2004 (77th Annual Awards)
Winners Only

Listed below are the Academy Award winners for the year 2004 (non-winning nominations have been omitted from this list). Click on the name of a film, person or song in the list to display more information about that film, person or song Or, click on a year in the column on the right to display the winners from that year.

Best Picture

Million Dollar Baby, Warner Bros. Pictures Production; Warner Bros. Clint Eastwood, Albert S. Ruddy and Tom Rosenberg, Producers.

Actor in a Leading Role

Jamie Foxx in Ray, Universal Pictures/Bristol Bay Production; Universal.

Actress in a Leading Role

Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby, Warner Bros. Pictures Production; Warner Bros.

Actor in a Supporting Role

Morgan Freeman in Million Dollar Baby, Warner Bros. Pictures Production; Warner Bros.

Actress in a Supporting Role

Cate Blanchett in The Aviator, Forward Pass/Appian Way/IMF Production; Miramax, Initial Entertainment Group and Warner Bros. (Germany, USA)

Directing

Million Dollar Baby, Warner Bros. Pictures Production; Warner Bros. Clint Eastwood.

Animated Feature Film

The Incredibles, Pixar Animation Studios Production; Buena Vista. Brad Bird.

Art Direction-Set Decoration

The Aviator, Forward Pass/Appian Way/IMF Production; Miramax, Initial Entertainment Group and Warner Bros. (Germany, USA) Art direction by Dante Ferretti; set decoration by Francesca Lo Schiavo.

Cinematography

The Aviator, Forward Pass/Appian Way/IMF Production; Miramax, Initial Entertainment Group and Warner Bros. (Germany, USA) Robert Richardson.

Costume Design

The Aviator, Forward Pass/Appian Way/IMF Production; Miramax, Initial Entertainment Group and Warner Bros. (Germany, USA) Sandy Powell.

Documentary

(Feature)

Born into Brothels, Red Light Films, Inc. Production; THINKFilm. Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski.

(Short Subject)

Mighty Times: The Children’s March, Tell the Truth Pictures Production. Robert Hudson and Bobby Houston.

Film Editing

The Aviator, Forward Pass/Appian Way/IMF Production; Miramax, Initial Entertainment Group and Warner Bros. (Germany, USA) Thelma Schoonmaker.

Foreign Language Film

The Sea Inside, Sogecine and Himenóptero Production; Fine Line Features and Sogepaq. (Spain, France, Italy) Spain.

Makeup

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Parkes/MacDonald/Nickelodeon Movies Production; Paramount and DreamWorks. (Germany, USA) Valli O’Reilly and Bill Corso.

Music

(Original Score)

Finding Neverland, FilmColony Production; Miramax. (USA, UK) Jan A. P. Kaczmarek.

(Original Song)

Al Otro Lado Del Río from The Motorcycle Diaries, South Fork Pictures in association with Tu Vas Voir Production; Focus Features and Film Four. (Argentina, USA, Chile, Peru, Brazil, UK, Germany, France) Music and lyric by Jorge Drexler.

Short Films

(Animated)

Ryan, Copper Heart Entertainment & National Film Board of Canada Production. (Canada) Chris Landreth.

(Live Action)

Wasp, Cowboy Films Production. (UK) Andrea Arnold.

Sound Editing

The Incredibles, Pixar Animation Studios Production; Buena Vista. Michael Silvers and Randy Thom.

Sound Mixing

Ray, Universal Pictures/Bristol Bay Production; Universal. Scott Millan, Greg Orloff, Bob Beemer and Steve Cantamessa.

Visual Effects

Spider-Man 2, Columbia Pictures Production; Sony Pictures Releasing. John Dykstra, Scott Stokdyk, Anthony LaMolinara and John Frazier.

Writing

(Adapted Screenplay)

Sideways, Sideways Productions, Inc. Production; Fox Searchlight/20th Century Fox. (USA, Hungary) Screenplay by Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor.

(Original Screenplay)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Anonymous Content/This is That Production; Focus Features. Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman; story by Charlie Kaufman & Michel Gondry & Pierre Bismuth.

Honorary Award

To Sidney Lumet in recognition of his brilliant services to screenwriters, performers and the art of the motion picture. [ [Statuette]]

To Arthur Widmer for his lifetime achievement in the science and technology of image compositing for motion pictures as exemplified by his significant contributions to the development of the Ultra Violet and the “bluescreen” compositing processes. [ [Award of Commendaton - Special Award Plaque]]

Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award

Roger Mayer

Gordon E. Sawyer Award

Takuo Miyagishima

Scientific and Technical Award

(Academy Award of Merit)

To Horst Burbulla for the invention and continuing development of the Technocrane telescoping camera crane. With its electronically driven leveling head, adjustable moveable weight carriage, and lightweight, extremely precise telescoping beam elements that allow camera movement during shots, the Technocrane has redefined the state-of-the-art in camera crane technology.

TO Jean-Marie Lavalou, Alain Masseron and David Samuelson for the engineering and development of the Louma Camera Crane and remote system for motion picture production. The Louma pioneered a remotely-operated camera head combined with a lightweight and portable modular crane. Its design has proved to be the inspiration for numerous subsequent remote camera systems.

(Scientific and Engineering Award)

To Gyula Mester (electronic systems design) and Keith Edwards (mechanical engineering) for their significant contributions to and continuing development of the Technocrane telescoping camera crane. With its electronically driven leveling head, adjustable moveable weight carriage and lightweight, extremely precise telescoping beam elements that allow camera movement during shots, the Technocrane has redefined the state-of-the-art in camera crane technology.

To Lindsay Arnold, Guy Griffiths, David Hodson, Charlie Lawrence and David Mann for their development of the Cineon Digital Film Workstation. Cineon pioneered a commercial node-graph compositing system establishing a new visual method for direct manipulation of the compositing process, which influenced and defined modern digital compositing workflows.

(Technical Achievement Award)

To Greg Cannom and Wesley Wofford for the development of their special modified silicone material for makeup applications used in motion pictures. This proprietary modified silicone makeup system allows for the creation of either partial or full-face appliances for motion picture makeup effects that move like real flesh, have translucency similar to skin and will accept standard makeup materials.

To Jerry Cotts for the original concept and design and Anthony Seaman for the engineering of the Satellight-X HMI Softlight. With its large radiating surface and thin profile, this collapsible, self-contained HMI softlight provides a diffuse light to simulate daylight in location interiors, where space is often limited.

To Steven E. Boze for the design and implementation of the DNF 001 multi-band digital audio noise suppressor. Designed in the early 1990s when digital signal processing was in its early stages, the real-time digital approach of the DNF 001 provided accurate filter response with minimal interaction, allowing noise attenuation with fewer artifacts.

To Dr. Christopher Hicks and Dave Betts for the design and implementation of the Cedar DNS 1000 multi-band digital noise suppressor. The Cedar DNS 1000 is specifically designed to reduce background noise from recorded motion picture dialog. With its precise filters it allows the frequency ranges to be altered or even cascaded to pinpoint and reduce the offending noise.

To Nelson Tyler for the development of the Tyler Gyroplatform boat mount stabilizing device for motion picture photography. As a pioneer in this area of motion picture technology, Tyler’s 2-axis, hydraulically-powered camera mount successfully eliminates the pitch and roll associated with camera shots taken from a boat in the water.

To Dr. Julian Morris, Michael Birch, Dr. Paul Smyth and Paul Tate for the development of the Vicon motion capture technology. Vicon Motion Systems developed special-purpose cameras for motion capture with software systems that maximized their impact on the motion picture industry.

To Dr. John O. B. Greaves, Ned Phipps, Antonie J. Van Den Bogert and William Hayes for the development of the Motion Analysis motion capture technology. Motion Analysis Corporation developed special-purpose cameras for motion capture with software systems that maximized their impact on the motion picture industry.

To Dr. Nels Madsen, Vaughn Cato, Matthew Madden and Bill Lorton for the development of the Giant Studios motion capture technology. The software solution created by Giant Studios applied a unique biometric approach that has influenced the development of motion capture technology for motion pictures.

To Alan Kapler for the design and development of ‘Storm,’ a software toolkit for artistic control of volumetric effects. ‘Storm’ employs an efficient method for directly manipulating volumetric data to create effects such as clouds, water and avalanches with familiar operators inspired by image compositing and painting operations.