OUAN502 - Should There Be a Second Category At the Academy Awards for Heavily VFX Films?

I have seen the opinion raised with film makers that films that include heavy amounts of visual effects should have a separate category to films made without them at award ceremonies such as the Academy Awards. What brought my attention to it again is when it was raised during the cinematographers round table segment from The Hollywood Reporter that I've mentioned before. Not only did it re-raise the point to me, but coming from people who knew the industry and were essentially in charge of that aspect of a film had more weight behind it - and when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. How do you compare a film that is heavily subsidised by visual effects such as synthetic lighting and an imaginary camera versus a film that is made through the use of setting up physical lighting or waiting for a specific time of day to begin shooting whilst having to manoeuvre through a scene using a camera that weighs upwards of 10kg? To me there is an obvious flaw in the current way films are judged in this way, especially with the era we live in currently and the quality of work that can be created through the use of visual effects.

It appears from listening to people in the industry that there is the widespread opinion that visual effects are at most a compromise, and doing things in camera is always the best way to do things because put simply - it makes things look better. Cinematographer Robert Richardson hold quite strong opinions on the topic of having a second category at places like the Academy Awards for films produced that contain a large amount of visual effects. He states that there are films made fairly normally with a certain percentage of visual effects involved and used to subsidise an otherwise complicated or expensive feature of a film, whereas there are also films that are purely visual effects or at the very least made using a vast majority of visual effects with minimum real time. An example he uses is Gravity; 'Gravity was shot with brilliant ideas in mind but as a visual effects film.' Cinematographer Alwin Kuchler agrees with this notion and further mentions that there used to be two categories at the Academy Awards separating black and white film from colour. I do believe there should be a divide between the two types of films (one heavily using visual effects and one using minimal visual effects) especially when it comes to the Academy Awards. After thinking about it, it seems that apart from the obvious discrepancy between two types of films with a different visual effects content, judging them against each other would be in some ways unfair and furthermore different things can be done using visual effects that can't be done in reality and vice versa.