Rawdon Hayne and Robert W. Jeffs of Leelium Tubelites received a 2002 Technical Achievement Award for their contributions to the development of internally lit balloons for motion picture lighting. The helium-filled balloons were designed to be usable indoors or out, quick to set up, and can light a large area.
The Aerohead motion control camera head and the J-Viz Pre-Visualization system, designed by Alvah Miller (pictured), Michael Sorensen and J. Walt Adamczyk, serves the needs of the live-action filmmaker and allows for sophisticated tiling and pre-visualization techniques. (2005 Technical Achievement Award)
Richard Edlund, visual effects supervisor for “Poltergeist,” poses at a 2007 Academy event with an example of the special television system developed for the film to display an image on TV at 24 frames per second, crucial for scenes with the “possessed TV.”
Arthur Widmer (1914–2006) received a special 2004 Award of Commendation for his lifetime of achievement in the science and technology of image compositing for motion pictures, in particular his contributions to the development of the Ultra Violet and ‘bluescreen’ compositing processes.
In 2007, the Academy honored 12 people with a special Award of Commendation “for their contributions to the environmentally responsible industry conversion from silver-based to cyan analog dye soundtracks.” The switch meant that 40 million gallons of water were saved each year and the amount of chemicals used was greatly reduced.
In this landmark report, the Council examined ways in which the movie business and other industries handle long term storage and access of important digital data. The goal was to better understand the problems faced today and what, if anything, is being done to avoid full-fledged data access disasters down the road. The study’s surprising results have caused reverberations around the globe.
