The politics behind the Academy Awards can sometimes make Washington, D.C., look like a playpen.
So whenever the Academy decides to do something new, there's bound to be controversy -- especially because it can take more than 20 years to develop a new category.
The list of Oscar nominees to be announced on Feb. 12 will include the category of Best Animated Feature for the first time. The award ceremony takes place March 25 in Los Angeles.
"The desire to have this category has been going on for half a dozen years," said John Pavlik, director of communications for the Academy. "But the wheels of the Academy grind exceedingly slow. And it's only been recently that there were enough animated films distributed to make it an honest-to-goodness horse race."
But some feel the Academy's strict guidelines for a film to qualify for the new category are already outdated, which could deter Academy members from nominating animated films.
"The academy has a lot of rules that it clings to and won't let go of," said Brett Buckalew, a student at the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California. "Their feeling is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I think (the Academy) would be afraid to acknowledge an animated film that was on the Internet or played overseas."
For an animated film to be considered for nomination, it must be released during the calendar year, play in Los Angeles County for seven days and be at least 70 minutes in running time. Furthermore, a significant number of the major characters in the film must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture's running time. In the end, three films will be nominated.
One of the reasons that it must play in a Los Angeles theater is to verify the film's quality.
"The Academy maintains that the film must have a theatrical release," said Jon Bloom, chairman of the short and feature animation film categories for the Academy. "Our feeling is, if you can't get a distributor, are you really worth it? The Academy is looking to narrow the field to get the cream of the crop."
Buckalew said he thinks it has taken until now for this category to be considered legitimate because animation is a medium that still carries a stigma of being merely cartoons for kids. Because of this, animated filmmakers have a harder time with distribution, and potential filmmakers interested in animation might avoid the medium because of all the work involved.
Furthermore, he said that in the past the Academy did not recognize the amount of effort that went into making an animated film.
Bloom said the Academy has not yet decided who will present the Oscar for the new category, but the award will be given during the regular ceremony. The award will be presented to "the key creative talent most clearly responsible for the overall achievement."
He also said the judging panel for animated features consists of both animators and Academy members, but that animators who work directly on an entered film should and would remain objective during the voting process.
"We can't ensure (that people won't give their competitors a low vote)," Bloom said. "But we believe that people who are voting place values high on their list. No matter what, we think the best three pictures will get through."
Strong values aside, some animators think the Academy should be more flexible with its screening process.
"I think it's a great thing that they're having this new category," said Carlos Saldanha, whose animation company Blue Sky Studios won an Oscar for best animated short in 1999. "But they should set it up so that filmmakers can screen their films at a place in Europe and Asia so that more films have a chance to be nominated."
"But eventually, I think all movies should be screened in L.A. After all, the Oscar is a Hollywood thing."
