Awards Outlook - A Tale Of Two Campaigns
Awards analysis is provided by Sean from @MathTeacherMovies.
This past Oscar year highlighted two different Best Actress campaigns. The first was the Andre Riseborough’s campaign for To Leslie which led to a nomination and the other was Danielle Deadwyler for Till which led to a snub. Both performances were deserving of nominations, but both campaigns were very different and could lead to a change in how one could receive an Oscar nomination.
Till was the typical Oscar campaign where a studio dumps a whole bunch of money into advertisements and screenings. This is usually successful but didn’t work in this instance as this campaign didn't have the personal touch of Riseborough’s campaign.
Andrea Riseborough’s campaign was more strategic in figuring out the amount of votes she would need to get a nomination and also grass roots in that the director and his wife managed to talk to the right people on the inside of which they had connections to, who ended up running screeners and tweeting a very similar blurb that managed to reach enough people to get enough votes for a nomination.
The great aspect of this campaign is that it created an opportunity for smaller films that may not have the money to have a campaign of this magnitude and Riseborough ended up getting a much deserved nomination. However, this also felt a bit more like a nomination that was given because of who people knew instead of talent, even though there was clearly talent behind the performance. This was a nomination provided due to connections in Hollywood where people of power created a nomination displaying a lack of diversity in those powerful corners of Hollywood.
The Riseborough campaign also brought to the surface the gross nature of the politics of the Oscars where sometimes the way to get a nomination is not through talent but to play the game. However, it can’t be stressed enough that this nomination was deserved but other actors have played this strategy and were far less deserving, it was just never as apparent.
In the coming years, there will be many different campaigns like Riseborough’s but they probably will not pay off in the same success as voting members will probably be looking out more for them and will not fall for them in the same fashion.
Both campaigns have their positives and their negatives and there is no true great solution for the problem of the politics within the Oscars, but there will most likely be a shift in rules for the campaigns in the coming years especially through the social media that was the most apparent in the grass roots from Riseborough’s campaign.