Academy Hands Out Scientific and Technical Awards at Beverly Hills Ceremony

BEVERLY HILLS, CA -- The developers of cinematic advances ranging from enhanced wireless microphones to an animatronic horse puppet to facial-performance-capture systems were honored Saturday evening during the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's annual Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony.

Eighteen scientific and technical achievements developed by 34 individual honorees and five organizations were lauded at the event staged at the Beverly Wilshire, hosted by actor John Cho and actress Leslie Mann.

"This year we are particularly pleased to be able to honor not only a wide range of new technologies, but also the pioneering digital cinema cameras that helped facilitate the widespread conversion to electronic image capture for motion picture production," said Ray Feeney, chair of the Academy's Scientific and Technical Awards Committee. "With their outstanding, innovative work, these technologists, engineers and inventors have significantly expanded filmmakers' creative choices for moving image storytelling."

Recipients of Technical Achievement Awards, in the form of Academy certificates, were:

• Thomas Grass Valley from development of the Viper FilmStream digital camera system;
• Larry Gritz for development of Open Shading Language;
• Carl Ludwig, Eugene Troubezkoy and Maurice van Swaaij for the CGI Studio renderer at Blue Sky Studios;
• Brian Whited for development of the Meander drawing system at Walt Disney Animation Studios;
• Mark Rappaport, Scott Oshita, Jeff Cruts and Todd Minobe for creation of the Creature Effects Animatronic Horse Puppet;
• Glenn Sanders and Howard Stark for the Zaxcom Digital Wireless Microphone System;
• David Thomas, Lawrence E. Fisher and David Bundy for development of the Lectrosonics Digital Hybrid Wireless Microphone System;
• Parag Havaldar for development of expression-based facial performance- capture technology at Sony Pictures Imageworks;
• Nicholas Apostoloff and Geoff Wedig for creation of animation rig- based facial performance-capture systems at ImageMovers Digital and Digital Domain; and
• Kiran Bhat, Michael Koperwas, Brian Cantwell and Paige Warner for the ILM facial performance-capture solving system.

Recipients of Scientific and Engineering Awards, in the form of Academy plaques, are:

• ARRI for development of the Super 35 format Alexa digital camera system;
• RED Digital Cinema for the RED Epic digital cinema cameras with upgradeable full-time sensors;
• Sony for development of the F65 CineAlta camera;
• Panavision and Sony for development of the Genesis digital motion picture camera;
• Marcos Fajardo, Chris Kulla, Alan King, Thiago Ize and Clifford Stein for development of the Arnold Renderer at Sony Pictures Imageworks and Solid Angle SL;
• Vladimir Koylazov for creation of V-Ray from Chaos Group;
• Luca Fascione, J.P. Lewis and Iain Matthews for development of the FACETS facial performance capture and solving system at Weta Digital; and
• Steven Rosenbluth, Joshua Barratt, Robert Nolty and Archie Te for the Concept Overdrive motion control system.

-- City News Service, photo credit: Ivan Bandura/Wiki Commons