'Once in a lifetime': small Aussie studio in Oscar hope

A small Australian visual effects studio is celebrating a "once in a lifetime" chance to win an Oscar for its work on a Hollywood blockbuster.

Visual effects supervisor Guido Wolter, from Adelaide-based Rising Sun Pictures, is among a team of four nominated for best visual effects at the Academy Awards for Ryan Coogler's segregation-era vampire thriller Sinners.

The film starring Michael B Jordan has stormed into the awards race with the most Academy Award nominations of ?any release this year, landing a record 16 nods including for best picture.

Wolter described the nomination as a dream come true for the small studio.

"We're up against the big players ... it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing. This opportunity doesn't come around very often," he told AAP.

For Wolter, the biggest challenge was creating visual effects for a film shot primarily on 70mm IMAX film.

"Film is a medium that's not being used anymore ... it's a fairly slow process and it's not as precise as digital," he said.

"The biggest challenge we had was communicating with the outside world that we did a fair bit of work with this project ... the fact you don't see it is the point."

The Australian-German dual citizen said viewers were often under the misconception visual effects were just about Marvel movies.

"About 80 per cent of what you're watching is 'invisible' visual effects but you just don't realise it," he said.

Wolter described the nomination experience as humbling, maintaining recognition belonged to the entire Sinners team.

"It feels unreal. It's something very, very special," he said.

Australian Hollywood duo Rose Byrne and Jacob Elordi are nominated for best actress and best supporting actor respectively.

They are joined by a third Australian in line for a major gong, with Nick Cave getting a surprise nod for best original song.

Byrne's performance in indie film If I had Legs I'd Kick You has already earned her the best actress prize at four key pre-Oscars events including the Golden Globes.

She received the news of her Oscar nomination in the middle of the night in Australia when her husband contacted her from New York.

"And then he started screaming, it was like 'They said your name!' and then my parents came in the room, they're like 'Oh my God' and then we were all screaming, and that was it," she said.

"Now I've had a shot of adrenaline and I'm wide awake."

Byrne is up against Jessie Buckley in Hamnet, Kate Hudson in Song Sung Blue, Renate Reinsve in Sentimental Value and Emma Stone in Bugonia.

Elordi has been nominated for his role in Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein, one of nine nods for the Netflix film.

Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, the Brisbane-born actor said he was "beside himself" after receiving the news.

"I am so excited. I mean, I'm 28 years old. It's wind in the sails," he said.

Cave was nominated for the title song to Clint Bentley's film Train Dreams, which stars Australian actor Joel Edgerton.

Edgerton, the central pillar of Train Dreams, was not nominated, though the picture earned four nominations, including best picture.

Australian costume and production designer Fiona Crombie has also been nominated for an Oscar in the best production design category, for her work on Hamnet.

One Battle After Another, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, Bugonia, F1, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value and Train Dreams are also nominated for this ?year's best picture trophy.

Winners of the gold Oscar statuettes will be chosen by the roughly 10,000 actors, producers, directors and film craftspeople who make up the Academy of ?Motion ?Picture Arts and Sciences.

Warner Bros Discovery, the studio subject to a bidding war between Netflix and Paramount Skydance, led all studios with 30 nominations.

with Reuters and Associated Press