One University of Utah Professor is part of a group nominated for "Best Animated Short Film" by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
That means the movie "Ninety-Five Senses" could bring home an Oscar!
Hubbel Palmer, a screenwriting professor at the University of Utah, co-wrote the film and joined us, along with Tori Baker from the Salt Lake Film Society. Their non-profit program MAST produced the film.
The film is about a man who is on death row and he's counting down the minutes until he's executed. As he looks back on the happy times of his life and the mistakes he's made, it's all sort of through the lends of the five senses.
Each scene is animated in six distinctive styles by six different artists.
Palmer and his co-writer Chris Bowman got the idea in 2019 when they found a series called Execution Watch, which are interviews of death row inmates.
The film took over three years from the initial concept to animation, and first premiered in 2022.
“Well, we started putting the film out in the world once it was completed,” Palmer added. “And initially, it was sort of like, not a lot of interest from film festivals.”
That all changed quickly.
“And then it just kind of started to snowball," he said.
People and festivals have taken notice of their film. "Ninety-Five Senses" has been in over 30 film festivals and has won over a dozen awards.
The Oscar nomination is a first for the professor in his career in film and he hopes this accolade will be an opportunity to guide his students in an often challenging industry.
You can watch "Ninety-Five Senses" for free on MAST's website smallscreenings.org and it's also streaming on ROKU.
