The 96th Oscar cycle is upon us, and with it, something new—the mandatory representation and inclusion standards that require filmmakers and/or their storylines and/or their distributors to meet elaborate racial, sexual, and disability guidelines.
Don’t kid yourself with that “everybody qualifies anyway” notion that’s been floating around since the standards were announced a couple of years ago. These rules are intended to change the film business. If you don’t think so, take a few minutes to browse the long list of compliance resources that are now posted on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences website at raise.oscars.org/resources/standards.
Clearly, the Academy isn’t just out to monitor diversity and inclusion. It wants to help you make your movies the ‘right’ way, or, at the very least, put you in touch with hundreds of people who will do exactly that.
At present, the Academy’s list of Standards Resources includes 20 entities, with the promise of more to come. Some are nonprofits, others are commercial firms. The list, says the website, has been “curated and reviewed” by the Academy, and each resource provides “robust, relevant and actionable tools to support a filmmaker, production, studio or distributor in meeting the standards, and facilitating progress.”
“Progress,” though this usually isn’t said aloud, means a reduction in the percentage of able-bodied, heterosexual white males involved with film production or stories. Other demographic groups, in one way or another, are favored by the standards and supported by the expanding list of resource companies and organizations.
And an impressive list it is, offering an approach to hiring and development that would be shockingly unfamiliar to a producer of the 1990s, when films were built around flashes of inspiration, seat-of-the-pants decisions, trips to the favor bank, backdoor deals and, sometimes, artfully loaded test audiences.
By the Academy’s lights, a script hunt now starts not with a power agent lunch, but rather a visit to the Black List, “a globally unique database that efficiently identifies and celebrates great writing for everyone who needs it most.” Or, more to the point, to the parallel British Blacklist, “for information about the exciting work of UK-based black storytellers.”
With your standards-compliant screenplay in hand—the Academy list helpfully explains which standard or standards each business or organization will help you to meet—you can start assembling your inclusion-friendly film.
If you need interns—and who doesn’t like cheap labor?—the Academy itself can supply them through its diversity-oriented Academy Gold program, and that will go a long way toward getting you past Standard C, which requires you to provide skill development for underrepresented groups. That, or you can try the Group Effort Initiative, which, notes the Academy site, can help you meet that same standard with “people of color, LGBQ+, people with disabilities, former foster and homeless youth and people that have been previously incarcerated.”
As for the rest of the staff, no problem. You can meet standards B and D, which require a diverse creative and marketing/distribution teams, by visiting the ARRAY Crew database “created by filmmaker Ava DuVernay and led by an all-women executive team,” says the Oscar website. Elsewhere, the site notes that DuVernay is on the Academy’s Board of Governors. But hers is not the only listed source of standards-appropriate women and people of color. Staff Me Up, which charges just $149.99 a year for a premium membership—about the same as IMDbPro—is said to list 120,000 crew workers who have “self-identified as underrepresented,” presumably easing the burden on a producer who is wrestling with the Academy’s RAISE platform, a complex identity data entry portal through which all Oscar films must now pass. Yet another source of staff might be Free the Work, a 501c3 organization that, says the list, “allows your production team to self-identify beyond a dehumanizing and limited set of options, helping them feel seen as their whole selves.”
Whatever that means, it can help with Standard A, which demands diversity in your storyline and/or onscreen talent.
Need music? Turn to the Composers Diversity Collective or Donne, Women in Music. Lawyers and publicists? Those might come from Diverse Representation, good for standards C and D. For animation, Women in Animation. For advice about Asians, try CAPE USA; for Native Americans, IllumiNative; for Middle Eastern and North African people, MENA Arts; for Latinos, the National Association of Latino Independent Producers.
LaVant Consulting, says the list, specializes in those with disabilities. Gold House “reshapes public opinion” in favor of Asians and Pacific Islanders (good for standards A and C). Color of Change Hollywood can keep you up-to-date on the latest activist trends. Women in Film is there to help with all four standards.
And Crewvie, whose own website sports an Oscar logo, a gold check, and a prominent reference to “Standard A B C D,” can, according to the Academy, “streamline the collection and reporting of DEIA analytics to easily apply for RAISE.”
Happily, someone is there to help, because RAISE is complicated. That identity data portal has been live since 2021, but Oscar films will actually be required to meet its standards for the first time this year. To date, the portal has been accessible only to those who register a film. But Academy members, we hear, will be offered a “walk-through” in early May.
It’s about time. You might want to take a look. Because the platform and its myriad industry support groups are designed to change the way you do business.