Branching Out

Winning an Academy Award may be an honor to some, but the folks at Introvision are insulted by theirs--and have turned it down. The reason, says president Tom Naud: Members of the Science and Technical Achievement Branch--which presents film makers and companies with special awards in advance of the April 11 Oscar ceremonies--don’t really know/understand what Introvision does.

Developed nearly 10 years ago, Introvision is a complex process that places an actor within a frame of film--making it seem that he’s somewhere he really isn’t. (He’s actually in front of a picture of a set.) It was Introvision, for instance, that allowed the kids of “Stand by Me” to flee across a bridge seemingly just ahead of an oncoming train. And for a little girl in “Adventures in Babysitting” to appear to cling to the exterior of a skyscraper.

The trouble started between Introvision and the academy when a three-man exploratory group toured the facility last year. The head of the group, Naud said, “actually told us that Introvision was no more than a refined application of front projection. We laughed in his face.”

They also asked him to leave and the tour continued without him.

About three months later, the company received a “dinky little” Class II plaque, not a gold-plated statuette. Of all things, mused Naud, it cited them for “refined use of front projection”!

“We’re not in the special-effects business,” Naud continued. “We’re in the ‘ordinary’ business.” Meaning: “That if we do our job, you don’t know we were in the movie.”

As for the plaque: “I’m told that the way these things work is, you more or less work your way up the ladder (to a “real” Oscar). Well, that’s a laugh--we don’t need to work our way up any ladder.”

Naud added that when and if the Science and Technical Branch decides to award Introvision an actual Oscar statuette, the company will gladly accept--”if the award correctly describes what we do.”

A rep for the academy confirmed that the award had, indeed, been returned. He didn’t want to comment, other than to say that Spencer Tracy once returned an Oscar because it had been incorrectly engraved to Dick Tracy.