Next Poll?

[OscarGuy]

I think editing is just as integral as cinematography, but I'm just answering the polls as they come up.

And for those who aren't aware, Cinema Sight is running two sets of Oscar-related polls each week. On Thursday evening is currently score (I've done several others to date) and on Fridays are the Face-Offs, which pit two winners against each other and will eventually be used to create a type of bracket battle. All of which are archived and permit you to vote weeks after the poll started.

[FilmFan720]

The other nice thing about switching to song is that we get an influx of different movies...there's only so many times we can hit on some of these same films!

[Cinemanolis]

I like the idea for the Best Song/Score poll, as well as the Cinematography one.

Also another reminder, what happened to the Best of the Best and Nomination Elimination games? If i recall correctly we only had 3-4 years to finish them and we stoped for no apparent reason. Any chance to revive them?

[Big Magilla]

My two cents: Cinematography is, to me, the most important Oscar category outside of Picture/Director.

We'll get to it.

[FilmFan720]

Best Song could be fun for some lighter conversation!

[Eric]

My two cents: Cinematography is, to me, the most important Oscar category outside of Picture/Director.

[Big Magilla]

Some more good ideas. Best Song would certainly be easy to do, Best Score problematic in the years when there were more than five nominees but not undoable.

As for voting on adaptations, what you see is what you get. If you're familiar with the original work and that enters into your like or dislike of a film then vote accordingly, but if you haven't then vote according to your like or dislike of the way the story progresses on screen, no need to search out the source material.

[mlrg]

I second BJs opinion that these polls are the reasong that the board is still alive.

I have several issues while voting for the screenplay categories. On one hand, there will be many nominees that I've never seen, thus reducing the probability of casting a vote. On the other hand, how woul you vote in adapted screenplay category? Would you vote based in the quality of the film (and many films already have been discussed in the acting and picture/director polls) or the way the book/play was transported to the screen? If so, you'll need to read the books or see the plays they're based on.

I'm also on board about the song and score nominees. They are much more accessible at this stage than the screenplay categories.

Regarding the voting schedule, I think that we should start new polls after the next oscars.

[Heksagon]

I second Ksrymy's idea of doing Score and Song next.

Screenplay is good, but it's a huge effort to go through everything, especially if we go through it one category at a time rather than one year at a time. I agree it's a good idea to go through the writing one category at a time as BJ suggests, but it will take several years to complete. We could get the music categories done a lot faster.

On the other hand, I don't like the idea of holding a break during the Awards season. The reason being that there are likely some lurkers and lapsed posters who will visit during the Awards season who wouldn't come here otherwise, and they are more likely to stay if they notice the polls going on. This is one reason why I think that starting the lighter Song and Score polls in January would be nice, as they are easy to jump in.

I did some researching and I think that practically all the Song nominees are available in YouTube. I looked for about two dozen titles that I hadn't heard of and they were all there, so I don't think finding the Song nominees is a problem.

Unfortunately, all the Score nominees are not in YouTube; I didn't check any specific music databases. I think that for the post-1945 years there is at least some sample for the vast majority of nominees in YouTube, but I don't know if the samples are long enough to be properly representative of the whole score.

Up until 1945, there was a huge number of nominees each year, and I don't think you can find even a short sample of all of them.

So, my preference would be going through the Songs starting in January. I'd like to go through the Scores at the same time (at least post-1945), but if the more musically oriented posters here feel that there aren't good enough samples available to work on, ok, I won't complain about it.

[The Original BJ]

Anyone planning a trip to the Library of Congress to view the only existing print of 1928's Glorious Betsy?

UGH, I was there two weeks ago! I should have seized the opportunity!

[Big Magilla]

I like these suggestions. We could do the writing categories separately, although Original Story seems to mean different things at different times. It generally meant best outline or scenario as opposed to fully written screenplay but in the early days actually meant Best Original Screenplay so the confusion will likely continue. But, yeah, separate polls would make it easier on whoever ends up conducting the polls. Volunteers?

Song would be a good one if all the nominees are accessible on YouTube. I'm not sure about Score which has undergone more changes than Screenplay over the years. For a number of years the nominees for score were submitted by the various studios, both major and minor and there were some pretty obscure nominees.

But, yes, a break at least until after the Oscars would be fine. Anyone planning a trip to the Library of Congress to view the only existing print of 1928's Glorious Betsy?

[ksrymy]

I vote for Song and Score. They're all easily accessible via YouTube and online music databases.

[FilmFan720]

I second everything that BJ said, and add in that maybe we should wait until after the Oscars to pick back up...there's enough to talk about in those months without this looming over our shoulders (and a lot of us spend more time catching up on current nominees than past nominees).

[The Original BJ]

Here's my two cents (with acknowledgments that these polls have become my favorite part of this board and whatever everyone as a group decides is completely fine by me):

I, too, think the writing categories would be the most interesting to cover next. But I do have some reservations about the way Magilla proposed to do it. First, I'd rather be interested in people's choices among the fields the Academy selected (in most cases, one original, and one adaptation) -- yes, in some years I'd rather choose two scripts in one category, but being forced to make close calls is part of what makes these polls interesting, especially in years with a lot of diverse choices.

But second -- and more importantly -- I think discussing ten movies EVERY POLL is quite a lot. I remember doing those early Best Picture slates, with 10-12 movies plus sometimes lone directors, and it got kind of exhausting. I'd be more inclined to keep each poll to five movies.

And since the writing categories haven't always been structured into Original/Adapted, my pitch might be to go through the writing categories chronologically, but one category at a time. (Original 1975, followed by Adapted 1975, followed by Original 1976, etc.) That way we can comment on those squirrelly Original Story/Original Screenplay/Screenplay years without trying to figure out how to define the categories by present-day terms.

The other suggestion I would have would be to give some breathing room after the Picture/Director polls are finished. That way some of us who might want to catch up on some movies we haven't seen (and by some of us, I do mean me) can do so in preparation of the Writing polls. And also, it would give people a chance to catch up on commenting in the Picture/Director polls they weren't able to get to in real time (it's been nice to read Heksagon's recent comments on those races, even after the fact, and I would still definitely be interested in reading Mister Tee's thoughts on a lot of those '50's slates.)

[Big Magilla]

I'm thinking we should continue this poll at the current pace of one per week through the 1997 poll which will take us through mid-October, then speed up to two per week from 1998 to the present inasmuch as this period has been well covered throughout the years. That will take us to mid-January. We can then vote for the 2013 nominees in real time.

For our next series of polls, I'm thinking we should take up screenplay, albeit with a twist. The screenplay categories have undergone several changes over the years. I'm thinking we should simply list all the screenplays nominated in a given year regardless of what extemporaneous category they were placed in and vote for two. We can make our picks by choosing one original and one adaptation; one musical or comedy and one drama or just our particular two favorites from amongst all the nominees.

What do you guys think?