Dr. Schaub's movie Mitzi and Mencken
Four years of intensive research and production craft a success
Briana Booker
- Page 1 of 1
|
College of Notre Dame of Maryland campus is quiet, but within its walls there's a creative student body and faculty. One very creative and interesting character within the school walls is Dr. Joseph Schaub. He is an associate professor of communication arts who conducts classes on film and media but he is also known for his own creations.
Schaub's short films are experimental documentaries, or as he likes to call them, "creative non-fiction," which is an art technique of taking a true story and then presenting it in a creative way. His favorite method of presenting the story is through animation. He became very interested in this form of art at the early age of 12, when his grandmother introduced him to oil painting and sketching. "I saw the world as art, and wanted to be involved in making something others could see and react to ,"Schaub says.
But the best thing about creating short films according to Schaub is the process of editing together materials that lack connections with each other and use these elements to work harmoniously together. An example of how he creates this film magic can be seen in his short film called Mitzi and Mencken, which is a 14 minute film telling the story of an elderly woman reflecting back on her youth and on her political activism. It centers around when Mitzi was 17- years- old and got arrested for participating at an interracial tennis match.
The telling of the story blends Alche Mencken, a well known reporter of the Baltimore Sun's life with hers on the account her story was his last written work before a stroke prevented him from ever writing again. This film took four years between the summer of 2003 to 2007 to be created.
Other works of Schaub are Tangerine Crows, an animation film, and Waves of Pure Lemon, about a 70- year -old woman who describes her admiration for the author Virginia Wolfe, but becomes crushed at discovering that Wolfe committed suicide since she read her books for inspiration. He says film is a great way to touch people emotionally and in adding a poetic way.
He advises anyone who wants to get into film to decide if they want to do it simply for money or for artistic rewards. Schaub also promotes students to post their art at festivals, YouTube; a Web site for video and audio file sharing, and anywhere else possible because Schaub says short, animated films are generally a new medium that is in need of exploration.
No comments:
Post a Comment