NEW YORK (AP) – Ninety seconds. So quickly Steven Soderbergh believes that the Academy Awards will convince viewers that this year’s broadcast is different.
The concept for the show, which Soderbergh produces with Stacey Sher and Jesse Collins, is to treat the broadcast not as a TV show, but as a movie. And he is convinced that he has an opening scene.
“We will announce our intention immediately,” says Soderbergh. “Right outside the gate, people will know, ‘We need to put on our seat belts.'”
Changing the Oscars, a 93-year-old American institution, has usually proved an exercise in futility. Changes were tried along the way, but the basic format was stubbornly immutable.
But this year, the pandemic shook the Oscars like never before. When the broadcast begins on April 25 on ABC, it will not be public. The base of the show will not be the usual home of the Academy Awards, the Dolby Theater (although Dolby is still a key location), but Union Station, the airy railroad center, Art Deco-Mission Revival in downtown Los Angeles.
For manufacturers, the COVID challenges are an opportunity to finally rethink the Oscars.
“At every step of the creative process of making a film, when I ask a question about why something is done in a certain way and the answer is: ‘Because it’s always been that way’ – this is a real red flag for me Soderbergh said in a recent Zoom interview with Collins and Sher. “All this year we took the opportunity to really challenge all the hypotheses that go into an awards show.”
No matter how well it does a job, ratings will certainly drop from 23.6 million viewers last year.. The number of awards shows increased during the pandemic, and this year’s Oscar nominations – although widely circulated and more diverse than ever – do not have the kind of buzz generated in a normal year. Soderbergh praises the best nominees for the film as “one of the leading filmmakers.”
“If the Super Bowl teams come from small markets, it’s still a great game, people care,” says Collins, who produced this week’s Super Bowl break show The Weeknd..
Collins was also the producer of last month’s Grammy Awards, a television show that drew praise for his personal jam-session sensation. That sense of community is something that Oscar also wants to exude.
“My great thing has always been: it’s not intimate. It doesn’t feel personal, “says Soderbergh. “We are in a COVID world. It has to be that way. Nominees, guests, presenters. This is. These are the only people in the room. This was just a strange alignment of the catastrophe and my personal concern. “
The Oscars will certainly be very different from the virtual Golden Globes, mostly in February. Manufacturers have opposed both Zoom and casual wear. This is, after all, the Oscars; there will be no acceptance speeches made in a hood. The producers pressured the nominees to participate in person, with the appropriate safety measures.
Some have understood the position of the academy – blocking regulations are in place in some countries and cases are persistent in Europe and elsewhere – leading to compromises. There will be a nominee hub in London and, by the end of last week, about a dozen remote satellite connections. Some materials will be pre-recorded; each nominee spent 45 minutes with the producers.
Soderbergh envisions the broadcast as a three-hour film, not a webinar. But what does that mean, exactly? If the Oscars are a movie, what kind will it be? From the director of “Ocean’s 11” and “Logan Lucky”, should we expect a robbery movie?
“It will feel like a film in that there is a general theme that is articulated in different ways throughout the show. So the presenters are essentially the storytellers for each chapter, ”says Soderbergh. “We want you to feel that it was not a show made by an institution. We want you to feel like you’re watching a show by a small group of people that has really attacked everything that feels generic or useless or insincere. This is the kind of intention I lack when I watch shows like this. A voice. He must have a specific voice. ”
From a technical point of view, the transmission will have a broader look and a more cinematic approach to music. (Questlove is a music director.) The presenters are considered the cast of the ensemble. One thing you won’t see, says Collins, is standard stuttering before an award is handed out.
“When you see members of the cast come up for awards, you’ll see a connection,” says Collins. “There won’t be two people coming back who just met in the green room struggling to stay with the teleprompter.”
It is, without a doubt, much to be achieved, with COVID-19 conditions and restrictions constantly evolving. The logistics are “dizzying,” says Soderbergh. Egos, another fascinating component. “Oh, it’s definitely a chapter for memory,” he says. But the show is approaching. “I feel pretty amplified,” he says.
The role of the savior of the Oscars is unlikely for Soderbergh, who dramatically said goodbye to Hollywood eight years ago. His criticism then was that the studios did not innovate and that the films were derived from the cultural center. But after returning to film in a restless sprint of adventurous, conceptually daring movies (some filmed on iPhone, one made on an ocean liner ), Soderbergh helped bring the industry back into production during the pandemic by identifying safety protocols – including the types of testing and quarantine that will be in place for participation in nominees next week.
The Oscars are an annual gathering, like this, for Hollywood – a time of reflection, aspiration and overlap for the industry. This year’s awards, postponed by two months, follow a punitive pandemic year for the industry that has seen cinemas closed and streaming services proliferated. Soderbergh hopes the Oscars will be cathartic and a blow to Hollywood.
“The cliché when you go into filming is to say it’s about hope and scope,” he says. “That’s what we want to do, to show what’s possible.”
This includes an affectionate celebration of the crafts and nominations of each category.
“Snark is something we didn’t want,” says Sher, a veteran producer of “Get Shorty,” “Django Unchained,” and Soderbergh movies like “Out of Sight” and “Erin Brockovich.”
On Oscar night, Soderbergh – who usually serves as his own film director under the alias Peter Andrews – plans to be in the production truck with the show’s director, Glenn Weiss.
“There was so much resistance to making big moves, but at least what we did, coming from the other end, is to give the academy, the network and the viewers some real information about what they like and what they don’t like. we made some big moves, “says Soderbergh.” That means it will evolve and it must evolve. “
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Follow AP Film writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP