Motion Picture Academy shares details of May 4 general meeting

By Nicole Sperling

April 4, 2013 12 AM PT

Since the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences sent out a “Save the Date” notice last week inviting its entire 6,000-person membership to an unprecedented general meeting, Hollywood has been buzzing about just what would be on the agenda.

Now, academy President Hawk Koch is unveiling his motives for calling the confab.

“It’s about time the academy is finally doing this,” said Koch, a longtime Board of Governors member whose term as president will end in August after one year, due to academy term limit rules. “The membership has been asking about this for many, many years. It’s a good thing to do and I was lucky enough to be president this year where I was pushing for as many changes as I could make.”

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According to the invitation that went out Thursday, the academy intends to update the members on the latest developments surrounding the academy’s new movie museum being built on the campus of LACMA; electronic voting for the Oscars; and how the organization intends to deal with new technology, both as it relates to the awards distributed at the annual telecast and how it effects the membership at large.

The meeting will be held at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater at the academy headquarters on Saturday morning, May 4, and simulcast to the Lighthouse International theater in New York and to Pixar Studios in Emeryville, Calif. Koch, academy Chief Executive Dawn Hudson and academy Chief Operating Officer Ric Robertson will make a formal presentation followed by a question-and-answer period.

The academy is requesting that members submit questions ahead of time in an effort “to increase communication” and “to hear what’s important to you,” the invite said.

Koch is optimistic that the event will “be a full house,” and hopes members submit a lot of questions ahead of time. “We want to address what the majority of our members are asking about,” he said.

One academy member said he was encouraged by the meeting, hoping that it would delve into issues being presented by by the new technologies that are creeping into every area of filmmaking.

“Most of the guilds have at least one annual, membership meeting,” said the member. “Why not AMPAS?”

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