UT Alumna’s Short Film Nominated for Academy Award

By Jordan Schraeder in Blog, Special on January 30, 2012 at 3:22 pm | 1 Comment

Can’t see the video? Click here.

It’s not every day that a film you made is a contender for an Oscar nomination.

With that mentality, Time Freak producer Gigi Causey, BS ’95, a graduate of UT’s Radio-Television-Film program, and her writer-director husband, Andrew Bowler, decided to film themselves watching the nomination announcements live at 5:30 a.m. last Tuesday morning.

Clad in bathrobes and pajamas, the film-making duo’s ecstatic reaction to Time Freak’s nomination in the Live-Action Short Film category has since gone viral, even earning a spot on Good Morning America’s “Play of the Day” segment.

And their YouTube video isn’t the only thing generating buzz. The 11-minute story of a neurotic inventor who, consumed with regret, creates a time machine and gets lost traveling in his past, has garnered international praise—even winning the grand prize at the Seattle International Film Festival.

Causey served as producer on the project, while Bowler wrote the screenplay and directed the short. Now based in LA, Causey has previously worked on movies including 2008’s Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, and the upcoming Denzel Washington-Ryan Reynolds flick Safe House.

The Oscar winners will be announced at the 84th Annual Academy Awards on Feb. 26.