The Academy of Motion Picture Arts has announced the five nominees for Best Visual Effects at the 90th Academy Awards. We’re proud to state that every facility, VFX team and production nominated has at least one thing in common – a long history of using cineSync.

Blade Runner 2049, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Kong: Skull Island, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and War for the Planet of the Apes were all honored with a nomination.

Dan Lemmon, VFX Supervisor on all three of the recent Planet of the Apes films, including War for the Planet of the Apes, has called cineSync “a really powerful filmmaking collaboration tool”. Used for over a decade by Industrial Light and Magic and Weta, Double Negative, Framestore and MPC – and thousands of other facilities worldwide – cineSync has enabled filmmakers around the globe to collaborate with the best talent available, regardless of location.

“We handpicked the best facilities regardless of the time zone. We were going to make it work and cineSync was going to help us do it. That’s what elevated the overall quality of Blade Runner 2049, because everyone was handpicked for this film from the get-go. Without cineSync pulling us all together I don’t know how we could have pulled it off.”

– Karen Murphy-Mundell, VFX Producer, Blade Runner 2049

Editors on War for the Planet of the Apes spent from four to six hours a day reviewing the visual effects iterations, all via long distance cineSync sessions:

“cineSync changed how we saw what was needed for sound and music…Every time there was a new shot, there was a new iteration of sound.”

– William Hoy, Picture Editor, War for the Planet of the Apes

And facilities working in the Marvel Cinematics Universe have made great use of the software:

“cineSync allows us to draw on the screen and work remotely. It’s not a linear process – it’s different levels of a shot within a sequence, trying to imagine how it looks at a finished level. We show the work at Marvel, get notes. That goes on and on for over 2000 shots.”

– Christopher Townsend, Production VFX Supervisor, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2

Rory McGregor, CEO of Cospective, the makers of cineSync, says, “We are constantly in awe of the work our customers are doing and we feel very privileged to work alongside these incredibly talented people. cineSync continues to improve as our customers push for ever better results. We are committed to matching the ambitions of the industry and to providing the best service we can, well into the future”.

The 90th Academy Awards winners will be announced at the star-studded event on March 4th at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. We wish the very best Oscars luck to all facilities, artists and technicians involved!

Last year, The 89th Academy Award for visual effects was won by Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book in January 2017. The collection of facilities that created the impressive environments and characters created for that movie were also empowered by cineSync’s worldwide collaboration solutions.

cineSync itself won The Academy’s Scientific and Technical Award in 2011 for its significant contribution to the motion picture industry.