The 2025 Oscar Craft Races: Who Will Win, Who Should Win
Editor’s Note: On Februrary 27 this article was updated to reflect changes in our predictions for the Best Sound and Best Production Design categories.
When it comes to the “technical” categories, we all know what the Academy voters like: large-scale world-building, showy “look at me” uses of craft, period detail, and, ideally, especially for certain categories (like Best Editing and Cinematography), it helps to be the Best Picture front-runner. But those aren’t always the ingredients that make for the best filmmaking and visual and aural storytelling.
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With final Oscar voting having wrapped, the IndieWire craft team looks at eight categories to see who is most likely to win and who we would pick if we had a vote. A few notes before we jump in.
The “Will Win” sections below are based on the latest predictions by IndieWire’s Bill Desowitz, the best craft and animation awards analyst in the business. Make sure to follow Bill’s continued coverage of the craft Oscar races as guild awards continue to confirm or upset predictions, especially with so many races in a state of flux.
The “Should Win” sections below are based on the rest of the craft team’s opinions. And full disclosure, this year, more than any other recent year, we were less in agreement, which just speaks to how certain categories (for example, Best Cinematography and Best Production Design) are loaded with award-worthy work.
Best Cinematography
Will Win: “The Brutalist” (Lol Crawley)
This is a stacked category, and with Greig Fraser having already won for the first “Dune” movie, it would appear for the moment Lol Crawley is in the lead. Although the shot on VistaVision angle is overblown in terms of explaining Crowley’s excellent work, it’s part of a larger narrative about how the cinematographer and director Brady Corbet created an epic canvas for a period film costing less than $10 million that will likely register with the Academy as a whole.
Should Win: “Maria” (Ed Lachman)
Cinematographer Ed Lachman reunited with his “El Conde” director Pablo Larrain for this gorgeous bio-pic about opera singer Maria Callas and, in the process, found the perfect cinematic corollary for opera itself. Combining a constantly moving camera, lenses that heighten reality, and a psychological approach to color, Lachman perfectly conveys both the experience of watching an opera and Maria’s inner emotional state. The use of color in her apartment, for example, where warm colors give the impression of a protective nest but are then invaded by harsher greens as the outside world intrudes, tells us all we need to know about Maria’s feelings that she cannot — or will not — articulate. Lachman utilizes a variety of stocks to depict different periods or different states of mind: 16mm for footage shot by a documentary crew, super-8mm to replicate material filmed by Callas’ butler, which Lachman looked at for research, color 35mm for the 1960s and 1970s, and black-and-white 35mm for Maria’s memories. From the movie’s striking opening sequence of Maria singing to the camera in gorgeous black-and-white to its devastating climax, “Maria” is a clinic in how to express character and emotion through purely visual means. —JH
Best Costume Design
Will Win: “Wicked” (Paul Tazewell)
The relationship between Elphaba (Oscar-nominated Cynthia Erivo) and Galinda (Oscar-nominated Ariana Grande) is arguably the biggest movie story of the year, one fans, the press, and awards voters can’t seem to get enough of. And it’s one that costume designer Paul Tazewell told elegantly and iconically in creating the intentional differences and juxtapositions between dark and light, color, texture, and silhouette. Bottom-line, it’s the type of awards story that will register across the branches.
Should Win: “Gladiator II” (Janty Yates)
“Gladiator II” is a sweeping epic in the grandest Hollywood tradition that required costume designers Janty Yates and Dave Crossman to dress thousands of actors and extras. Yet what makes their work stand out isn’t its scale but the sense of intimate detail; each costume tells a story, from the opulent clothes and accessories that mark Denzel Washingon’s Macrinus as a social climber to the excesses of power-mad emperors Geta and Caracalla, whose looks are as influenced by punk rock as by Roman history. As the designer in charge of military uniforms, Crossman had to create outfits for 150 gladiators yet never went for the generic or obvious — look closely, and you’ll see that each warrior has his own distinct armor according to rank and specialty as well as personality. Add to that Yates’ powerful but subtle looks for Lucius — a character who had to compete visually with Russell Crowe’s iconic hero from the first movie — and “Gladiator II” reveals itself to contain the most audacious and ambitious costume design of 2024. —JH
Best Editing
Will Win: “Conclave” (Nick Emerson)
The process of selecting the next pope is turned into a taught, twisty, paranoid thriller. Combined with being a legit Best Picture contender, “Conclave” will likely be the obvious pick for editing. That being said, with this past weekend’s awards wins, “Anora” is back to Oscar frontrunner status, and director Sean Baker’s turn as editor could give Emerson some stiff competition. This may now be a toss-up.
Should Win: “Anora” (Sean Baker)
Sean Baker wrote, cast, directed, and produced “Anora,” so his editing of the film could be written off as the execution of his own well-laid plan and indistinguishable from the auteur’s overall contribution. Except that so much of what makes “Anora” a thoughtful, hysterical, gut-punching ride is the way Baker handles some truly neck-snapping tonal twists as the film moves from fairytale to something far more complicated. Each section of the film is impeccably paced around Ani’s (Mikey Madison) strongest emotions while offering the audience just enough perspective and sense of place to keep us intrigued about the world she (and we) finds herself in. “Anora” feels as inevitable and uncontrollable as a whirlwind, but that’s a huge credit to Baker and his editing team, who seamlessly find the best route to Vegas and back again. —SS
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Will Win: “The Substance” (Prosthetics makeup designer Pierre-Olivier Persin)
We’ll find out with Demi Moore’s Best Actress run if the Academy can get past its rather obvious bias against horror, but the one category where the Oscars have never failed to celebrate the supernatural is makeup and hairstyling, where Persin is joined by fellow horror nominee David White for his work on “Nosferatu.” The Academy likes big transformations, making “A Different Man” a sleeper pick, but the body horror elements are at the heart of “The Substance” breaking through and getting a surprising five Oscar nominations, including for Moore’s performance — and the Academy has a recent history of connecting acting and makeup with double wins for “The Whale” and “Poor Things.”
Should Win: “The Substance”
Yes, El Monstro is a cubist masterpiece. A Coralie Fargest fever dream made tangible, and somehow big screen believable by Persin’s art as much as his technical achievement. But it’s not the extremes that nudge this work over the top in a category of heavy hitters. In the beginning of the film’s earliest transformation, the skin and flesh and bone remain organic in appearance as it rips apart. It’s work that is not masked by cuts or shadows, as is so common, but, like the actresses themselves, left naked and exposed under Fargeat’s macro lens and bright white bathroom set. This is not only an incredible technical achievement, but to actually feel the flesh splitting open as if giving birth to another being (Margaret Qualley’s Sue) is the soul of the ideas and themes of the film. —CO
Best Production Design
Will Win: “Wicked” (Nathan Crowley)
First off, let’s acknowledge this category this year is, once again, both absolutely stacked and incredibly competitive. In particular, this is a race between “The Brutalist” production designer Judy Becker and Nathan Crowley, who somehow has never won after all his incredible Christopher Nolan collaborations and whose big-budget, large-scale builds for “Wicked” are something the Academy-at-large will be looking to reward in the technical categories. There is also a recent history of costume and production designer winners coming from the same film, which also tips the scales toward “Wicked.” Still, Becker’s got a chance here. For starters, the film is about an architect (post-nominations, the Academy likes simple narratives as members start voting outside their own branches), but also how Becker, cinematographer Lol Crawley, and Corbet create a sense of scale with movie magic ingenuity is a narrative voters will be drawn to.
Should Win: “The Brutalist”
We do have to have more discussions about generative AI and establishing best practices, but Becker’s use of Midjourney to render two drawings as ’80s-ified artifacts in the epilogue (which were then hand drawn) should hardly be controversial, and the IndieWire Craft Team across the board was wowed by what Becker and team were able to achieve using a clever mix of largely old-school techniques. The pressure on the production design is right there in the title. Becker needed to deliver a decades-spanning vision of America in which the geometry of spaces, particularly those designed by László Tóth (Adrien Brody), has an acute and often achingly poignant emotional dimension. Tóth’s transformation of Harrison Lee Van Buren’s (Guy Pearce) study is but the first instance throughout the film where the characters’ deep wounds and desire for freedom come together in a wordless, visual celebration of design. Becker does this throughout the film, with a mix of builds and model work, and with such gravity it really does feel like the shell of Tóth’s soul is up in the construction site on the hill. –SS
Best Original Score
Will Win: “The Brutalist” (Daniel Blumberg)
Blumberg’s stiffest competition, and deservedly so, is “Conclave” composer Volker Bertelmann, but look for the innovative and thematically rich music from “The Brutalist” to be what captures Oscar voters’ attention, especially with the crowd-pleasing “Challengers” score not getting nominated.
Should Win: “The Brutalist”
Music does have a way of embodying or articulating ideas with a scope that is impossible to achieve with words. But still. Blumberg met one of the wildest dramatic challenges set for a composer this year and found the sound of brutalism with “The Brutalist.” The film’s score is, by turns, delicate and bold, flowing and discordant, unrepentantly experimental, and an echo of the grandeur of Hollywood. Themes pick and unpick themselves as neurotically as László Tóth (Adrien Brody) sketches out designs for a community center at the behest of his mercurial patron (Guy Pearce), but Blumberg also constructs a musical journey between characters and across decades with his music. The score does it all, never quite working fully with or against the picture but giving it a musical shape we can almost see in the film’s most important moments. —SS
Best Sound
Will Win: “Dune: Part Two” (Gareth John, Richard King, Ron Bartlett and Doug Hemphill)
This is a race between “Wicked” and “Dune: Part Two,” two big Hollywood movies that use sound in very different ways. The Academy has a tradition of rewarding musicals in the sound categories (now a singular category), but the sound mixers (Cinema Audio Society) just gave their big prize to another musical film, “A Complete Unknown.” Yet all signs (two big MPSE wins) are pointing to the Academy likely voting again for Denis Villeneuve and team’s sonic world-building.
Should Win: “Dune: Part Two” (Gareth John, Richard King, Ron Bartlett and Doug Hemphill)
The sound team behind “Dune: Part Two,” all of whom but supervising sound editor Richard King returned after working on the first “Dune,” could easily have rested on its laurels and recycled effects and motifs from the original film. Instead, they created an entirely new sonic landscape, finding a unique aural language for each of the desert landscapes and using sound to trace the arc of hero Paul Atreides. In his first big sequence with the sandworm, for example, the audible aspects of Timothée Chalamet’s performance merge on the soundtrack with Hans Zimmer’s score and a vivid array of effects to build tension and anticipation; the sequence is also a perfect example of the movie’s ability to blend the fantastical with organic, recognizable sounds from the real world. Even when “Dune: Part Two” climaxes with a massive galactic battle sequence involving spacecraft and sandworms, the core sounds have a grounded quality that makes the action all the more involving and compelling — the movie as a whole balances character and spectacle beautifully, and the sound plays a major role in that. —JH
Best Visual Effects
Will Win: “Dune: Part Two” (Paul Lambert, Stephen James, Rhys Salcombe and Gerd Nefzer)
Following the near sweep of “Dune” in the craft categories in 2022, it would appear VFX is where its sequel is most likely to repeat. That’s in part because Denis Villeneuve, Lambert, and DNEG turned the dial up on the visceral action, especially with Paul’s (Timothée Chalamet) sandworm ride. But also working in its favor is the acting branch’s (dumbass) bias against performance capture.
Should Win: “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” (Erik Winquist, Stephen Unterfranz, Paul Story and Rodney Burke)
It is time for the Academy to finally acknowledge the performance capture work of the “Planet of the Apes” franchise. Full stop.
This isn’t a make-right vote for the previous years it should have won. It’s an acknowledgment of how visual effects supervisor Erik Winquist, Wētā, and team continue to push the most exciting, human, and organic VFX technology to come along in decades to new heights with each film. To see performance capture become so agile it can adapt to essentially what is a road film with multiple locations and an ensemble of talking apes is truly next level. And to now be able to see, via the Blu-ray split screen, how the raw actor performance is translated to the finished product only deepens our appreciation for the careful craft that is put into these films.
And memo to the Acting Branch: For all that CGI technology has done to minimize and manipulate your craft, how about acknowledging with each step of the way that Wētā has honored and preserved the soul of performances and, with each iteration, strives to get that much better. –CO
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