【Pilar Coll】

If there are Pilar Colltwo words that appear every Oscars season, they're "snub" and "upset."

Whether it's through movies left off the list of Oscars nominees or shocking wins at the actual awards ceremony, the Academy Awards can leaving viewers asking "Just who is picking these damn winners?!"

SEE ALSO: Where to watch all of this year's Oscar-nominated films

The good news is that the Academy has in place an elaborate system in order to try to properly select and honor the best movies each year. The bad news is that it's super, super complicated. This year's rule book is 35 pages alone.

But as they say, knowledge is power. So here's a beginner's guide to how Oscars voting works.

The Basics

The Oscars winners are selected through a two step process. First members of the Academy vote on all eligible movies to create a list of finalists, better known as the list of Oscar nominees. Those nominees are typically announced in January.

Then, from that list of nominees, Academy members vote on the finalists and declare a winner in the Oscars telecast we've all come to know and love.

Which movies are eligible to win an Oscar?

To be eligible to be nominated and win, though, movies must adhere to a set of basic rules and guidelines that apply to most categories.

For example, movies must be feature length (which the Academy says is over 40 minutes), unless otherwise noted, and movies must have a "qualifying run of at least seven consecutive days, during which period screenings must occur at least three times daily, with at least one screening beginning between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. daily." Also, movies have to have a showing in Los Angeles County, unless otherwise noted.

Of course, these rules don't necessarily apply to all categories. For instance, movies nominated in the short film category don't have to be 40 minutes. Eligibility rules vary outside of general categories. You can check the Academy's guidelines here.

The Oscar statuette in all its glory at the 88th Annual Academy Awards in February 2016. Credit: Getty Images

Who Votes?

All voting for the Oscars — whether that's voting for a movie to be an Oscars nominee in a particular category or voting to find the winner from the announced list of nominees— is conducted by active and lifetime Academy members.

In 2016, however, the Academy's president Cheryl Boone Isaacs announced rules dictating who could be considered an active member. Under the new rules, Academy members are only considered active if they've worked in or for at least one motion picture in the 10 years prior to voting. If an Academy member has been active during three 10-year terms, then that Academy member will receive lifetime Oscars voting rights. Any Academy member who has won or been nominated for an Oscar also receives lifetime voting rights.

In January 2017, there were close to 7,000 voting members of the Academy, according to Variety.

So if you're an active Academy member, you get to choose who wins an Oscar?

Well, sort of.

If you're an active or lifetime member, you're allowed to vote. However, to come up with the list of nominees, generally, individual branches vote for nominees within their field. So if you're a costume designer, you nominate costume designers, if you're an sound engineer, you nominate sound engineers.

The idea is to leave the nominating process to the professionals in that particular genre.

In certain categories, however, all members can nominate their favorites. Best Animated Feature is one example. The category was actually restricted in the past, but recently, it moved to open voting for all members, which is how The Boss Babybecame an Oscar-nominated movie.

The Boss Baby is an Oscar-nominated movie?!

I know! Ain't that some bull -ish!?!

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Ugh! Anyway, how do you become an Academy member?

The process of becoming an Academy member, and thereby gaining the ability to vote on the Oscars movies, is a tricky one. One does not simply apply for membership.

Instead, you have to be sponsored by someone who is already a member of the academy.

"The Academy’s membership process is by sponsorship, not application," the Oscars' Academy Membership website explains. "Candidates must be sponsored by two Academy members from the branch to which the candidate seeks admission.

And the Academy advises, "Sponsoring a candidate for membership in the Academy is a serious commitment. Please make sure you are confident the candidate has truly 'demonstrated exceptional achievement in the field of theatrical motion pictures' before you agree to sponsor an individual."

So the Academy just chooses a bunch of people they want to join?

Yes. But there are a bunch of rules. (Seeing a trend here??)

To curtail a flooding of Academy membership candidates, the Oscars has put two rules in place. First, members may only sponsor one candidate each year. Second, members can only sponsor candidates in their own branch out of the 17 branches of the Academy. In other words, a member of the Actors branch can't nominate someone to be in the Costume Designers branch.

Tl;Dr: It's hard AF to become a new member.

On top of that, each branch has its own set of requirements. For instance, to be a candidate for membership in the Actors branch, a candidate must "have a minimum of three theatrical feature film credits, in all of which the roles played were scripted roles, one of which was released in the past five years, and all of which are of a caliber that reflect the high standards of the Academy" while to be eligible to be a voting member in the Costume Design branch, you must "have screen credits as Costume Designer on at least four feature films of a caliber which, in the opinion of the executive committee, reflect the high standards of the Academy."

And the list goes on and on and on for each branch.

This is getting pretty difficult...

Mmmhhhmmm. And in addition to aaaallll of that, there is only a brief window when one can become a new member. The membership review period is open only once a year, typically in the spring.

TL;DR: It's hard AF to become a new member.

Okay, so if you do manage to get sponsored to become a member, then what happens?

After that, all eligible Academy candidates are reviewed by the Academy's Board of Governors. If approved, the candidate will receive an invitation to become a member.

Sounds kinda clique-y

Yeah, that's one way of putting it. Because you have to be nominated by previous Academy members, the Academy can be a bit "exclusive." And by "exclusive," we mean the Academy has frequently been accused of not acknowledging and celebrating the diversity of talent in the film world. That's what inspired #OscarsSoWhite.

Remind me again? What was #OscarsSoWhite?

#OscarsSoWhite was a campaign created by April Reign to highlight the lack of diversity in Hollywood, and specifically the Oscars. The campaign was inspired by the 2015 list of Oscars nominees, which notably included no actors of color in four major awards categories: Best Lead Actor, Best Lead Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress. There were also pretty big snubs, including a lack of Best Director nomination for Ava DuVernay who directed Selma.

So what are they going to do about it?

Well the aforementioned change to which Academy members have voting rights were implemented to try to prevent another #OscarsSoWhite. The Academy also appointed new governors to the Academy's Board (which again, approves new members) and the Academy committed to doubling the number of women and minorities in the Academy over the course of four years.

In addition to the rule changes, The Oscars has invited over 700 industry professionals to become new members of the Academy in the past few years. Many of the people who received invitations were women or people of color, including Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot, and Janelle Monaé.

Okay, so we have our Academy voting body, and they propose a movie. Then what happens?

To suggest a movie, Academy members receive a ballot where they list their top 5 favorite movies in a particular category. After a bunch of movies are proposed, the Academy needs to figure out which movies can be an official Oscars nominee.

To become an official nominee, a movie has to be nominated as a first choice pick in a particular category on at least one ballot. Then the movie has to reach "a magic number."

"A Magic Number"?

According to People, the magic number "is calculated by taking the total number of ballots received for that category and dividing them by the number of possible nominees plus one, and then rounding it up to the nearest whole number. (If the initial result happens to yield a whole number, then 1 is automatically added.)"

Once a movie reaches that magic number, then it is eligible to be an Oscars nominee. The next step is to whittle down the list of eligible movies to fit the number of finalists allowed in a particular category.

To do that, the Academy uses something called preferential voting.

Preferential voting?! Dear god this is a lot!

You're telling me! According to an LA Timesexplainer, in preferential voting,"A film needs more than half the votes to win. If no film gets more than half of the No. 1 picks, the nominee with the fewest is thrown out. Those ballots are then given to the remaining nominees according to the voters' No. 2 choice." Repeat that process until you have your top movies for the nominee list.

So no we have our list of nominees. Now how do they actually vote on the winner?

Oscars winners are voted on by secret ballot, which can be submitted either on paper or online. You can check out a sample ballot here.

So then they just tally the votes and may the best movie win?

For the most part. Most categories are chosen by tallying up all of the votes received, and the nominee with the largest amount of vote wins.

The voting process for Best Picture is a bit trickier. For Best Picture, votes go through the preferential voting system outlined above, where movies have to receive more than half the vote to win, and losing movies are knocked out one by one until the winner has been declared.

So THEN we have the Oscars winners?

Yep! Then we're done. All that's left to do is pray they announce the correct winners.

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Topics Oscars