# Why has the Best Original Score award been splitted in two awards between 1996 and 1999? (info for the TC best film score award)



## HansZimmer

In this post I'll explain why between 1996 and 1999 the award "Best original score" was splitted in two award: "Best original dramatic score" and "Best original comedy score".
This information is relevant for our competition: the Talkclassical best film score award

The love between Disney and good music is an ancient thing.

The soundtrack to the 1940s Fantasia cartoon features some of the greatest classical music: Go the suite of Fantasia

Subsequently, Disney went through a dark period, in which it forgot its origins and began to produce cartoons that were poorly developed from a musical point of view.

During this period, sales were at an all-time low.
In 1989 began an era which is called "Disney Renaissance" and which lasted until 1999. In this decade, Disney produced a series of animated films which, in addition to having a deep and dramatic plot, rediscovered another essential element: music.

The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast are examples of cartoons that belong to this period.

During the "Disney Renaissance", the Disney put so much effort into the composition of soundtracks that starting in the 90s it began to take a large part of the Academy Awards for "Best original score".
Someone didn't like that the cartoons of the Disney were stealing the musical awards to the great hollywood dramatic films, so in the 1996 the award "Best original score" was splitted in two parts:

Best Original Comedy Score
Best Original Dramatic Score

The animated films of the Disney were considered comedies, so the great Hollywood dramatic movies no longer had to compete with Disney's music.
From wikipedia...

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_Following the wins of four Walt Disney Feature Animation films in six years from 1990 to 1995 (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King) during a period called the Disney Renaissance, it was decided to once again split the Best Original Score category by genres, this time by combining comedies and musicals together. As Alan Bergman, the chairman of the Academy's music branch said, "People were voting for the songs, not the underscores. We felt that Academy members outside the music branch didn't distinguish between the two. So when a score like The Lion King is competing against a drama like Forrest Gump, it's apples and oranges – not in the quality of the score, but in the way it functions in the movie. There's a big difference."[5] The category was therefore split into Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Original Musical or Comedy Score in 1996._

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In few words, according to Alan Bergman, The Lion King shouldn't have won against Forrest Gump.

From the year 2000 the decision has been reverted and so we have now one single "Best original score" award like before the 1996.

This decision was absurd in my point of view, but the point is that in our competition, the Talkclassical best film score award, we will now have two polls for each year between 1996 and 1999:

One for the dramatic scores
One for the comedy scores

What do you think about the decision of the Academy Awards? You can vote in the poll, if you want.


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## pianozach

The Academy is constantly 'tinkering' with the categories. It's straightforward evolution; as films evolve year after year, decade after decade, the categories adjust to accommodate those changes. It might be altering the titles of the categories, or number of nominees allowed. 

For awhile they had dual categories in costumes, art direction, and other subsets for both color and black & white films, and then as B&W became a niche genre, they combined them again.

Even the very first Academy awards had dual categories for Best Picture: 


*Outstanding Picture*

*Wings – Paramount Famous Lasky**
_The Racket_ – The Caddo Company
_7th Heaven_ – Fox

*Best Unique and Artistic Picture*

*Sunrise – Fox**
_Chang_ – Paramount Famous Lasky
_The Crowd_ – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer



. . . which were combined the very next year.


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## HansZimmer

pianozach said:


> The Academy is constantly 'tinkering' with the categories. It's straightforward evolution; as films evolve year after year, decade after decade, the categories adjust to accommodate those changes. It might be altering the titles of the categories, or number of nominees allowed.
> 
> For awhile they had dual categories in costumes, art direction, and other subsets for both color and black & white films, and then as B&W became a niche genre, they combined them again.
> 
> Even the very first Academy awards had dual categories for Best Picture:
> 
> 
> *Outstanding Picture*
> 
> *Wings – Paramount Famous Lasky**
> _The Racket_ – The Caddo Company
> _7th Heaven_ – Fox
> 
> *Best Unique and Artistic Picture*
> 
> *Sunrise – Fox**
> _Chang_ – Paramount Famous Lasky
> _The Crowd_ – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
> 
> 
> 
> . . . which were combined the very next year.



Are you able to explain the actual distinction between a comedy score and a dramatic score in the meaning of the Academy Awards? I can't find references.

If I've understood correctly, the splitting has nothing to do with the intrinsic nature of the music (like in the case of "Best original song" Vs "Best original score"), but with the nature of the film.
In few words, the animated films of the Disney had to compete with comedy films between 1996 and 1999, this is right? I just wonder how exactly an animated film like the Lion King would be a comedy. It's a dramatic animated film, and it's score won agrainst other dramatic movies like Forrest Gump.


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## pianozach

HansZimmer said:


> Are you able to explain the actual distinction between a comedy score and a dramatic score in the meaning of the Academy Awards? I can't find references.
> 
> If I've understood correctly, the splitting has nothing to do with the intrinsic nature of the music (like in the case of "Best original song" Vs "Best original score"), but with the nature of the film.
> In few words, the animated films of the Disney had to compete with comedy films between 1996 and 1999, this is right? I just wonder how exactly an animated film like the Lion King would be a comedy. It's a dramatic animated film, and it's score won agrainst other dramatic movies like Forrest Gump.


Their categorizations are certainly not perfect.

_Are you able to explain the actual distinction between a comedy score and a dramatic score in the meaning of the Academy Awards?_

First off, comedy and dramatic refer to the films, not the scores, although in most cases the music will reflect that musically. To categorize a film as one or the other, it's just common sense. Show us a film, and ask which it is, and usually it's pretty simple to put it in one category or the other. So, yes, I think you've understood correctly.

_In few words, the animated films of the Disney had to compete with comedy films between 1996 and 1999, this is right? _

Yes, I believe that's correct. It had more to do with the Disney films winning too frequently, with non-animated non-musical films being unjustly overlooked. It's not that they wanted Disney animated musical films to compete with comedy films, but they bundled Disney and comedy together to justify splitting the Disney films off from the rest of the films. I think they wanted to avoid the appearance of creating a category for Disney films (I mean, could you imagine two soundtrack categories, *Best Disney Score*, and *Best Non-Disney Score*?). So, no, they're not saying that Disney films are comedies, they're simply putting them together.

There's precedent for this. In 1969 and 1970 they split the score awards into 

*Best Original Score—for a motion picture [not a musical]*, and
*Best Score of a Musical Picture—original or adaptation*

Prior to that they had split them into* Original *and* Adapted Scores *for awhile*.*

Again, as films themselves evolve, the Academy sometimes attempts to stay current.

And there are some crazy anomalies as well. For instance, in 1944 there were two categories, *Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture, *and* Scoring of a Musical Picture. *20 films were nominated in the former category, while 14 were nominated in the latter category. A total of 34 films were nominated. It wasn't until 1946 that the Academy limited the number of nominees to 5 in each category. Those categories lasted through 1961. Those two categories had replaced the categories of *Original Score* and *Scoring* in 1941.


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