Baahubali producer Shobu Yarlagadda details what goes behind an Oscar campaign: ‘Tired of misinformation and people using it for cheap publicity’

The producer, in a Twitter thread, gave a behind-the-scenes view of how a campaign for Oscar is mounted: from gaining attention of 10,000 Academy voters to raising a significant amount of money to run it.

“The Academy has around 10,000 members from around the world, mostly in US and around 40 or so members from India. These members belong to one of the 17 branches of the Academy based on their craft, like editing, sound etc. There are 16 crafts and 17th branch is non technical.

“Each year members from each branch will first vote to shortlist from the 300+ films eligible films in the reminder list (for the 10 categories where there is a shortlist) and then vote again to select the films to be nominated from each of their respective branches,” he tweeted.

For example, the producer wrote, members of the VFX branch will first vote for the 10 films (from the 300+ films in the reminder list) to be shortlisted and then again vote on those 10 films to nominate the final five. In a category where there is no short list, the members of that branch will vote directly to nominate the five films in that category.

Shobu Yarlagadda wrote that the next step involves nearly 10,000 members of the Academy getting to vote on the nominated films and the film with most votes in each category wins the Oscar in that category.

“So, the real challenge is to get 10,000 members of the Academy spread across the US and the world to know that your film is in contention and then to get them see it and hope that they like your film enough to vote for it! This is no easy task even for Hollywood films!

“So the films that have been blockbusters in US, or films that have won awards in the prestigious festival and critics awards all get noticed much more and obviously have higher chances of being in the race for awards. Apart from being well reviewed in press,” he tweeted.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by RRR Movie (@rrrmovie)

The producer noted that apart from this, “strategic promotional campaign is crucial.” Shobu Yarlagadda said, just as makers promote a film before release to get audience to theatres, “promotions specifically targeted to Academy members to watch film is needed.”

“After that you can only hope they liked the film enough to vote for it! This involves many months of campaign starting sometimes 6 months before the Oscars. There also needs to be some organic buzz and appreciation to build traction.

“Obviously this calls for significant investment in time and resources and is not easy. Hollywood studios are used to this as they do it year on year but for films from India it can be very daunting and a lot of learning to understand and execute a successful campaign,” he concluded.

When Los Angeles based producer Swati Shetty asked Shobu Yarlagadda to pin the tweets, he replied, ” I am so tired of all the misinformation on Oscars in India and people (even well-informed people) using this to gain some cheap publicity!” There was some confusion in India when Vivek Agnihotri tweeted a poster of The Kashmir Files saying he is the ‘official contender from India at the 95th Oscars’. Agnihotri had previously falsely claimed that his film had been “shortlisted for Oscars 2023.” He had also claimed that Pallavi Joshi, Mithun Chakraborty, Darshan Kumaar, Anupam Kher were all “shortlisted for best actor categories.” The Kashmir Files, however, had only became a part of the Oscar reminder list, which makes a film eligible to be considered for an Oscar nomination. Over 300 films are a part of this list.