How the Academy’s Screening Room Helps Films Find a Global Audience Among Oscar Voters
variety.comSasha Urban editorAs the pandemic raged and in-person screenings practically disappeared, the Academy’s Screening Room has found an appreciative audience.Many film distributors are able to send links to their films to various guilds, media members and voters; the Academy has stepped in with its screening room, offering voters those films plus other contenders who can’t afford to do that.With the Acad’s growing international membership, the website has been a boon, especially to those who submitted shorts, documentaries and international films.The website may also have helped international films such as “Parallel Mothers,” “The Worst Person in the World” and “Drive My Car” earn noms in other categories, such as original screenplay for “Worst” and three others for “Drive” (best picture, screenplay and director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi).
Although there have been growing pains since its inception in 2015, the streaming room has found an appreciative audience among the 9,573 Oscar voters.“Our membership, especially internationally, was continuing to grow,” says Tom Oyer, senior VP of member relations and awards for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. “We have a lot of members who are not based in Los Angeles; they live all over the U.S.
or around the world. We saw the need to find an easier way for all of those members to participate.”The Academy Screening Room website has since expanded to platforms such as Roku, Apple TV and iOS, filling in the gap for films that would otherwise have been sent as DVDs or screened in person.
But when the pandemic hit in 2020, it became a lifeline.“We were very, very lucky that we had this built already,” Oyer says.
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