Whiplash, Birdman and Game of Thrones were among the winners at the 10th Annual Hollywood Post Alliance Awards that took place at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, last night. The evening’s festivities recognized outstanding achievement in color grading, editing, sound and visual effects in film, television and commercials.
Over 80 different judges narrowed down the field of submissions to this year’s nominees. Past HPA winner Stuart Bass, who presented the outstanding editing category alongside Skip McDonald, another previous winner, shared that the HPA received more submissions this year than any other year in its existence. It was Tom Cross, ACE, who received the outstanding editing in a film award for Whiplash. Nabbing the award for television was Kristin McCasey for her work on Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways “Nashville” and Doobie White for GNP Seguros “World Cup” in the commercial category.
Steven Scott won for outstanding color grading for his work on Birdman and took the moment to thank Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki aka “Chivo,” saying, “Let’s face it. He’s the only reason why I’m here. His work is endlessly inspiriting and challenging. And he makes me uncomfortable and unsure. And I learn the most that way. My great satisfaction is being able to help him do the exploration he needs to do in order to arrive at the place he wants to be. It’s an honor to work with him and I thank him for that.”
The Game of Thrones team of Joe Bauer, Steve Kullback, Derek Spears, Eric Carney and Jabbar Raisani won the outstanding visual effects award for their work on the episode “The Dance of Dragons,” while the team for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, led by Joe Letteri at Weta Digital, grabbed the feature film award for visual effects.
For outstanding sound in film, the Warner Bros post team won for American Sniper, and for television, Homeland “Redux” took home the award. Winning for the third year in a row in the commercial category was U.K.-based Factory for its work on The Syria Campaign by Jon Clarke.
Awards for Engineering Excellence, which highlight companies who provide advancement in support tools, were handed out to Canon, Dolby Laboratories, Panasonic, Quantel and Sony Electronics. The HPA also bestowed ESPN with the Judges Award for Creativity and Innovation thanks to its ESPN Digital Center 2. The Center 2 is a 194,000 square foot facility comprised of over 60,000 IP signals, making it the world’s first large-scale IP-based production headquarters. Aaron LaBerge, VP and chief technology officer for ESPN was present to accept the award, saying, “We couldn’t have done what we accomplished without all the people involved and the senior management who allowed us to do all this crazy work.”
One of the more memorable highlights to the evening was when Leon Silverman accepted HPA’s Lifetime Achievement Award to a standing ovation. After Silverman thanked his piers for inspiring him to continue to do the work he always loved doing, he looked to his father and expressed that he was his one true mentor. Leon’s father was celebrating his 86th birthday that night and everyone took the moment to sing “Happy Birthday” before Silverman closed the show.
The complete list of HPA Award Winners:
Outstanding Color Grading – Feature Film
Birdman
Steven J. Scott
Technicolor
Outstanding Color Grading – Television
Boardwalk Empire “Golden Days for Boys and Girls”
John Crowley
Technicolor PostWorks NY
Outstanding Color Grading – Commercial
Lincoln “Intro”
Tom Poole
Company 3
Outstanding Editing – Feature Film
Whiplash
Tom Cross, ACE
Outstanding Editing – Television
Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways “Nashville”
Kristin McCasey
Therapy Studios
Outstanding Editing – Commercial
GNP Seguros “World Cup”
Doobie White
Therapy Studios
Outstanding Sound – Feature Film
American Sniper
Alan Murray, Tom Ozanich, John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff
Warner Bros. Post Production Services
Outstanding Sound – Television
Homeland “Redux”
Nello Torri, Alan Decker
NBCUniversal Post StudioPost
Craig Dellinger
Sony Sound Services
Outstanding Sound – Commercial
The Syria Campaign “In Reverse”
John Clarke
Factory
Outstanding Visual Effects – Feature Film
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton, R. Christopher White, Matt Aiken
Weta Digital
Outstanding Visual Effects – Television
Game of Thrones “The Dance of Dragons”
Joe Bauer, Steve Kullback, Derek Spears, Eric Carney, Jabbar Raisani
Fire and Blood Productions
Outstanding Visual Effects – Commercial
Game of War “Decision”
Benjamin Walsh, Brian Burke, Ian Holland, Brandon Nelson
Method Studios
HPA Lifetime Achievement Award
Leon Silverman
Engineering Excellence Award
Canon, 4K Cine Zoom Lens
Dolby Laboratories, Dolby Vision Projector
Panasonic, 4K Camera Imagers
Quantel, Pablo Rio 8K
Sony Electronics, BVMX300 Monitor
HPA Judges Award for Creativity and Innovation
ESPN, ESPN Digital Center 2
