The TGIAF Oscars guide

by Adrian Worton

Throughout the last month we have been tracking the battles for the various gongs at the 2016 Oscars. With the ceremony happening tonight (or tomorrow, for those in the UK) we present our final probabilities for each award.

Before that, however, we will look back at our final predictions from last year's Oscars to see how accurate we they were, and therefore with how much certainty we can predict tonight's ceremony.

Last year's predictions

We had two sets of predictions in 2015 - one for the full schedule of awards and one on the final night for eight of the bigger awards. As our tracking has shown, favourites easily change during February, so we will only look at the eight awards predicted on the final night.

Below are these eight awards, with the probabilities of the runners presented in descending order. Those highlighted in yellow are the eventual winner.

We can see that the favourites won in seven cases, with only the Original Screenplay award seeing anything close to a surprise, although second-favourite Birdman had still been given a decent 34.5% chance of winning - and due to the nature of probability we would not have expected all eight favourites to win anyway.

Seeing these results suggests that this method of predicting Oscars results is reasonably sound, and we can be reasonably confident with our predictions for tonight's awards, at least with regards to the bigger awards.

This year's predictions

Below is a list of each award and our latest probabilities. For an explanation of how this method works, and to see how the probabilities have changed over time, see our previous article.

Best Picture
The Revenant (62.5%); Spotlight (21.3%); The Big Short (12.2%); Room (1.7%); Mad Max: Fury Road (1.1%); The Martian (0.6%); Bridge of Spies (0.3%); Brooklyn (0.3%)

Best Director
A.G. Iñárritu (82.1%); G. Miller (9.7%); A McKay (4.2%); T McCarthy (3.4%); L Abrahamson (0.7%)

Best Actor
L. DiCaprio (90.1%); E. Redmayne (4.3%); M. Fassbender (3.5%); B. Cranston (1.1%); M Damon (0.9%)

Best Actress
B. Larson (88.3%); S. Ronan (7.0%); J. Lawrence (1.8%); C. Blanchett (1.8%); C. Rampling (1.1%)

Best Supporting Actor
S. Stallone (65.3%); M. Rylance (23.2%); C. Bale (5.1%); T Hardy (5.1%); M Ruffalo (1.3%)

Best Supporting Actress
A. Vikander (66.9%); K. Winslet (21.5%); R. Mara (9.1%); J.J. Leigh (1.7%); R. McAdams (0.9%)

Best Original Screenplay
Spotlight (79.4%); Inside Out (11.5%); Straight Outta Compton (3.7%); Bridge of Spies (3.7%); Ex Machina (1.7%)

Best Adapted Screenplay
The Big Short (84.2%); Room (9.8%); Brooklyn (3.8%); The Martian (1.1%); Carol (1.1%)

Best Animated Feature Film
Inside Out (90.3%); Anomalisa (4.3%); Shaun the Sheep Movie (2.7%); When Marnie Was There (1.4%); Boy & the World (1.4%)

Best Foreign Language Film
Son of Saul (81.2%); Mustang (12.2%); Embrace of the Serpent (2.5%); A War (2.1%); Theeb (2.1%)

Best Documentary - Feature
Amy (72.5%); Cartel Land (19.3%); The Look of Silence (5.1%); What Happened, Miss Simone? (1.7%); Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom (1.3%)

Best Documentary - Short Subject
Body Team 12 (40.6%); Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah (40.6%); A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness (10.7%); Chau, Beyond the Lines (4.1%); Last Day of Freedom (4.1%)

Best Live Action Short Film
Ave Maria (46.4%); Shok (25.7%); Stutterer (15.2%); Day One (8.3%); Everything Will Be Okay (4.4%)

Best Animated Short Film
Sanjay's Super Team (44.3%); World of Tomorrow (33.8%); Bear Story (16.9%); Prologue (2.9%); We Can't Live Without Cosmos (2.1%)

Best Original Score
E. Morricone (77.1%); J. Williams (15.8%); T Newman (3.8%): J. Jóhannsson (1.7%); C. Burwell (1.7%)

Best Original Song
Til It Happens to You (60.4%); Writing's on the Wall (16.5%); Simple Song #3 (10.3%); Earned It (9.7%); Manta Ray (3.2%)

Best Sound Editing
Mad Max: Fury Road (52.7%); The Revenant (34.8%); Star Wars: The Force Awakens (8.3%); The Martian (3.2%); Sicario (1.0%)

Best Sound Mixing
Mad Max: Fury Road (48.5%); The Revenant (41.9%); Star Wars: The Force Awakens (6.5%); The Martian (2.0%); Bridge of Spies (1.0%)

Best Production Design
Mad Max: Fury Road (81.3%); The Danish Girl (5.8%); The Revenant (4.6%); The Martian (4.1%); Bridge of Spies (4.1%)

Best Cinematography
E. Lubezki (84.0%); J. Seale (9.2%); R. Deakins (2.6%); E. Lachman (2.6%); R. Ricardson (1.7%)

Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Mad Max: Fury Road (78.0%); The Revenant (20.2%); The 100-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (1.8%)

Best Costume Design
J. Beavan (52.0%); S. Powell for Cinderella (23.1%); S. Powell for Carol (15.7%); P. Delgado (5.1%); J. West (4.1%)

Best Film Editing
Mad Max: Fury Road (70.7%); The Big Short (17.9%); The Revenant (5.7%); Spotlight (5.0%); Star Wars: The Force Awakens (0.8%)