Pasadena, Calif. ? No screaming fans. No crush of paparazzi. A red carpet that was more like a doormat.

Hollywood trekked to a Pasadena hotel over the weekend to honor the unsung creators of all manner of moviemaking gizmos as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences celebrated the other half of its name.

It was strictly an A-list crowd — A for academic — at Saturday night’s annual Scientific and Technical Awards banquet, where the first Academy Awards were presented in a ceremony to be seen only as a fleeting insert in the Feb. 27 Oscars telecast.

“This is the ultra nerds and the uber geeks,” said Richard Edlund, chairman of the academy’s technical awards committee.

When one winner thanked his wife for “putting up with weird math equations,” the crowd laughed knowingly.

Johansson had the night’s toughest job as she waded through recitation of the honored moviemaking machinery.

Johansson relied heavily on a teleprompter, yet still stumbled at times. At one point, she tossed up her hands and said, “Lost me there again.”

But clearly, Johansson had a sense of humor about her tricky task.

“We’re here to discuss the world of digital compositing, and Table 23, I’m only going through this once!” she said.

Actress Scarlett Johansson, host of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scientific and Technical Awards, has trouble with the technical jargon and tosses up her hands as she reads a telaprompter in the back of the room during the ceremony Saturday in Pasadena, Calif.