Flush — A Design Blog by Ivan W. Lam at ivanwlam.com

I just watched the Oscars and I thought it was very beautifully produced, and I’m talking beyond the graphics.

I like how they explicitly grouped the awards by the process of making the film, so they’re not just appearing out of order, and that they used the same people to present each group of awards with their comedy bits and what not.

While I thought that bringing past winners of the supporting and leading roles to present the nominees was very meaningful and exclusive in a way, sort of like initiating someone into a sorority or fraternity (although I have absolutely no clue to the actual process), it must be even more disappointing for the losing nominees to be brought up to the stars before being dropped off falling to the ground.

When I first heard that Hugh Jackman was hosting, I didn’t think it would be a good show. But the fact the he did at least two musical numbers made me realized why they picked an actor instead of a comedian to host. There is just something that Jon Stewart or Ellen Degeneres could not have pulled off had they hosted tonight.

With the graphics, they used a very elegant approach and kept it simple. They used the Oscar statue to be the “1” in the 81^st Annual Academy Awards logo, which normally would seem like the obvious answer to a design student’s project. But this was done very effectively and carefully to make the Oscar statue look like a 1 next to the wide 8 yet also the statue itself.

What stood out for me was the way they presented the nominees, in those little collages before they announce the winners. With the screenplay awards, they zoomed to a scene in the script, with a typewriter face, and played the typing against the actual scene in the films. With the documentary awards, they interviewed the directors and crew of those films. It’s all very thought-out.

Watching the Oscars makes me want to watch more movies. There are so many films out there that tell really compelling stories that it’s a shame not to view them.

And finally, a nice touch to pair the credits with this year’s upcoming films. I think Meryl Streep as Julia Child would be fun to watch.

Flush.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 21:13 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.