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Oscars 2015: A Look Backstage

AbFlaxer |
February 21, 2015 | 8:57 a.m. PST

Staff Reporter

Hollywood Blvd. gets shut down several days in advance to set up the red carpet for the Oscars (Neon Tommy/Jeremy Fuster)
Hollywood Blvd. gets shut down several days in advance to set up the red carpet for the Oscars (Neon Tommy/Jeremy Fuster)
The Oscars are best known for the red carpet, celebrity fashion and, of course, the coveted gold statuettes. But before anyone can be asked “who” they are wearing, the supervising producer and his team have to spend months organizing, booking, and planning every last detail.

The show is only around three hours long, but requires a head production staff of 15 people. Supervising Producer Michael B. Seligman returns once again, having worked 38 years with the Oscars. He’s joined by Producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, Co-Producer Lee Lodge and Director Hamish Hamilton, all of who have worked on the show before.

Diane Panosian was an assistant to Seligman during the 2007 and 2008 Oscars. She says development starts nine months before the show, when Seligman begins drafting a budget for everything from production design to staff salaries. After the Academy approves the budget, Seligman begins interviewing some 200 people to work on the show. And while he’s getting the people figured out, Panosian is keeping it all organized.

“My job was putting together show bibles — whole binders that include everything from quotes to deal memos, locations, designs of the stage, sponsorships, staff lists, anything you can think of,” Panosian says.

READ MORE: Oscars 2015: Predicting Best Actor

Seligman then begins working with the production staff to create the show. His team includes a talent producer, production designer, musical director, lighting designer, choreographer, costume designer and a team of writers.

“Just writing the show is a lot of work,” says Panosian. “There are 10 to 12 people writing the script.”

Kevin Pong worked on the Oscars in a variety of positions. He started in 2007 as a production assistant, became a coordinator in 2009, and worked as a loading dock coordinator in 2012. As a production assistant, Pong says he worked with a team of about 50 people. But the show as a whole?

“Man, that number is…well, not only is there the main show. There’s pre-show, red carpet, arrival, international, lots of events. In total? I can’t even imagine how many people. Including stage and all technicians? Probably 400 on just the main show.”

Two months before the show begins, members of the Academy begin the nomination process. Each member of the Academy is allowed to nominate within their category (actors nominate actors, directors nominate directors, etc.) either formally by paper, or through the Oscars’ online service. All members of the Academy, regardless of their category, are able to nominate for Best Picture.

The nomination process continues for about a month and the final list of nominees is announced mid-January. PricewaterhouseCoopers works with the Academy to tally up the nominations and report who received enough nominations to have their name placed on the final ballots. No more than five nominations make it to the final ballot for each award, with the exception of the ballot for Best Picture, which, since 2010, has allowed for between five and ten films to be nominated.

Members of the Academy then vote for every award on the final ballots, regardless of their individual categories. After the final votes are counted, only two members of PricewaterhouseCoopers know the results before the winner is announced at the Oscars.

READ MORE: 25 Movies To See Before The Oscars

While members are voting on the final ballots in the month before the show, the Academy begins ordering the famous statuettes. While there are only 25 awards given out throughout the night, the Academy reports that it’s actually impossible to know how many of the statuettes they’ll give out, since multiple people can be nominated in a category (like co-writers of a film).

The Academy won’t release numbers on the cost of each statuette, but a report by CBS in 2011 estimated that each statue cost around $400. CNN Money reports the price of gold hit $1,900 in 2011, but the highest price in February of 2015 has been around $1,270. It could be true that the statuettes are worth less than $400 now, but their wealth isn’t measured in the amount it costs to make them, but in the amount that an actor will make on future projects after winning one of the awards.

With the awards ordered and the show less than a month away, the production team moves into the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

“My office was in the dressing room of the theatre,” says Panosian. “I shared with Seligman and four other people. To the right of the dressing room was where people entered for the audience, and to the left was the green room and the stage, so everyone went through there.”

Panosian says about 200 people come together at the Dolby to get the show running in the last two weeks. She says everyone who works on the show comes together to go through a rundown of the show, page by page. The host comes for this meeting, but the talent don’t come in to rehearse until right before the show.

“Right before the show, they do rehearsals with stand-ins and some of the talent come in. They do around six rehearsals. Some of the talent come to a couple rehearsals. Some of the talent never show up and do it the day-of. It really just depends on the person,” she says.

“The talent isn’t there much,” Pong says. “But the host is there about a week prior to work with everyone. And depending on who it is, depends on how much influence they have on their script. Usually the hosts have their own set of writers and they come in to work with the writers.”

READ MORE: Sports At The Oscars

So does it worry the production team that some of the talent don’t ever go over their parts in full rehearsal? Panosian says

“The main concern is getting an entire show off the ground and working, so the least of the worries is the talent.”

In these last couple of weeks before the Oscars, the crew is practically eating, breathing and sleeping the awards show. Or, maybe not sleeping so much.

“I basically slept there,” Panosian laughed. “[I had] at least 12 hour days, if not 14 hour days. I was lucky to have a hotel room for a couple nights. So I could just go over to the hotel and sleep for a little bit. Some nights maybe you get six hours. Maybe.”

But it doesn’t stop there. After a quick stroll down the red carpet, Panosian says it’s back to the office to help Seligman with any issues that pop up during the show. And there are “numerous problems. Everything from negotiating with Ellen’s shoemaker to coordinating with Beyonce’s manager,” she says.

“No matter how much pre-planning you put into it, something is bound to happen and it’s up to us to figure out how to fix it,” Pong laughed.

Pong says you don’t think about the amount of people that put work into a show until you work on the Oscars.

“When I was in high school or college you see the shows and think that it’s just a couple days that go into the rehearsal process. In my mind, to do a show it was two days to do rehearsal, maybe a week to get it all done. Then you realize it takes months of pre-planning. It took me a while to comprehend the size of the show.”

After the long hours and exhausting days, Panosian says it does feel rewarding. The most exciting part of the process for her? “The show day for sure. If you don’t think it’s worth it on show day, it’s not worth it at all.”

Reach Staff Reporter Abby Flaxer here or follow her on Twitter



 

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