Five SMPTE Members Earn Academy Awards for Scientific and Technical Achievement

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Five Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers members have been recognized with prestigious awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards honor those whose discoveries and innovations have contributed to motion pictures.

“Science and technology are fundamental to the filmmaking process, and we're so pleased to see SMPTE members recognized and honored by the Academy for their pioneering work in this area of the motion picture industry,” said Barbara Lange, executive director at SMPTE.

SMPTE member Florian Kainz is part of the team that earned a Technical Achievement Award Academy Certificate for the architecture and development of the Zeno application framework. For more than a decade, Zeno’s design has allowed the creation of a range of visual effects toolsets at Industrial Light & Magic.

SMPTE members Joshua Pines, David Reisner and David Register together earned a Technical Achievement Award Academy Certificate for their role in the development of the American Society of Cinematographers Color Decision List technology. The ASC CDL unifies color correction principles for use on- and off-set, providing for the faithful reproduction of color values across a variety of color-correction devices. This technology provides basic image-processing mathematics that translate the lift, gamma and gain settings to a set of common color values to help preserve the cinematographer's intent throughout production.

SMPTE Life Member Peter W. Anderson, ASC received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award, an Oscar statuette, for technological contributions that have brought credit to the industry.

The 2013 awards were presented at the Academy’s Scientific & Technical Award ceremony at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. An excerpt from the ceremony was included in the Oscar ceremony broadcast.