AMPS 2020 - Winners

Well, it's been over two weeks since I posted the five Best Picture nominees for the Awards for Motion Picture Services (AMPS), one of the fake awards I created for my fake movies I came up with from the fake country that I made up when I was around seven or eight years old. (The fake country is called L World, because seven-or-eight-year-old me was so creative.) I am pleased to report that there were enough votes for a clear winner to come out, so the fake ceremony was held this past weekend. Of course, Best Picture is just one of the 15 awards being given out in multiple different categories pertaining to all different aspects of moviemaking. So here we go: the winners for AMPS from the year 2020.

Before we get started, a big thanks to my good friend Nathaniel "Diamondwhits" Whitman who used his graphic design skills to create the AMPS logo, obviously based off a film reel. Oh, I miss my projectionist days.

Also once again, these movies and these names are fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. (That hasn't always been the case...) 

Best Makeup

Winner: Gabriel Charles, The Countess of Monte Carlo

Clearly this is equivalent to the Academy Award category now called Best Makeup and Hairstyling. AMPS still rewards only the makeup efforts. The Countess of Monte Carlo failed to gain a spot in the final Best Picture lineup, but the makeup efforts in transforming the protagonist Diane Edmondson to her alter ego Jill Countess helped head makeup artist Gabriel Charles take home the AMPS.

Best Visual Effects

Winner: Alex Habney, Tim Hackensack, and Jerrold Warren, Dream World: The Return

This category is essentially the same as the Best Visual Effects category for the Academy Awards, awarding efforts in special effects. Back in 2004 the film Dream World was a box office blockbuster combining live action with photo-realistic CG-i and 2D animation. It received a nomination in this category that year but lost the award to The Quest: Survival of the Fittest, the third film in the epic The Quest series. It took 16 years for a sequel to hit cinemas, but even with stiff competition Dream World: The Return managed to take home the award that eluded the original film.

Best Sound Effects

Winner: Cody Besser, The Mysterious Guests

Best Sound Effects is the same category as Best Sound Editing within the Academy Awards, a category that awards achievements in the creation of, well, the sound effects that are heard within the film. The award typically goes to epic action blockbusters, but this year's winner The Mysterious Guests is a tense thriller about a family who shows up to small towns wreaking havoc wherever they go that is defined by the ambiance created by the sounds.

Best Sound

Winner: Harold Cossler, Anna Owens, and Jeffrey Resslanger, Gridiron Gridlocked

Best Sound is the equivalent of Best Sound Mixing, a category that rewards the combination of all aural elements of a film, from the sound effects to the music to the dialogue. Gridiron Gridlocked, the three-and-a-half-hour epic football film, was a favorite for the Best Sound Effects award before getting upset by The Mysterious Guests, but it took home the award for Best Sound.

Best Art Direction

Winner: Kendall Dumas and Josie Zoness, Darlene's Revenge

Best Art Direction is the same award that is now called Best Production Design within the Academy Awards, a category that celebrates the visual components of the film's environment, primarily the sets, and with AMPS the costumes as well, as AMPS does not have a separate category for costume design. The award goes to the Best Picture nominated sci-fi epic Darlene's Revenge, which presents a vision of a post-modern world with contrasting plush mansions and seedy, dilapidated slums. 

Best Score

Winner: Tanna Harper, Silvermore

Best Score is the AMPS equivalent of Best Original Score in the Academy Awards, a category that celebrates the musical score, most of which should be original. The award this year goes to Silvermore, the stirring drama about depression whose musical elements change reflecting the mental status of protagonist Matthew Silvermore in his increasing battle against depression.

Best Cinematography

Winner: Claude Rayner, Action

Best Cinematography is the same as the category of the same name in the Academy Awards, which celebrates the camerawork involved in the particular film. This year the award goes to the filmmaking action-comedy Action, with its clever use of different lenses in the production of the film-within-a-film. Cinematographer Claude Rayner had won in the same category 20 years earlier with the earlier film Comedy.

Best Editing

Winner: Jana Dorsler, Darlene's Revenge

Best Editing is the same as the Academy Award category known as Best Film Editing, which rewards the overall cutting of a film to create its dramatic flow. In the Academy Awards it has a high correlation with the Best Picture winner. Six of the past ten AMPS winners in this category have also won Best Picture, which bodes well for Darlene's Revenge, whose editing helps to raise the film's tension despite its two and a half hour running time.

Best Screenplay

Winner: Ted Layne, Silvermore

In the Academy Awards, the screenplay Oscars are split up into two categories, one for Original Screenplay and another for Screenplay Adapted from Another Source. With AMPS there is only one, which also gives it a high correlation with Best Picture. The award this year goes to Silvermore, a sobering look at a young man's struggles with depression. It was an original screenplay, but screenwriter Ted Layne had utilized interviews with many other people with depression to craft the tale.

Best Supporting Actress

Winner: Diane Pye, Dream World: The Return

We now head into the acting categories, among the most notable of the categories in any film awards. This celebrates the best performance by an actress in a supporting role, which is the official name of the category in the Academy Awards. The AMPS goes to Diane Pye in her performance in the life action/animated hybrid Dream World: The Return, as she voices the memorable comic relief sidekick in animated form as well as playing her in live action form. Pye had won for the ensemble Western epic Hang 'Em High last year, making her the first actress since Nancy Anson in 2003-04 to win in this category in back to back years. This was also a major upset as she beat out Candy Cross, who was selected by the illustrious (and fake) Movie Magazine as the Best Performance of the Year for her role in The Countess of Monte Carlo. It had been almost 30 years since a performance to receive the illustrious Movie Magazine honor had lost out in the AMPS.

Best Supporting Actor

Winner: Pete Klao, Silvermore

The actor version of the Supporting acting award goes to Pete Klao for his role as Coach Guff, the football coach in Silvermore. He is certainly no stranger to the AMPS stage as the veteran actor had captured the AMPS for Best Supporting Actor a grand total of 13 times dating back to 2000 for as diverse a lineup as the slapstick comedy Malaprop Man in 2003 to the family drama The Serviceman's Wife in 2006. Coach Guff was certainly a challenging role for Klao, as he had to internalize the character's own battle with depression to mirror that of the titular character, hiding behind a tough exterior and letting it out only on a gradual basis.

Best Actress

Winner: Ashley George, The Countess of Monte Carlo

The AMPS for the best performance by an actress in a leading role has been dominated in recent years by several notable actresses. With none of them in the running the award goes to Ashley George, the 17-year-old ingenue who portrayed the memorable lead role of Diane Edmondson/Jill Countess in the revenge drama The Countess of Monte Carlo. She had beat out thousands of aspiring actresses for the role, and made it a memorable acting tour-de-force. She is the youngest to win in this category since Ellen Hurse won her second (of ten) Best Actress AMPS in 2002 for My Evil Twin. 

Best Actor

Winner: Geoffrey Hale, Gridiron Gridlocked

The actor version of the Leading acting award goes to Geoffrey Hale for his role as defenseman Heath Terrell in the football epic Gridiron Gridlocked. Hale had come a long way since winning Best Supporting Actor as a teenager in 2014 for Potholes, but he had put it all into the performance, bulking up and going through a strenuous training program to get him in shape to give a realistic performance in the football scenes to go along with the the scenes off the field that made him a standout. He also joins Ralph Smorgen who won in 2017 for Howard: Class on the Diamond as the only black actors to win in this category in the past 30 years.

Best Director

Winner: Barry Talvend, Darlene's Revenge

Not much to say about this category as it honors the work of the film director whose visions are used to make up the film. The award this year goes to the respected 73-year-old director Barry Talvend, who had announced during production that Darlene's Revenge would be his final film before making a science fiction epic that combined action with social commentary on the wealth gap and learned helplessness. It was a fitting honor for the veteran filmmaker who specializes in sci-fi epics with a satirical edge, such as the films that had helped him win his previous directing AMPS in Photon (1989) and Crisis in Kingdom Kong (1980).

Best Picture

Here it is, the top honor for the night, an award for a film that would encapsulate the year in film. Going into the final award, there hadn't been a film that dominated as in year's past. Darlene's Revenge and Silvermore both tied with three wins, with the former film capturing some of the more coveted honors including Best Director and Best Editing. Gridiron Gridlocked isn't far behind with two honors and Action has one win. Meanwhile the fan's choice Abel the Able-Bodied Rabbit in Executive Hijinks is winless after losing out in Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Effects, and Best Screenplay, but with the changes in voting this year it certainly can't be counted out, especially since it had already won one vote.

And the winner is...

Silvermore

That's right, the film that was named as the best film of the year by Movie Magazine had gone ahead to do the same with AMPS. The four awards it captured is the fewest by a Best Picture winner since the controversial Raep Tiem captured the title with only two awards back in 2015. Yet more significantly it marked the first time there was a split between Best Picture and Best Director in AMPS voting since 2000, when Joe Lee won Best Director for The Nintendo Club only to see Best Picture go to Comedy. 

Anyways, congratulations to all of the winners and all of the winning movies! Not that you'll ever actually get to see any of them, because I never go beyond this step.

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Best Picture: Silvermore
Best Director: Barry Talvend, Darlene's Revenge
Best Actor: Geoffrey Hale, Gridiron Gridlocked
Best Actress: Ashley George, The Countess of Monte Carlo
Best Supporting Actor: Pete Klao, Silvermore
Best Supporting Actress: Diane Pye, Dream World: The Return
Best Screenplay: Silvermore
Best Editing: Darlene's Revenge
Best Cinematography: Action
Best Score: Silvermore
Best Art Direction: Darlene's Revenge
Best Sound: Gridiron Gridlocked
Best Sound Effects: The Mysterious Guests
Best Visual Effects: Dream World: The Return
Best Makeup: The Countess of Monte Carlo