Special Achievement Academy Award

The Special Achievement Award is an Academy Award given for an achievement that makes an exceptional contribution to the motion picture for which it was created, but for which there is no annual award category. Many of the film projects that received these awards were noted for breaking new ground in terms of technology, where an awards category simply did not yet exist for the given area. New awards categories were often opened in following years. For example, Toy Story was awarded a special achievement award as the first computer-animated feature film in 1996, before the best animated feature category debuted in 2001.^[1]

The award may only be conferred for achievements in productions that also qualify as an eligible release for distinguished achievements and meet the Academy's eligibility year and deadlines requirements. Special Achievement Awards were primarily given between the 1970s and 1990s, with only a single award being given since 2000.

Recipients

This table displays the individuals who received the Special Achievement Oscar for their contributions to film. The category was inaugurated in 1972.

Year	Recipient(s)	Achievement	Film
1972 (45th)	L. B. Abbott A. D. Flowers	Visual Effects	The Poseidon Adventure
1974 (47th)	Frank Brendel Glen Robinson Albert Whitlock	Visual Effects	Earthquake
1975 (48th)	Peter Berkos	Sound Effects	The Hindenburg
1975 (48th)	Albert Whitlock Glen Robinson	Visual Effects	The Hindenburg
1976 (49th)	Carlo Rambaldi Glen Robinson Frank Van der Veer		King Kong
1976 (49th)	L. B. Abbott Glen Robinson Matthew Yuricich		Logan's Run
1977 (50th)	Ben Burtt	Alien, Creature and Robot Voices	Star Wars
1977 (50th)	Frank Warner	Sound Effects Editing	Close Encounters of the Third Kind
1978 (51st)	Les Bowie Colin Chilvers Denys Coop Roy Field Derek Meddings Zoran Perisic	Visual Effects	Superman
1979 (52nd)	Alan Splet	Sound Editing	The Black Stallion
1980 (53rd)	Brian Johnson Richard Edlund Dennis Muren Bruce Nicholson	Visual Effects	The Empire Strikes Back
1981 (54th)	Ben Burtt Richard L. Anderson	Sound Effects Editing	Raiders of the Lost Ark
1983 (56th)	Richard Edlund Dennis Muren Ken Ralston Phil Tippett	Visual Effects	Return of the Jedi
1984 (57th)	Kay Rose	Sound Effects Editing	The River
1987 (60th)	Stephen Hunter Flick John Pospisil	Sound Effects Editing	RoboCop
1988 (61st)	Richard Williams	Animation Direction	Who Framed Roger Rabbit
1990 (63rd)	Eric Brevig Rob Bottin Tim McGovern Alex Funke	Visual Effects	Total Recall
1995 (68th)	John Lasseter	First Feature-Length Computer-Animated Film^[2]^[3]^[4]	Toy Story
2017 (90th)	Alejandro González Iñárritu	Virtual Reality	Flesh and Sand

References

^ "We Need More Special Achievement Oscars to Honor What is Interesting in Cinema". 23 February 2014.
^ "1995 Academy Awards". infoplease. Retrieved January 31, 2009.
^ King, Susan (September 30, 2015). "How 'Toy Story' changed the face of animation, taking off 'like an explosion'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 30, 2015.
^ "Three Pixar execs get special Oscars". San Francisco Chronicle. February 1, 1996. Retrieved March 12, 2009.

[1] "We Need More Special Achievement Oscars to Honor What is Interesting in Cinema". 23 February 2014.

[2] "1995 Academy Awards". infoplease. Retrieved January 31, 2009.

[3] King, Susan (September 30, 2015). "How 'Toy Story' changed the face of animation, taking off 'like an explosion'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 30, 2015.

[LasseterSpecial-4] "Three Pixar execs get special Oscars". San Francisco Chronicle. February 1, 1996. Retrieved March 12, 2009.

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