Adobe creative applications support 10 Oscar-nominated films

10 Oscar-nominated films used Adobe creative applications to bring their stories to life –  including three Oscar-nominated documentaries, and box-office hits ranging from Everything Everywhere All at Once to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Top Gun: Maverick.

Filmmakers used Adobe Creative Cloud applications including Premiere Pro, Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, and Frame.io to edit, create, and collaborate from anywhere – along with Adobe Substance 3D to produce photo- and hyper-realistic 3D objects and effects.

“We’re proud to empower Oscar-nominated filmmakers to bring the world’s greatest stories to life with the leading platform of creative applications and services in Adobe Creative Cloud and the Substance 3D collection,” said Ashley Still, senior vice president, Adobe Creative Cloud. “Adobe continues pushing the boundaries of innovation to unlock the future of filmmaking, empowering our customers to create in new mediums and collaborate in new ways, from anywhere.”

Celebrating Oscar Nominees

Outstanding storytellers behind this year’s frontrunning films trusted Adobe creative tools to power their projects:

• Editor Paul Rogers and his team at Parallax Post relied on Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Frame.io to bring Everything Everywhere All at Once to life, earning 11 nominations including Best Film Editing and Best Picture. “Premiere Pro is wonderful and I couldn’t imagine cutting in any other program,” said Rogers. “Combined with Frame.io, the whole workflow was very intuitive. I was able to focus on the film, not the tools.”
• Top Gun: Maverick Film UI designer Jayse Hansen turned to After Effects and Illustrator to supplement the practical interior shots of the various aircrafts by designing and animating the realistic cockpit, speed and command center displays that captivated audiences and earned six nominations, including Best Visual Effects and Best Picture. “All of Adobe’s tools play so well together,” said Hansen. “This allows our team the quickest workflow from design, to animation, back to changes, and then to final composites.”
• Adobe Creative Cloud and Frame.io were important tools for the post-production team of Fire of Love, the National Geographic Documentary Films feature which earned a Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award at Sundance as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature Film. VFX artist Kara Blake shared that “In bringing this moving story to life, Photoshop and After Effects helped us craft the visual design of the film and integrate archival footage from multiple eras while Frame.io made remote collaboration easy and efficient.”
• Digital Domain Texture Lead Artist Sarah Cosmi and her team used Substance 3D tools to polish the visuals in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which earned five nominations including Best Visual Effects and Best Costume Design. “To create the climactic battle of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Digital Domain built two complete digidouble armies, multiple super-powered combatants, and digital environments from scratch, and it all begins with the textures,” said Cosmi. “My team and I relied on Adobe Substance 3D as part of our integrated workflow to create every detail from the battleship to the oceans and more, which helped us deliver an amazing experience for audiences around the world.”

Adobe Creative Cloud and Substance 3D applications have also played major roles in the creation of globally popular and influential films, including the Star Wars and Spider-Man franchises, Frozen 2, The Batman, and Blade Runner 2049.

Industry Recognition

As a testament to Adobe’s continuing innovations in the film and entertainment industry, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honoured Adobe with a Scientific Technical Award for Substance 3D Designer’s contributions in visual effects and animation. This is Adobe’s third Scientific and Engineering Award, including After Effects and Photoshop’s 2018 recognition for their impacts on motion design and digital painting.

At the 2023 Eddie Awards, film editors who trusted Premiere Pro bring their stories to life were honoured for editing, including Best Edited Feature Film Everything Everywhere All at Once, Best Edited Single Camera Series The Bear, Best Edited Non-Script Series VICE, and Best Edited Animated Series Love Death and Robots.

Adobe also received the Lumiere™ Century Award from the Advanced Imaging Society for creating innovative post-production tools and pioneering access to creative technology solutions in the filmmaking industry.

Supporting Inclusive Storytelling

Furthering Adobe’s efforts to support the next generation of storytellers, the Adobe Foundation recently made a  $250,000 grant to the USC School of Dramatic Arts’ (SDA) MFA Acting Programme, directly supporting the production of short films by underrepresented students. This investment builds on Adobe’s commitment ‘to enable inclusivity, access, opportunity, and creativity for all’ and the Adobe Foundation’s support of ‘The Inclusion List’ — a new research-led effort with the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which measures inclusion in the industry from 1929 to present day, charting nominations for women and people of colour across 19 categories.