Why We Should Care About the Oscars Sci-Tech Awards

These Academy Awards honor the technical guts that make movie magic possible.

ByABC News
February 22, 2015, 1:51 AM

— -- Somewhere in the middle of tonight's Oscar telecast, the scientific and technical awards will get a brief mention.

Many viewers at home will take that time to get up, stretch their legs and go fetch another drink or more Oscar nibbles.

But without those folks, some of whose names will be mentioned during the Oscar broadcast, the faces we've come to know and love on the big screen wouldn't look so good, and the silver screen magic wouldn't be as magical.

"We look at the actors and the director -- those are the people who you see on camera who get all the press," Jordan Zakarin, a writer for Yahoo Movies, told ABC News. "But no movie is possible without the hundreds of people who work on set everyday, running the set and the special effects. There are all these people behind the scenes."

Some of those people behind the scenes were recognized earlier in the month at the Academy's Scientific and Technical Awards presentation on Feb. 7. Known in the industry as the Sci-Tech Awards, they were hosted this year by Margot Robbie and Miles Teller.

"Margot and Miles represent some of the best of the next generation of rising stars and it is only fitting that they host an evening saluting the film innovations and innovators who will inform the future," Oscar producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron said in a statement.

The pair handed out 21 awards to 58 individual recipients throughout the evening, portions of which will be broadcast tonight.

"Our honorees represent an enormous range of technologies, from camera rigs to software systems, with names as colorful as ‘Biscuit Jr.,’ ‘Barbershop’ and ‘PhysBAM,’” Richard Edlund, an Oscar-winning visual effects artist and chair of the Scientific and Technical Awards Committee, said in a statement. "They exemplify the phenomenal creativity of professionals in the scientific and technical community, and the invaluable contributions they make to what is arguably the most creative industry in the world."

So while you may be eager to get back to the rest of the show, just remember there would be no "Hobbit," no "Avatar" and no "Birdman" without the achievements of the sci-tech community.