YOU have to feel for Dave Clayton.
While the Australian media has been hyping for more than a month the Oscar chances of Hugh Jackman, Naomi Watts, Jacki Weaver and make-up artist and hairstylist Rick Findlater, nobody bothered to check if Clayton was an Aussie.
Somehow the 34-year-old visual effects wizard, born in Brisbane, educated at the Queensland University of Technology and with a resume that includes some of the great spectacle films of the last decade - Avatar, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, King Kong and I, Robot - fell through the cracks.
It's official.
Australia has five, not four, nominees at Monday's AEDT 85th Academy Awards, with Clayton a good chance at winning a gold statuette in the visual effects category for his work on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
As animation supervisor, one of Clayton's major tasks was to ensure the beloved Gollum lived up to Hobbit fans' great expectations.
"One of my mates was watching TV and a promo said 'Coming up, Australia's Oscar nominees' and he thought 'Great, Dave is going to be on here'," Clayton, who finds his accidental snub by the media amusing, laughed.
"I wasn't on the show. The four other Aussies were on it."
Clayton has spent the last decade living in Wellington, New Zealand, after Peter Jackson saw a humorous animated short film, Cane-Toad: What Happened to Baz?, Clayton made with Brisbane mate Andrew Silke and gave him a job.
Clayton and Silke took six months off work to make the six minute film, but it paid off big time.
Clayton's first job at Jackson's Weta production house was Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, which went on to win a record 11 Oscars at the 2004 Academy Awards.
The Oscar celebration will be a family affair for Clayton, with wife Kylie, their daughters, three-year-old Esme and eight-month-old Sylvie, and his in-laws, Denis and Mary Lander, flying to Los Angeles from New Zealand.
The plan was for the Landers to babysit Esme and Sylvie on the big night, but Clayton managed to arrange two extra tickets to the Oscar ceremony, scoring big points with his in-laws.
"I have the suit, the limo, had a haircut and that's about it," Clayton, who has organised a babysitter for his kids, said.
"Being a bloke it's pretty straightforward.
"My wife has all of her hair and make-up lined up and the great New Zealand designer Juliette Hogan has made her a dress."
The favourite for the visual effects Oscar is the team from the Ang Lee visual feast, Life of Pi, but Clayton and his fellow Hobbit nominees - Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon and Christopher White - are second favourites.
Clayton knows it is a cliche, but he's just happy with the first Oscar nomination of his career.
Thankfully, if Clayton's name is called out at the Academy Awards as a winner, we now know he is a boy from Brisbane.
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