Oscar Technical Achievement Award
At this years (2021) Oscar Technical Achievement Award, which was held digitally due to the corona pandemic, my ground braking idea and development of a facial motion tracking device: the FaceTracker was honored. Too bad they did not award this disruptive development, which was the foundation of the whole process of head mounted optical facetracking, but the Academy gave the price to the company Standard Deviation which took my idea and developed it further. The price wace given to the company which served the most facetracking devices actually used in movie production. Under these conditions, of course US based companies in the Hollywood circumfence were preferred.
Standard Deviation founders worked in the same studio as I did at that time, at a company called Mr. Film, run by Chris Walker. Chris was a technology driven producer, but always short in money. So, instead of buying one of my FaceTrackers, he asked his technicians to copy it. Of course they improved it further. I never received any royalties. Anyway, I sold about 100 of my units to other mayor movie and 3D anmiation companies such as Disney Imagineering, Sony Picture Imageworks and Warner Brothers.
Standard Deviations grew with their Facetracker sales and still are in business. Their founder was so fair to mention my name in his list of thanks during the award presentation.
Thanky you Babak, anyway.
Here is a full report in visual effects magazine “fxguide”
