How To Run An Oscar Campaign For An Animated Short
Benoit Berthe Siward, a prominent campaign strategist, tells us how he works.
It’s Oscar season. You can tell, because prestige titles are coming out thick and fast, and nomination hopefuls are making themselves seen and heard. Meanwhile, pundits are whipping themselves into a frenzy of prognostication. The steady drip-feed of smaller awards in the run-up is giving them plenty of material.
As this plays out publicly, a parallel operation is taking place behind the scenes. At the heart of the season is that venerable Hollywood institution: the awards campaign. This is essentially a strategy to get a film seen by voters and talked about generally, with a view to securing it a nomination, then a win. Filmmakers and studios often work with independent strategists, who draw on their knowledge of the industry and campaigning expertise to target films as effectively as possible.
All this is true of the Animated Short Film category—the one that most interests me. One of the most prominent strategists in this field in recent years is The Animation Showcase. Aside from organising screenings and other events, generally at big studios (where Academy voters are concentrated), the company also promotes films, including features, on its namesake streaming platform, which is free to use but only open to students and industry workers. (Sign up here if you fit the bill.)
The Animation Showcase is headed by Benoit Berthe Siward, who created it in 2016. The period he’s been working on campaigns has been an eventful one for the Academy: the membership has diversified and become more global in the wake of the #OscarsSoWhite crisis, while the pandemic massively disrupted in-person events for a time (and provided the impetus for the launch of the streaming platform). Meanwhile, his consultancy has thrived: it worked with two of the past three winners, The Windshield Wiper (watch below) and War Is Over!, and many other nominees.
Berthe Siward is currently a busy man. With the shortlist of Animated Shorts—which will whittle the race down to 15 contenders—due to be announced on December 17, he is in full campaigning mode. So I’m all the more grateful to him for having found the time to tell me, by email, just what these campaigns involve.
ADdW: Can you describe a typical Oscar campaign for a short film? When does it start and what does it involve?
BBS: It usually starts in September/October. I usually get approached or approach the film teams myself after Annecy Festival, during the summer, and the campaign lasts as long as the film stays in the running. Some campaigns last around six months if they start early and make it to the ceremony.
There are three phases for short films. Phase one: from the confirmation of the films that have qualified in the category (a bit less than 100 a year in animated shorts) until the announcement of the 15 shortlisted films. Phase two: from the announcement of the shortlist until the announcement of the five nominees. Phase 3: from the announcement of the five nominees until the ceremony.
Sometimes the campaign work continues after the ceremony if the film works, to handle the press, requests and the consequences of a win.
During phase one, the first and longest, there are a lot of preparations, creation of extra content (bonus, images, making ofs and other communication elements), a lot of travel to screening opportunities or animation studios, as well as some strategic planning and budgeting, since those campaigns can cost quite a bit. During phase two, the shortest, the work is different: it’s a lot of awareness raising and ads or networking.
During phase three, the most intense for the artists and filmmakers, if they are nominated: they usually move to the US for a few weeks or months to handle all the events happening for the nominees, campaign on site towards the entire Academy branches, and prepare for the ceremony.
How do you choose the films you accompany? How much of it is your taste, and how much your sense of what voters will like?
It is always a tough choice, and as much as I would love to choose films only based on my own taste, I also have to consider other important factors. Some of the shorts I love are very experimental, or sometime “weird” in a good way, to my eyes. But even if they might have a wonderful life in festivals, they might not have a real shot at the Academy, who rarely nominate experimental or abstract shorts. That being said, I hope I will be able to witness, in my lifetime, experimental animated shorts being nominated, or at least the Academy having enough open-mindedness to seriously consider them.
There are many aspects that I have to take into consideration. The strength of the craft and achievement is one (even more so in animation than any other medium). A lot of it is about the story, the message and its originality, the writing and its capacity to communicate emotions.
But there are also basic considerations, such as: what does the film team need from us and are we the right fit for them, what is their budget and does it match what they need, can we deliver what they want us to do, and also if we feel there is a good human connection between us and the whole film team involved in the campaign (distributors, producers, directors, others). The human aspect if particularly important, since we will all be working together for months and some parts of the campaign are stressful and intense. If it is not good, some campaigns can be quite painful.
How do you prepare the filmmakers for their campaign appearances?
We talk a lot with the filmmakers about what are the key points they should highlight in their film, and the different ways they can deliver them and spread them. Some need a bit of a media training; in animation we are often more reserved and quiet people than in live action, where actors and people used to the cameras are perhaps more at ease with public speaking.
But we also don’t want to over-prepare them to the point where the appearances would feel fake, spoken “by heart.” So it’s a matter of balancing, and finding with the directors the authentic substance of the film, but also the best way they can present themselves during the campaign. Because in the campaign it’s not only the film that is important but also the people behind it; this is part of what the Academy is and the way it functions, in contrast to film festivals, where a film can easily be self-sufficient.
When you screen films during campaigns, what do the industry audiences tend to be most interested in: the narrative, the production process, or other things?
The feedback can be quite different depending on where we show the film and who the audience is. But overall, in my eight years working on building Oscars campaigns and screening films during the awards season, I am quite surprised at how people are never insensitive/indifferent to a strong story! That can be surprising, as we know how much in animation we love the craft and the production process, which is a core part of our jobs, and obviously it is important, especially for those many members of the Academy from the Animation branch who are themselves animators or experts in the field.
But a strong story is a universal language that everyone can understand and be touched by, and that’s what cinema is: a vehicle of emotion and stories. So if the narrative is strong, and the craft is amazing and fully supports it, then it is a banger! But we still spend quite a bit of time exploring the production process, because it’s a way to communicate the filmmaker’s achievements to their peers.
The Academy’s membership has diversified in recent years (although this is perhaps less true of the Animation branch than the membership in general). Has this changed your approach to campaigns?
The diversification in the Animation branch over the last few years was one of the strongest within the entire Academy.
The huge increase in the membership, after many criticisms and scandals including the #OscarsSoWhite movement, massively transformed the Academy. It not only brought an essential diversity, but also helped decentralise the voting power from the US to the rest of the word. It allowed more diversity in gender and culture, and less monopoly for the majors (even if this is still quite present, but less so in many aspects than before). Indies now have a better chance to move forward.
I didn’t fully change my way of working, firstly because my work is to highlight the achievements of films and the people who made them, but also because I didn’t campaign much before the #OscarsSoWhite movement. One thing is that I’m campaigning more and more in Europe, and reaching wider, not only in Los Angeles. I am also less sceptical about the chances for an indie auteur film to get nominated—and perhaps win—nowadays than in the 2010s.
How would you describe the Academy’s taste in animated shorts? With all your experience, are you still ever completely surprised by choices they make?
I’m not really comfortable talking about a taste in animated shorts with the Academy, even if I can’t deny there is an Academy filter or bias in the films that get nominated, for sure. But the issue is that there are a lot of urban legends and misinformation sometimes spread in the media about the taste of the Academy or the disinterest of its members towards animation. Some articles in animation media got me pretty upset when they portrayed an Academy membership that will mainly ask their kids to watch animated features and vote based on what the kids like. That’s false, and for the wrong reasons it totally delegitimises the institutions—the work of many members who take the time to watch many films each year, and the meaning of the result of the vote.
Obviously, there can be abuse by some members who are not doing the job well, and yes, the Academy results should not be taken as a perfect overview of the best films made this year. There are many factors that create biases in every competition and political campaign. The institution and the voting process can be ameliorated for sure. The Academy works on it every year. Many would say “it’s too slow,” or “we are far from an acceptable system.” Perhaps, but I know from experience that the Academy and its members are working to make it better, fairer and more inclusive. It’s a tough job, as no system is perfect.
Now, with this in mind, I will still try to answer your initial question. I think the Academy vote would lean toward impressive pieces of achievement (cinematographically speaking, in terms of craft and other factors) and, lately, more and more strong-themed stories. Last year, I was not surprised with the nominees so much—they were all high calibre—but mainly pleasantly surprised at the fact the Academy only picked very strong, deep “subject films”: one about war, one about child abuse, one about death row, one about intergenerational trauma from the Holocaust, and one about an Iranian teenager and her experience wearing the hijab as a school uniform. I don’t think this would have been possible five or ten years ago.
During the pandemic, when in-person campaigning was impossible, you launched a streaming platform on which industry people can watch award contenders. You’ve kept it going since. What are the advantages of the platform? And does it mean that fewer voters now discover the films in the “ideal” conditions of a proper screening room?
For me, the pandemic meant me that I couldn’t travel around the world with the shorts and features, in all the big animation studios, and meet people in person to share more about those gems. I knew that with the lockdown, I would struggle to share the films if I didn’t have a proper system, with a nice environment and powerful technology.
Building a streaming platform was an obvious solution, after observing my own habits in watching films at home in good conditions: I turn on my projector and connect my favourite streaming platform. The challenge was big, as I needed to think through and build the entire system, making it easy to access, free, secure, and high quality—and to find a way to do this in a very short amount of time, and finance it myself in order for the animation industry to have access to it with no fees. But it was totally worth it, given how fast the membership grew, and the very positive feedback from animation studios and artists.
What I quickly understood, too, is that the platform was able to reach areas with vibrant animation communities which I had never been able to travel to, like South America, South Africa or Eastern Europe. It also allowed me to share content, like exclusive making-ofs, which we previously struggled to share with the studios, as our in-person events couldn’t be longer than 60–90 minutes. And also to share feature films which couldn’t screen in cinemas (as they were all closed), like Calamity and Flee.
It was clear after the first lockdown that the tool was very powerful and appreciated. So I worked on preserving it after Covid, reaching new places, while also going back onsite. In the end, it gave me more than twice as much stuff to handle, with the platform system and curation as well as travelling for the studio tour. But, again, the system works, because the platform allowed me to contact more people in the cities I travel to, and encourage the members of The Animation Showcase to come to my onsite screenings and share a drink and chat with the artists.
I like watching films on a very wide screen and with proper sound like Dolby Atmos, but also I love the experience of watching a film with other people in the same room. I can also be a bit old-school and secretly like people dressing in tuxedos to watch premieres in Cannes Festival, which many people would find a bit ridiculous. I know from Oscar members and animation folks I discuss with that there is a real appetite to come back to theatres in-person screenings. The world won’t be like before, but it’s totally possible to work with both screening possibilities: at home or in a proper theatre.
What do you think an Oscar win (or nomination) means to the director of an animated short? Has this changed in the time you’ve been working?
Getting nominated or even winning is a huge recognition for a filmmaker: it can open doors, enable new contacts, create career opportunities, and bring them a form of legitimacy regarding the funding and making of possible future projects. Contrary to preconceptions, these things don’t automatically happen for all nominated directors, and winners are not flooded with requests to meet and collaborate.
The opportunities a nomination or win creates depends on a lot of factors. Some depend on the directors, their upcoming projects and whether they are willing to change the scale of the way they work (working with Hollywood, for example, or moving from shorts to features). Other factors are more dependent on the state of the industry (which is complicated at the moment).
But more than just enabling career opportunities, a nomination or win is above all an incredible opportunity for directors of shorts to have their film widely shared within the industry and in the world. Rare are those opportunities for shorts to be seen at this scale and in these conditions today.
The interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Merci Alex, super intéressant comme toujours :)
Thank you so much. Saving this!