are not out yet, there is a great buzz surrounding the film now.

The Oscars are awarded annually by the “Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science” (AMPAS). This year, Academy Awards will celebrate its 95th event as the hype is brewing. As such, it is not easy to impress the “Academy” and win an award. A film has to take a long path to be able to win that one award.

Let’s now track the route to Oscars. Baahubali franchise producer Shobhu Yarlagadda has briefed the entire process through a series of tweets recently, on his Twitter profile.

Campaign for Oscar's is like a marathon. I am attempting to put in a simple thread here..
— Shobu Yarlagadda (@Shobu_) January 15, 2023

The Academy has 10,000 members spread across the entire World in different nations, mostly in the US. They belong to one of the many crafts of filmmaking. Every year, members from each craft vote from among 300+ eligible movies to be short listed for further voting.

The Academy has around 10,000 members from around the world, mostly in US and around 40 or so members from India. These members belong to one of the 17 branches of the Academy based on their craft, like editing, sound etc. There are 16 crafts and 17th branch is non technical
— Shobu Yarlagadda (@Shobu_) January 15, 2023

In a category where there is no short list, the members directly nominate the top 5 films. After this, almost all the 10,000 members of the academy vote among the top 5 in each category and the film with maximum votes goes on to win the Oscar.

Each year members from each branch will first vote to shortlist from the 300+ films eligible films in the reminder list ( for the 10 categories where there is a shortlist) and then vote again to select the films to be nominated from each of their respective branches.
— Shobu Yarlagadda (@Shobu_) January 15, 2023

Ex. Members of the VFX branch will first vote for the 10 films (from the 300+ films in the reminder list) to be shortlisted and then vote again on those 10 films to nominate the final 5 .
— Shobu Yarlagadda (@Shobu_) January 15, 2023

In a category where there is no short list the members of that branch vote directly to nominate the 5 films in that category.
— Shobu Yarlagadda (@Shobu_) January 15, 2023

All the nearly 10,000 members of the Academy then get to vote on the nominated films. And the film with most votes in each category wins the Oscar in that category.
— Shobu Yarlagadda (@Shobu_) January 15, 2023

So, the real challenge is to get 10,000 members of the Academy spread across the US and the world to know that your film is in cotention and then to get them see it and hope that they like your film enough to vote for it! This is no easy task even for Hollywood films!
— Shobu Yarlagadda (@Shobu_) January 15, 2023

So the films that have been blockbusters in US, or films that have won awards in the prestigious festival and critics awards all get noticed much more and obviously have higher chances of being in the race for awards. Apart from being well reviewed in press.
— Shobu Yarlagadda (@Shobu_) January 15, 2023

This involves many months of campaign starting sometimes 6 months before the Oscars. There also needs to be some organic buzz and appreciation to build traction.
— Shobu Yarlagadda (@Shobu_) January 15, 2023

Obviously this calls for significant investment in time and resources and is not easy. Hollywood studios are used to this as they do it year on year but for films from India it can be very daunting and a lot of learning to understand and execute a succesful campaign.
— Shobu Yarlagadda (@Shobu_) January 15, 2023

But, it get’s hard as a film has to be popular enough to be able to catch the attention of all of these members. This task is easier for the Hollywood as it’s an every year task for them but for foreign nations like India or Korea, it’s quite a daunting task.

The 95th Academy Awards is scheduled to take place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California on March 12, 2023.

Oscar nominations 2023: As India awaits victory for 'RRR', take a look at how campaigning works

Now, Telugu film RRR is under the spotlight as movie lovers across the globe are expecting at least one award for the film in any of the categories

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