Can a 'voice' win an Oscar?

[Wippit Guud]

New Line Studio's is submitting the name of Andy Serkis for best supporting actor, for the role of Gollum.

Until this point, you cannot be nomiated for an acting role by simply being the voice, which is why Robin Williams was not nominated for the Genie in Aladin. I find that a bit biased, because people who play character who are mute are eligable, why shouldn't people play a non-existant body be nominated.

Personally, I think he should be nominated to leading actor, Gollum is the main character as much as Frodo is in Two Towers.

 

[Mordane76]

As to my understanding, the actor also did much of the body work that the figure of Gollum was stretched over, which means he did much of the physical action as well. I believe the Oscar committee is going to consider him because of this detail.

 

[Shalimar]

Actually, he did all of the body acting done by Gollum. After all the scenes were filmed he returned to the studio and redid all of the scenes so that his form and motions could be captured and then overlaid with the CGI, he also redid all of his lines as well. So he did twice the work the other actors did.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Until this point, you cannot be nomiated for an acting role by simply being the voice, which is why Robin Williams was not nominated for the Genie in Aladin.

I don't believe the Academy has any specific rules against an actor being nominated for voice work. It is just a organizational bias. The Academy, as a whole, is pretty conservative, very set-in-its ways, very slow to recognize the advancements of technologies and moviemaking techniques.

Take animated movies. For years, they were considered "inferior" to live action movies. As the technology and techniques for animation advanced, and the movies became better, there was a lot of pressure on the Academy to give animation its due. Finally, "Beauty and the Beast" was nominated for Best Picture, which was the Academy's way of acknowleding animation as a legitimate motion picture art form on par with live action movies. Now animated features have their own category.

Specific areas of the Academy, such as the branches involved in special effects, visual effects, art design, etc., are more liberal and more willing to accept and embrace new techniques and new technologies. It's just hard to get some of the other Academy members to change.

I think the Gollum character this year is really going to force the Academy members to look long and hard at what is acting and what performances can be nominated in an acting category.

When you get right down to it, there is no difference between what Serkis did in playing Gollum, and what John Hurt did in playing The Elephant Man. Both are wearing a special effect which hides most of their features -- one is computer generated, the other is hand-applied latex and makeup. But the character is brought to live in both cases by the actor's underlying performance -- the voice and the body movements.

 

[Mistwell]

Re: Re: Can a 'voice' win an Oscar?

I don't believe the Academy has any specific rules against an actor being nominated for voice work. It is just a organizational bias. The Academy, as a whole, is pretty conservative, very set-in-its ways, very slow to recognize the advancements of technologies and moviemaking techniques.

On the contrary, from the rules section of the Academy:

A performance by an actor or actress in any role shall be eligible for nomination either for the Best Performance in a Leading Role or for the Best Performance in a Supporting Role. If, however, all the dialogue has been dubbed by another actor, the performance shall not be eligible for award consideration. Singing which is dubbed will not affect the performer's eligibility unless it constitutes the entire performance.

The rule is unclear what happens when what you see is computer generated, but is based on the movements of a real person, who is also the person doing the dubbing.

In addition, CGI does not appear to qualify as "makeup" under the rules:

Makeup is any change in the appearance of a performer's face, or hair, or body created by the application of cosmetics, three-dimensional materials, prosthetic appliances or wigs and hairpieces, applied directly to the performer's face or body.

I have no idea how the Academy is going to handle this one.

 

[nopantsyet]

I wonder why they would put in that phrase, "applied directly to the body." Seems overkill to say anything beyond the part must be acted in whole, both action and voice, by the same individual. As I see it the CGI Gollum body is a costume. It just happens to have been applied in post-production rather than in filming. A minor point, really, since John Hurt's nomination for The Elephant Man clearly demonstrates that the face and body can be completely obscured. But for both roles, the sum of the performance in action and voice, was performed by the actor. That should be the important point IMO.

 

[s/LaSH]

All minutae aside, Gollum got me emoting more than any movie I've seen in years. Unfortunately, I'm no Academy member, or I'd be pulling favours to swing votes or however their system works.

<Obligatory Denzel Washington reference>

I never pay the Academy much heed. I much prefer to make up my own mind... and it's made up right now, Sirkis was very good as Gollum.

 

[Assenpfeffer]

Re: Re: Can a 'voice' win an Oscar?

I think the Gollum character this year is really going to force the Academy members to look long and hard at what is acting and what performances can be nominated in an acting category.

I agree, and I think that this needs to be done. It will force the Academy to think about how they're going to handle what will surely be an ever-increasing number of digital performances in the future.

However, I don't think that Serkis will get an actual nomination when all is said and done. Serkis' work here is groundbreaking, and the Academy as a rule seldom recognizes groundbreaking work.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

As an actor myself, I think it's a very good thing that he's being put forward for nomination. He's done an incredible job, and it's important that all the physical work he did is recognised.

To take a bad example, if Jar-Jar had been nominated I would be annoyed, because he's a CGI creation. But Serkis did the physical work himself, which was then used to create the film character directly. This is a wonderful way of using modern techniques to create a memorable performance.

I hope he gets a nomination. He deserves it. He gives a better performance in that film that some leads do in other films out this year.

I would also like to see if other people on the boards rated Wormtongue's performance as highly as I did. I thought he was extremely good, very menacing and subtle.

 

[Ranger REG]

Personally, I think that because Andy Serkis is fully involved in the making of Gollum CGI (using his body to animate the character and his voice, when they could have just used a body actor and a voice actor to make the character) is deserving of praise and worthy of a nod from the Motion Picture Academy.

All the CGI staff do is basically be his virtual "costume and makeup artists."