In a clear demonstration of ARRI’s near dominance among industry professionals as their camera of choice, seven out of nine of this year’s Best Picture nominees for the Academy Awards were shot using ARRI cameras. These include award front-runners Amour, Life of Pi and Zero Dark Thirty – all captured digitally with ARRI ALEXA.

Tom Hooper’s  Les Misérables and David O Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook were shot on 35 mm with ARRICAM while Argo utilized a combination of both ALEXA and ARRICAM. Beasts of the Southern Wild chose Super 16 with the ARRIFLEX 416 and SR3 while many of these productions additionally relied on lighting equipment from ARRI

Four out of five films nominated for Best Director were shot with ARRI: Amour (director Michael Haneke), Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin), Life of Pi (Ang Lee) and Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell).

Life of Pi also received a Best Cinematography nomination for Claudio Miranda, ASC, competing with Skyfall, shot by Roger Deakins ASC, BSC on ALEXA Studio, Plus and M cameras.

In the category of Visual Effects, two of the five nominated films (Life of Pi and Marvel’s The Avengers) were made with ALEXA cameras, proving that the quality and detail of ALEXA excels under the most demanding VFX requirements on the biggest films.

Under Best Foreign Film, four out of five films used ARRI cameras: Amour, Kon-Tiki, A Royal Affair and War Witch. All of these features utilized ALEXA except for A Royal Affair, which relied on ARRICAM.

Life of Pi received 11 total nominations. Les Misérables, Silver Linings Playbook, Argo, Skyfall, Zero Dark Thirty and Beasts of the Southern Wild additionally received multiple nods.

Many of these films are also recognized for their visual artistry in other competitions including the BAFTAs, Directors Guild of America, Producers Guild of America and American Society of Cinematographers Awards. Beasts of the Southern Wild was the first recipient of the ARRI Sundance Grant.