Explained: How are Oscar nominees chosen? Why the process of choosing Best Picture is complicated?

Oscars 2024:The team behind Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon and Poor Things all got a major reason for celebration, when Oscar nominees for 2024were announced. Now, all eyesareon the big winners of this year’s Academy Awards.

The prestigious Academy Awards will be announced on March 10, and many of the films and artists are already being nominated. But how are these films shortlisted? Who shortlists these movies and how does the voting system of one of the biggest awards in the entertainment industry work?

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Here is everything you need to know about the complicated process in a much simpler way:

Oscars 2024: Process of nominating Best Picture is complicated yet fascinating

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences consists of a team of around 9000 filmmakers and film professionals. This team of professionals are the people who vote for the Oscars. There are two ways how a film can be selected for The Academy, either it has to go through a rigorous application process or should be invited to join The Academy directly (though almost every nominee gets an invite).

The organisation itself is divided into 17 specific branches with a dedicated branch for actors, directors, editors and many others.

Nominees for each category are selected by votes from members of these specific branches. For instance, only actors are allowed to select nominees for acting categories; likewise, directors get to select the nominees for Best Director.

But here's a little catch, when it comes to the Best Picture category, everyone gets to vote for this category.

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In this category, a voting member must submit a list of five to ten nominees. For every other category, a voting member submits a list of not more than five nominees.

But the question is how do these individual ballots turn into the final nominations? Let's do some maths.

While submitting a list of preferred nominees, Academy members rank them according to preference. The nomination ballots are initially sorted based on the first-place ranking of the voters. If a selection receives a certain number of first-place votes (sometimes referred to as the "magic number"), it becomes a nominee.

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This "magic number" is calculated by multiplying the total number of ballots received in a given category by the total number of possible nominees plus one. If a choice receives this number of votes (or more), it is considered a nominee.

Assume the magic number is 333, and Colin Farrell received 337 votes for Best Actor. In this case, he is automatically nominated.

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But then what happens to the votes for the second, third, fourth, and fifth places? After that first pass, the Pricewaterhouse Coopers accountants sort through the remaining ballots and remove the stack with the fewest votes.

PricewaterhouseCoopers is the accounting firm that tallies the Oscar votes and has been doing this for decades now.

This stack is then reassigned based on voters' second-place selections, for example, if Robert Pattinson received the fewest first-place votes, his stack is then counted based on second-place selections. Ballots are redistributed in this manner until the magic number is reached or there are only five nominees left.

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After all nomination ballots have been counted, new ballots are distributed to each Academy member. After the nominees are chosen, everyone gets to vote on each category from the list of nominees chosen by the category's experts.

So, once the final list of nominations is announced, an actor will be able to vote not only for Best Actor, but also for Best Costume Design, Best Short Film, and Best Cinematography.

So, while experts in each individual category guide the nomination process, the final winners are chosen by the Academy's esteemed members only.

(With inputs from agencies)