calimac | awardalysis

As a former awards administrator for two literary societies, I continue to be fascinated by the Oscars snafu this year. There are two outstanding questions in my mind: 1) how and why was Warren Beatty handed the wrong envelope?; 2) why did it take so long for the PwC awards administrators, who have memorized all the winners precisely to prevent problems like this, to stop the train wreck? I checked the time stamps on my DVR, and it was 1 minute 50 seconds after Faye Dunaway read out "La La Land" until a production crew member collected the cards, though there'd apparently been some fuss going on behind for a previous 10 seconds or so. And it was 40 seconds after that - a full two and a half minutes after the wrong winner was announced - before the correct announcement was made: "Moonlight, you guys won Best Picture." And who said that? Jordan Horowitz, one of the La La producers, not an Academy or PwC representative. That's an unconscionable gap of time and dereliction of responsibility.

However, as the correct card was held up, proving that what Horowitz said was true, I could easily see what had confused Beatty and Dunaway: bad award card design.

The award card had the Oscars logo at the top. Below that was the name of the winning movie, and immediately below that, in the same large and bold-faced type, the names of its producers. Those are the parts the presenter was expected to read, in that order. Only at the very bottom, in very small, light-faced type, was the category, "Best Picture."

If the card Beatty had was laid out the same way, it would have said "Emma Stone / La La Land", in that order, in large and bold-faced type, and only at the bottom, in that tiny, light-faced type, would have been "Best Actress in a Leading Role."

Beatty clearly had the presence of mind to realize that something was wrong as soon as he saw the card. The next thing he did was to look in the envelope, as if speculating whether another card might be in there. Then he tried to draw out the announcement: "... and the Academy Award ... for Best Picture ..." perhaps hoping that someone would stop him or explain things to him. What he was wondering was why the card had the name of the lead actress instead of the producers. He probably didn't see the category in tiny type.

But then he handed the card to Dunaway, who thought he was clowning around and didn't realize anything was wrong. She glances at the card quickly, she doesn't parse the oddity of the personal name, she sees "La La Land" in big bold type, she knows it's a nominee, she reads it aloud. And the train crashes. As someone has pointed out, if instead of being an extra card for Best Actress, it had been for Best Makeup and read "Suicide Squad", this probably wouldn't have happened.

I'd just like to point out that when I was administrator of the Hugo Awards, our announcement cards had the category name in Big Bold letters at the top of the card, so there was no mistaking which was which.

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This graphic designer agrees with your analysis. Another picture I saw showed the outside of the envelope shows the award title in an fairly small, low-contrast, all caps font -- it's elegant...and remarkably hard-to-read. I also note that the presenters don't typically look at the front of the envelope -- they're focused on opening it and withdrawing the card with the winning name(s).

Curiously enough, this article says they changed the design this year and shows how much larger the envelope labels were in previous years. (Sorry, you'll likely have to click ads shut to see the full image on most of the photographic examples.

As you note, the presenters aren't checking the outside of the envelopes. (Why should they? What they have to announce is what's inside.) I have read that screencaps can show that "Best Actress" is visible on the envelope as Beatty is carrying it out, but nothing I've seen is high-enough resolution to reveal that.

If the bad design of the envelopes did contribute to the error, then it surely was - as the article you link to suggests - because it was difficult for the PwC people backstage to see which envelope they had, rather than with directly confusing the presenters. My suggestion, of course, is that if Beatty (or Dunaway) could have seen "Best Actress" on the card, he'd have realized what the problem was, and the same applies if he'd seen it on the envelope.

Agreed.

As you pointed out, the teeny italics on the bottom of the interior card are all but useless as any sort of confirmation check for the presenters.

In my less than humble opinion, they'd also be safer using upper and lower case letters rather than all caps throughout.

Here's someone else making the same point about the interior design of the cards, in more detail.

Interestingly, I found this article linked to by Mark Evanier, who'd received the link from Neil Gaiman.

The reforms started under you and Seth (and nominally me, but you two did the work) have made the Hugo Awards a lot less susceptible this sort of error. Now you can't easily prevent the tech errors like the flashing of Cheryl Morgan's name up before the presenter read her name out in Boston, but everything under the Administrator's control is much better now for the Hugos than it was a generation ago. Also, as I recall, we typically have an on-stage escort who delivers the actual cards, so we don't need the duplicate cards that the Oscars used.

How was Beatty handed the wrong envelope? Apparently a Huffington Post story a few days before the ceremony hinted as to how it could happen: one PWC representative is positioned stage right and the other is stage left, and both of them have a full set of all 24 award envelopes. And then Beatty and Dunaway apparently entered from the opposite side of the previous presenter, Leonardo DiCaprio, who had announced the Best Actress. But I haven't read what caused the PWC staffer on their side to hand them the wrong card, although I did just hear one report that, because Dunaway was having trouble navigating stairs, their entrance was changed late from one side to the other.

Watching the show Sunday evening, shortly before that Best Picture presenters were announced (or maybe it was just prior to the previous award?), I saw on the broadcast the silhouette of a person running stage right behind the set. At the time, I thought that was a surprising little mistake. When the big mix-up happened, I wondered if there was any connection between the two events.

I am in complete agreement with you that the PWC and the Oscar production crew were ridiculously slow to respond. The stage managers in the theater where I work, I hope, would resolve a problem like this much more swiftly. It's likely the Oscar crew has never practiced for what to do if this mistake should happen, or not for many years (having forgotten the 1964 incident you mention in the other post).

Here's a link to a photo where the award name on the outside of the envelope Beatty held is barely visible, though as you say, he had no reason to check it:

http://thecount.com/2017/02/27/oscars-scandal-la-la-land-moonlight-conspiracy-theories/envelopegate-warren-beatty/

-MTD/neb

That there were two sets of envelopes explains Emma Stone's objection that she still had her own card, so Warren Beatty couldn't have had it. He had the other one.

But it doesn't explain why he was given the wrong one. The answer to that seems to lie in a combination of poor labeling of the outside of the envelope, and of the PwC guy being distracted because he was too busy tweeting backstage photos. If the latter was responsible, then he should be sentenced to four years of scrubbing toilets, or possibly working in Trump's Treasury Department.

However, as the correct card was held up, proving that what Horowitz said was true, I could easily see what had confused Beatty and Dunaway: bad award card design.

Thank you for this analysis; I am both enjoying it and finding it illuminating.

awardalysis

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