Oscars 2018 Category Breakdown: Best Production Design

So what we do here each year as a warm up for the Oscars is, I break down each of the 24 categories. The idea is to both familiarize everyone with the category and its history. I look at what the major trends are throughout the past bunch of years, how the precursors tend to go, whether they matter or not, that sort of stuff. I look at how the category came to be this year, and just anything else that seems totally pertinent about it. Then I rank each of the nominees and tell you what their likelihood (at this particular moment in time) of winning is.

This is all prelude to my giant Oscar ballot that I’m gonna give you. But I figure, if you have these as the warmup, it’s not as intimidating. You’ll have seen a lot of the pertinent trends here and we’ll all be able to reference these as a sort of cheat sheet. Plus it shows you where my head is at for how I think each of the categories are gonna go, and you can see me working my way up to all the bad decisions I usually make while guessing. Pretty much, with this, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the category is gonna turn out.

Today is Best Production Design. Probably one of the few categories with any real intrigue in for me this year.

Production Design is one of those categories that you kind of need the precursors to help with, otherwise you could, in a vacuum, talk yourself into anything. Though sometimes (like 2012), the precursors don’t really help and you just get caught. So it’s kind of a case by case basis. Last year we got lucky with an easy one. This year, I’m curious.

But we’ll start by looking at the main guild, ADG, and how they do vs. the Oscars since their inception:

• 1996 — The English Patient won both.
• 1997 — Titanic won both.
• 1998 — Shakespeare in Love won the Oscar, What Dreams May Come won ADG.
• 1999 — Sleepy Hollow won both.
• 2000 — Crouching Tiger won the Oscar, Gladiator won ADG.
• 2001 — Moulin Rouge won both.
• 2002 — Chicago won the Oscar, The Two Towers won ADG.
• 2003 — Return of the King won both.
• 2004 — The Aviator won the Oscar, A Series of Unfortunate Events won ADG.
• 2005 — Memoirs of a Geisha won both.

After 2005, they split the categories into the three we know them as today, Period, Fantasy, Contemporary.

• 2006 — Pan’s Labyrinth won both.
• 2007 — Sweeney Todd won the Oscar. There Will Be Blood won ADG Period.
• 2008 — Benjamin Button won both.
• 2009 — Avatar won both.
• 2010 — Alice in Wonderland won the Oscar, The King’s Speech won ADG Period and Inception won ADG Fantasy.
• 2011 — Hugo won both.
• 2012 — Lincoln won the Oscar. Anna Karenina won ADG Period, Life of Pi won ADG Fantasy.
• 2013 — The Great Gatsby won both.
• 2014 — The Grand Budapest Hotel won both.
• 2015 — Mad Max: Fury Road won both.
• 2016 — La La Land won both.
• 2017 — The Shape of Water won both.

So in 22 years, ADG is 15/22. So 2/3. Not terrible. And 9 of the last 12, so 75% since they split the categories.

Of the seven times they did not match the Oscar winner:

• 1998 — The Best Picture winner won.
• 2000 — The Best Picture winner won ADG but lost the Oscar to a Best Picture nominee
• 2002 — The Best Picture winner won.
• 2004 — The Best Picture nominee won.
• 2007 — A Tim Burton film wins.
• 2010 — A Tim Burton film wins.
• 2012 — A Steven Spielberg wins (generally surprising people, given that it won none of the precursors)

BAFTA, meanwhile, is 7/10 the last ten (missing 2016, 2012 and 2010, so two of the same three ADG missed), and the only ADG miss that they picked up was The Aviator. Every other one they also got wrong (including Shakespeare in Love).

And BFCA has been handing out an award for production design since 2009, and they’ve only missed twice. They’re 7/9 in the last ten years, and haven’t missed since 2012. Their two misses are 2010 and 2012. They had Inception (along with everyone else) in 2010, and Alice in Wonderland came up and surprised, and they had Anna Karenina in 2012 (along with most people, though Les Mis and Life of Pi also had precursors, and then Lincoln jumped up and won).

Generally, what this means is, unless it’s gonna go completely off book, the precursors will usually tell you (along with general observation) what the contenders are.

Best Production Design

Black Panther

The Favourite

First Man

Mary Poppins Returns

Roma

This is one of the categories that went entirely as expected. These were the films that got nominated pretty much across all the three precursors and made the most sense. So not a whole lot to talk about in the way of how the category became the category. The only possible alternative was Fantastic Beasts, but when faced with that vs. Black Panther… the choice was obvious. So no surprises here.

The precursors so far:

• ADG Period: The Favourite
• ADG Fantasy: Black Panther
• ADG Contemporary: Crazy Rich Asians
• BAFTA: The Favourite
• BFCA: Black Panther

I think that about tells us everything we need to know, don’t you?

Rankings:

5. First Man — It’s the only one where you can’t really remember a set piece from it, can you? Like, yeah, there’s the spaceships and stuff, but it’s all so tight on Gosling a lot of the time, you don’t really remember it. And then everything else just feels kind of like “generic 60s” sets. So I don’t think anyone’s rushing to vote for this. They love space movies in this category, but they never win. Passengers, The Martian, Interstellar, Gravity, even Apollo 13 — all lost. This as a fifth choice makes total sense in the absence of any precursors.

4. Mary Poppins — It’s Mary Poppins, so you know it’s got that aura of having good sets and things. And Disney, so a lot of people might vote for it on principle for that. Still, no precursors, and I don’t think anyone saw/has love for the movie to the point of it picking up categories. So it feels like an “also ran.” Maybe I try to sneak it third come Oscar night just because I wouldn’t want to get caught with it winning, Lincoln-style. But honestly, I doubt this category gets past the top two. That’s a hell of a vote split to get past those two.

3. Roma — It’s tied for most nominations, and it’s a Best Picture frontrunner. Can’t not show it respect in other categories, even though the Academy is very good about giving awards to things only “when it makes sense.” They don’t just sweep vote anymore. So that makes this an unlikely winner. Plus, so much of Roma is about the cinematography and the vérité feel that some people might take the production design of it for granted. Mary Poppins is much more showy, which is why I might say that’s a third choice over this. Still, no precursors outside of the top two, so at that point, we’re splitting hairs and just covering for possible eventualities. Don’t see the vote getting this far.

2. Black Panther — It’s got a guild win and it’s got BFCA. That’s something. Could snag a few extra votes in an open vote, but it’s not the frontrunner. Could easily win, but you cannot call it the favorite to win here. You just can’t. The thing with Hollywood is, they’re only doing this to seem like they care. They’ll clap for it, but they truly don’t want to vote for this. They’ll vote for it where it “makes sense.” So maybe it’ll win Score, maybe it’ll win Costumes, maybe it’ll win one of the Sound categories, maybe it’ll win this. I can’t see it getting more than one or two wins at most. This one is in play, but I feel like it’s one of the lesser probability ones.

1. The Favourite — It’s got the guild (Period, too, which is the big one) and it’s got BAFTA. Hard not to see this as (insert title here) to take this one down. It’s a toss up of a category. This vs. Black Panther. All things being equal, this has the better precursors and makes more sense for them because this one isn’t loaded with CGI. This seems like the probable winner. Either way, this is a clear frontrunner.

– – – – – – – – – –

http://bplusmovieblog.com