Well to say I'm not disappointed would be lying, but there are many things that happened last night that was good for stereoscopic 3D. Yes HUGO did not win for Best Picture or for Director, two awards that I thought it had very legitimate odds to win. Certainly Scorsese deserved it as did the entire movie - but that has been the way with the Oscars of late.The good news is HUGO won a bunch of technical awards, including Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Art Direction and Cinematography. The Visual Effects award was a surprise to me as I thought that TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON (another 3D movie) was the clear winner. In fact I had RETURN TO THE PLANET OF THE APES in second!
Here's why these awards are important to the S3D industry: There is no category or award for stereoscopic 3D excellence. The closest thing to a potential future S3D award is the current Cinematography and/or Visual Effects awards. Why both? Well a conversion (and most native 3D productions require SOME conversion too) is a post production workflow. Yes, 3D must be considered while shooting a conversion too of course (if it is going to be good that is) which means cinematography. And a native 3D production is heavier on the cinematography side for 3D, but still has elements of it in post (conversion). So for an innovative 3D movie like HUGO to dominate the technicals is effectively a broad pat on the back for the 3D accomplishments of the movie. Well done!
A let out a huge sigh when Dreamworks Animation lost out to RANGO in the animation award. Big mistake in my books. I liked PUSS IN BOOTS here. Definitely.
I was further disappointed that the 3D documentary PINA did not capture Oscar either. Oh well. The doc has won worldwide acclaim already.
No need to comment in any depth on the acting awards for me. Yes I believe Viola Davis should have won for THE HELP, but other than that I was happy with the other results, especially Christopher Plummer's win (though Nick Nolte did a bang up job - any other year Nick!).
So while there were some typical surprises and disappointments with the awards, it was still a HUGE victory for S3D with the technical dominance of HUGO. My hats off to all those involved! Keep up the hard work. It pays off!!