Categories Affected by the Weighting of Votes
Animated Film - Frozen would have edged out Wolf Children based on a straight-up percentage (60.9% vs. 60.0%)
Art Direction - Her would have beaten The Grandmaster (44.2% vs. 40.0%)
Act of Killing got 19 votes, At Berkeley got 5... but the Doc category wasn't affected by weighting? How does that work?
At Berkeley won 50% of its voters while Act of Killing only won 48.7% of its voters.
I feel like there's two forms of weighting going on, one for the percentage of its viewers a film won and one for films with fewer viewers and both of those give lesser seen films a bit too much of an advantage, though it's hard to complain when I haven't seen the films in question.
Right. There are three ways to look at the numbers: 1) The raw vote total (19 votes for
The Act of Killing, 5 for
At Berkeley; 2) The straight percentage (19/39 = 48.7% for
The Act of Killing; 5/9 = 55.6% for
At Berkeley; and 3) The weighted percentage (30.1% for
The Act of Killing; 45.0% for
At Berkeley).
A vote is worth a full 1.00 points if you've seen every nominee in the category; but then it's a sliding scale down to 0.50 points if you've only seen a single nominee in the category. The design here is to encourage people to vote for any nominee they feel is deserving (even if it's the only nominee they've seen) but to keep that from giving the more widely viewed films too much of an advantage; and also to encourage people to catch up with as many of the nominees as possible. It's always a little controversial, but I think it works up pretty well and generally holds up to scrutiny. For example, looking at the subset of voters who saw both
At Berkeley and
The Act of Killing, 5 voted for
At Berkeley, 1 voted for
The Act of Killing, 1 voted for
Stories We Tell, and 1 voted for
Blackfish. That's a small statistical sample, to be sure, but I feel it justifies the end result.
If winners were decided by just raw vote total, they'd look like this:
Picture: 12 Years a Slave
Director: Gravity
Original Screenplay: Her
Adapted Screenplay: Before Midnight
Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) - TIEActress: Adèle Exarchopoulos (Blue Is the Warmest Color)
Supporting Actor: James Franco (Spring Breakers)
Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave)
Ensemble Cast: 12 Years a Slave
Non-English Language Film: The Hunt
Animated Film: FrozenDocumentary: The Act of KillingEditing: GravitySound: Gravity
Score: Upstream Color
Soundtrack: Inside Llewyn Davis
Cinematography: Gravity
Art Direction: HerVisual Effects: Gravity
Surprise: Spring BreakersDebut Feature: The Act of Killing
Overlooked Film: Gimme the Loot
Scene (Dramatic): Final Scene (Captain Phillips)
Scene (Comedic): Cerebral Palsy Phase (The Wolf of Wall Street)
Shot: Opening (Gravity)
Line: "Look at my shit!" (Spring Breakers)
pixote