LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Next week’s Oscar ceremony will look like a movie, giving the winners more time to speak, while coronavirus masks will play a major role, the show’s producers said on Saturday.
The coronavirus pandemic and a trio of new producers have led to a reinvention of the traditional show in which the highest film honors in the world are handed out in front of a theater audience of over 4,000 A-list stars and industry directors.
Much of the April 25 ceremony will take place instead at Art Deco Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, where a stage is being built and where presenters will do more than open an envelope with the winner’s name.
“It won’t be like anything that’s been done before,” director Steven Soderbergh, who co-produced the show with Stacey Sher and Jesse Collins, told a news conference.
Soderbergh, who directed the 2011 film “Contagion,” said the pandemic “opened up an opportunity to try something that hasn’t been tried.”
“We want the show to have a voice,” he added.
Soderbergh said the ceremony would be filmed as a movie, with presenters including Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford and Halle Berry “playing alone or at least a version of them.”
The speeches of the Oscar winners were previously limited to about 45 seconds. This year, Soderbergh said, “we give them space. I encouraged them to tell a story and tell something personal. ”
The producers have said that there will be strict tests and COVID protocols, many of them following the standards developed last year to run film and TV production again.
They also consulted extensively with epidemiologists who worked 10 years ago on “Contagion,” which strangely foreshadowed the devastating effects of a virus on the world and saw an increase in rents and transmission last year. in flow.
Asked about masks at the ceremony, Soderbergh gave what he called a deliberately cryptic reply.
“Masks will play a very important role in the story,” he said. “This topic is very important in the narrative.”
Candidates who are unable to travel to Los Angeles for the ceremony will be able to attend via satellite connections from locations around the world, but there will be no Zoom appearances.
The ceremony will be preceded by a 90-minute pre-show that will include performances by the five contestants of the original pieces that were previously recorded on the roof of the new Academy Museum in Los Angeles and Iceland.
Reporting by Jill Serjeant