TECH SUPPORT: Kicking off the new year

Well here we go again. Welcome to the third year of “Tech Support” here at In Contention, still the Oscarweb’s only weekly column devoted strictly to the crafts elements of filmmaking and the awards process that surrounds them.

The Toronto International Film Festival will be commencing tonight in my hometown and I am yet again “up the creek” (the creek being Lake Ontario) in Kingston. TIFF is correctly acknowledged as the true starting point of awards season so the next few weeks will really be an intro to the year ahead posing the intial questions that the oncoming season will eventually answer. The crafts categories will be no exception in that regard.

So before we get there, perhaps stating the purpose of Tech Support, for both new and veteran readers, is a good place to start.

Consider camera work. Sets. Costumes. Editing. Sound. Visual Effects. Makeup. Music.

It goes without saying the absence of either element would negate the film-going experience. It might be true that the average moviegoer will see a film because of its director or its stars and not its
cinematography but that does not take away from the work that crafts artists do behind the scenes to
bring a movie to life, to improve it and to push the medium of film forward.

Tech Support is an attempt to give the artists behind this work a more prominent role in the media, a role they almost never find themselves in. At In Contention, our focus is obviously on the awards side of the filmmaking industry. Discussing phenomena seen in the categories that award these disciplines, discussing particular categories and interviewing those “in contention” are frequent subjects of the weekly debate and discourse.

Obviously, Tech Support is a drop in the bucket in terms of this overall goal. I am nonetheless proud of its uniqueness as a small step towards achieving the goals of this site…so let’s get on with our third season.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will analyze the state of the race so far. But like you, I am quite curious about the questions lying ahead.

Will Roger Deakins, after painfully losing twice last year (in an amazing group of nominees), be in the hunt to finally win his long overdue cinematography Oscar this year with “Revolutionary Road?” Will his main competition be Mandy Walker, seeking to become the first woman ever nominated in the category for Baz Luhrmann’s “Australia”?

Will Christopher Nolan’s amazing team of right-hand men be able to garner a bevy of nominations for “The Dark Knight?” Will David Fincher’s team of crafts artists for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” who, as a
whole, have received little Oscar recognition to date, finally break through?

Will a film dominate the crafts categories like we have seen in the past with the likes of “Chicago,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” “Memoirs of a Geisha” or “The Aviator?” Will a critically reviled film, like “Norbit” or “The Affair of the Necklace,” manage to garner the moniker “Academy Award nominee?”

What songs will we have to suffer through in the ceremony? Alright…I kid. I actually have immensely enjoyed the refreshingly unique recent winners in that category, even if its status as an Academy-recognized discipline remains…suspect.

These are all questions that will take months to answer so I will not attempt to do so today. And they will likely be a drop in the bucket compared to what lies ahead. I look forward to it.

On a final personal note, academic commitments have made my contributions to this site less frequent
than in the past. For that, I am disappointed. But I nevertheless am very much looking forward to
a third year of “Tech Support” and pondering thoughts about the crafts categories every Thursday for
the next six months.

Happy movie watching to you all.