{"id":10849,"date":"2012-02-27T20:13:04","date_gmt":"2012-02-27T20:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/?p=10849"},"modified":"2025-01-30T23:53:35","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T04:53:35","slug":"the-pocket-protector-pocket-squares-and-paparazzi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/02\/the-pocket-protector-pocket-squares-and-paparazzi\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pocket Protector: Pocket Squares and Paparazzi"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Heidi S. Douglas,\u00a0 hdouglas@engineer.uconn.edu<\/em><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences got it wrong.\u00a0 No, it\u2019s not about Jean Dujardin beating out best buds George Clooney and Brad Pitt to win Best Actor by uttering just two words or missing the chance for an Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis double header for their fabulous performances in The Help<\/em>.\u00a0 For 81 years, the Academy has missed a brilliant opportunity to showcase and bring national attention to real stars.\u00a0 Smart stars.\u00a0 Nerd stars.<\/p>\n

On Oscar Sunday, the highly creative, technical and entrepreneurial stars, whose discoveries and innovations, according to their website \u201ccontributed in significant, outstanding and lasting ways to motion pictures,\u201d were marginalized and squeezed into a shorter-than-a-punchline mention tucked into the end of the show.\u00a0 If you blinked or got up for a Bud, you missed it.\u00a0 The green eyeshades from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the firm \u201csafeguarding Hollywood\u2019s best kept secret,\u201d got more face time than the people who put Sciences<\/em> in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.\u00a0 If we want to attract more kids to pursue STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) careers, what better venue than the nationally televised, \u00fcber-hyped Academy Awards ceremony to recognize the work of stars in those fields as cool and sexy?<\/p>\n

On February 11, at a separate-but-equal presentation ceremony hosted by Milla Jovovich at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, 10 Scientific and Technical Awards were made to 29 individual award recipients.\u00a0 The men wore tuxes, women wore gowns, there was a red carpet and a three-song set including Oscar-winning “Falling Slowly\u201d performed by Glen Hansard (from the Irish band, The Frames) and Mark\u00e9ta Irglov\u00e1 (classically trained Czech pianist and vocalist), two of four members of the band, The Swell Season and stars of the 2007 movie \u201cOnce.\u201d\u00a0 But there was no live broadcast and you won\u2019t see the ceremony or learn about the winners unless you Google it.\u00a0 You won\u2019t see the amazing inventions and teams of scientists and engineers, many of whom labored a lifetime to deliver new technologies and innovations that make the movies magic and help to propel, both literally and figuratively, a $10B industry, one that the U.S. still leads on the world stage.<\/p>\n

What if it were the other way round?\u00a0 What if the Sci-Tech Awards were showcased Oscar Sunday, with all of the attendant fanfare and hoopla?\u00a0 The scientific and engineering rags would announce the nominations, technical journalists would interview and write profiles of the \u201cbackroom boys\u201d and television advertisements for the ceremony would feature action packed \u201ctrailers\u201d of the nominated technologies operating behind the limelight.\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t that be a cool and sexy advertisement for sci-tech careers?\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t that get more kids jazzed about science and engineering?<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation winner, visual effects technologist Jonathan Erland, shared a quote by screenwriter and director William C. deMille in his acceptance speech: \u201cIf we don’t get the science first, you ain\u2019t gonna get no art.\u201d\u00a0 Grammar aside, I love the sentiment.\u00a0 I bet there were a few protectors in those pockets, sporting silk squares.\u00a0 Sexy.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a list of this year\u2019s Sci-Tech Awards recipients:<\/p>\n

Technical Achievement Awards (Academy Certificates)
\n <\/strong>Andrew Clinton and Mark Elendt for the invention and integration of micro-voxels in the Mantra software.<\/p>\n

Scientific and Engineering Awards (Academy Plaques)
\n <\/strong>Radu Corlan, Andy Jantzen, Petru Pop and Richard F. Toftness for the design and engineering of the Phantom family of high-speed cameras for motion picture production.<\/p>\n

Dr. Jurgen Noffke for the optical design and Uwe Weber for the mechanical design of the ARRI Zeiss Master Prime Lenses for motion picture photography.<\/p>\n

Michael Lewis, Greg Marsden, Raigo Alas and Michael Vellekoop for the concept, design and implementation of the Pictorvision Eclipse, an electronically stabilized aerial camera platform.<\/p>\n

E.F. \u201cBob\u201d Nettmann for the concept and system architecture, Michael Sayovitz for the electronic packaging and integration, Brad Fritzel for the electronic engineering, and Fred Miller for the mechanical engineering of the Stab-C Classic, Super-G and Stab-C Compact stabilizing heads.<\/p>\n

John D. Lowry, Ian Caven, Ian Godin, Kimball Thurston and Tim Connolly for the development of a unique and efficient system for the reduction of noise and other artifacts, thereby providing high-quality images required by the filmmaking process.<\/p>\n

Fujifilm Corporation, Hideyuki Shirai, Dr. Katsuhisa Oozeki and Hiroshi Hirano for the design and development of the Fujifilm black and white recording film ETERNA-RDS 4791 for use in the archival preservation of film and digital images.<\/p>\n

Academy Award of Merit (Oscar Statuette)
\n <\/strong>Franz Kraus, Johannes Steurer and Wolfgang Riedel for the design and development of the ARRILASER Film Recorder.<\/p>\n

John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation
\n <\/strong>Jonathan Erland<\/p>\n

Gordon E. Sawyer Award
\n <\/strong>Douglas Trumbull<\/p>\n

If you like what you read, let me know.\u00a0 If you didn\u2019t like what you read, let me know.
\n <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences got it wrong. No, it’s not about Jean Dujardin beating out best buds George Clooney and Brad Pitt to win Best Actor by uttering just two words or missing the chance for an Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis double header for their fabulous performances in The Help. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":224917,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[39],"class_list":["post-10849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 07:54:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224918,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10849\/revisions\/224918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/224917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10849"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=10849"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}