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ACADEMY AWARDS for SCIENTIFIC and TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENTS.

Monday, 15th February 2021

 AMPS (The Association of Motion Picture Sound) is proud to announce that long time Associate Member Jeff Bloom, who heads our Sustaining Member company Synchro Arts, has been awarded an Academy plaque in this year’s Academy Awards for Scientific and Technical Achievements. Jeff is named along with Guy McNally and Nick Rose in recognition of the original concept and engineering of the Wordfit System for automatic ADR synchronisation. Also named for the award are John Ellwood and Jonathan Newland for the engineering and development of VocALign and Revoice Pro. AMPS Fellow Lionel Strutt was heavily involved in the early development and use of Wordfit at his Mayflower Studio facility.

Wordfit revolutionised the process of post sync ADR by eliminating the need for manual editing to perfect lip sync. VocALign and Revoice Pro are software tools that together give sound editors unprecedented control over the final performance in replaced dialogue. In use for many years, these technologies continue their predominance in the creation and seamless integration of replacement dialogue tracks in motion pictures.

In the same category, Alexey Lukin and the Team of Mathematicians, Software Engineers, Sound Designers and Product Specialists of iZotope Inc. receive a plaque for development of the RX audio processing system, which features spectral processing algorithms enhanced with machine learning. The iZotope RX system is widely favoured by motion picture sound professionals for audio repair and enhancement.

iZotope RX, was the winner of the first AMPS Technical Award. They also won the AMPS Technical Award for a Post Production Audio Product in 2020 for iZotope Dialogue Match. So the perceptive decisions made by AMPS Voting Membership lead the way in recognising this worthy technology.

The winning products in The Academy Scientific and Technical Awards this year need not have been developed and introduced during a specified period of time. Rather, the achievements demonstrate a proven record of contributing significant value to the process of making motion pictures. It’s encouraging to see audio technology recognised as three of the award winners.

The other winners in the category are:

Dr. Zvi Reznic, Meir Feder, Guy Dorman and Ron Yogev for the development of the Amimon wireless chipset, which enables untethered, high-quality on-set, encrypted digital video monitoring with sub-frame latency.

By using novel extensions of digital data transmission and compression algorithms, and data prioritisation based on error rate, the Amimon chipset supports the creation of systems with virtually unrestricted camera motion, expanding creative freedom during filming.

Nicolaas Verheem, Greg Smokler and Ilya Issenin for the development of the ruggedised Teradek Bolt wireless video transmission system for on-set remote monitoring.

The Teradek Bolt system features a frame-synchronised back channel for real-time camera control, an error-resilient timecode channel and integrated production metadata, which have led to its widespread adoption in motion picture production.

Sanken Microphone Company Limited for the original innovation and continuous refinement of the Sanken COS-11 series of miniature lavalier microphones.
Sanken’s early engineering work in microphone orientation and miniaturisation has inspired the current generation of lavalier microphones. The exceptional sound quality and durability of the COS-11 series have made them the predominant lavalier microphones used in motion picture production sound recording.

The Scientific and Engineering Awards (Academy Plaques) were presented at a virtual ceremony attended by Academy members via Zoom on Saturday 13th February 2021. Along with Certificates for twelve Technical Achievement Awards.

We congratulate all the winners, particularly Jeff Bloom, and compliment the
AMPS Voting Membership for their preemptive recognition of the worthiness of iZotope.

Historic note: AMPS Fellow Colin Broad won a Technical Achievement Award from the Academy in 1984 for the design and development of the EDL ‘Lister’, which creates an encoded timecode and database during the initial transfer of the production sound rushes.

GVH 5/3/21