Actress Elizabeth Banks will host the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Scientific and Technical Awards at The Beverly Wilshire on Saturday, Feb. 20, 2010. Banks will present 15 awards to 45 individual recipients during the evening.
Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation honors achievements which demonstrate a proven record of contributing significant value to the process of making motion pictures and need not have been developed and introduced during 2009. Then event is not televised, although portions are included in the Oscar presentation on March 7, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, and televised live by the ABC beginning at 5:00 p.m. PT.
Banks is known for her roles in Definitely, Maybe, W., The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Seabiscuit, Catch Me If You Can and the Spider-Man trilogy of films. Her upcoming roles will be in the feature film, The Next Three Days, directed by Paul Haggis, opposite Russell Crowe, and in The Details, with Tobey Maguire and Laura Linney.
The winners of the academy’s Technical Achievement Award, for which they will receive an Academy Certificate, are:
• Mark Wolforth and Tony Sedivy for their contributions to the development of the Truelight realtime 3D look-up table hardware system.
• Dr. Klaus Anderle, Christian Baeker and Frank Billasch for their contributions to the LUTher 3D look-up table hardware device and color management software.
• Steve Sullivan, Kevin Wooley, Brett Allen and Colin Davidson for the development of the Imocap on-set performance capture system.
• Hayden Landis, Ken McGaugh and Hilmar Koch for advancing the technique of ambient occlusion rendering.
• Bjorn Heden for the design and mechanical engineering of the silent, two-stage planetary friction drive Heden Lens Motors.
The winners of the academy’s Scientific and Engineering Awards, who will be awarded the Academy Plaque, are:
• Per Christensen and Michael Bunnell for the development of point-based rendering for indirect illumination and ambient occlusion.
• Dr. Richard Kirk for the overall design and development of the Truelight realtime 3D look-up table hardware device and color management software.
• Volker Massmann, Markus Hasenzahl, Dr. Klaus Anderle and Andreas Loew for the development of the Spirit 4K/2K film scanning system as used in the digital intermediate process for motion pictures.
• Michael Cieslinski, Dr. Reimar Lenz and Bernd Brauner for the development of the ARRISCAN film scanner, enabling high-resolution, high-dynamic range, pin-registered film scanning for use in the digital intermediate process.
• Wolfgang Lempp, Theo Brown, Tony Sedivy and Dr. John Quartel for the development of the Northlight film scanner, which enables high-resolution, pin-registered scanning in the motion picture digital intermediate process.
• Steve Chapman, Martin Tlaskal, Darrin Smart and James Logie for their contributions to the development of the Baselight color correction system, which enables realtime digital manipulation of motion picture imagery during the digital intermediate process.
• Mark Jaszberenyi, Gyula Priskin and Tamas Perlaki for their contributions to the development of the Lustre color correction system, which enables realtime digital manipulation of motion picture imagery during the digital intermediate process.
• Brad Walker, D. Scott Dewald, Bill Werner and Greg Pettitt for their contributions furthering the design and refinement of the Texas Instruments DLP Projector, achieving a level of performance that enabled color-accurate digital intermediate previews of motion pictures.
• FUJIFILM Corporation, Ryoji Nishimura, Masaaki Miki and Youichi Hosoya for the design and development of Fujicolor ETERNA-RDI digital intermediate film, which was designed exclusively to reproduce motion picture digital masters.
• Paul Debevec, Tim Hawkins, John Monos and Mark Sagar for the design and engineering of the Light Stage capture devices and the image-based facial rendering system developed for character relighting in motion pictures.