How does a movie win a best picture Oscar? There’s a method to the voting madness

How does a film win the Oscar for greatest image? Since 2009, when the Academy of Movement Footage Arts and Sciences expanded the variety of nominees in what’s sometimes the evening’s remaining class, it’s been determined by a course of often known as the preferential poll.

Right here’s an evidence of how the academy’s greatest image voting course of works, as beforehand reported by The Occasions’ awards columnist, Glenn Whipp.

Whereas all academy members get to vote on all of the classes listed on every year’s remaining poll of nominees, greatest image is the one class the place voting members from all 17 branches of the academy get to set these nominations.

Then, after one of the best image nominees are set — for 2022, they’re “Belfast,” “CODA,” “Don’t Look Up,” “Drive My Automotive,” “Dune,” “King Richard,” “Licorice Pizza,” Nightmare Alley,” “The Energy of the Canine” and “West Facet Story” — the preferential poll comes into play.

Additionally known as instant-runoff voting and ranked-choice voting, the preferential poll is an electoral system utilized in locations world wide — together with in New York Metropolis — for elections with greater than two candidates. Every voter ranks his or her selections, quite than selecting just one to be the winner.

The considering behind the system is to make sure that every poll could have most affect, placing a premium on the alternatives that voters rank close to the highest.

For the Oscars, if an academy member put Film A primary and Film A will get knocked out of the operating early for lack of different votes (assuming no film received a majority), that member’s poll continues to impact the result. If the member has Film B ranked second, that poll’s vote then goes to Film B till one in all three issues occurs: Film B accumulates 50% of the vote and wins, one other film crosses the 50% threshold and wins, or Film B can be eradicated. And the cycle continues — Motion pictures C by means of J, anybody? — till one in all this yr’s 10 nominees crosses that fifty% threshold and claims the prize.

Relying on how lengthy it takes to find out a winner, that academy member’s one vote may in the end switch to plenty of totally different motion pictures earlier than in the end touchdown in its remaining resting place.

And that’s how and why the Oscars’ greatest image winner generally isn’t the film that’s most passionately beloved. Typically, it’s the movie that’s most typically preferred — or, for these glass-half-empty sorts, the image that’s least disliked.

For a greater rationalization of preferential voting — with narration and animation, no much less — scroll again up and watch the video embedded above.