 | | Erich Ragsdale and Jeanne Stern '03 visited Connecticut College to debut their film, The Isle of Cattywampus. | |
With ingenuity, creativity and hard work, filmmaker Jeanne Stern ’03 brought an epic journey to life – in miniature. For her latest film, The Isle of Cattywampus, Stern created the puppets and dioramas depicting the cosmic adventure of two space explorers. She and fellow filmmaker Erich Ragsdale also designed their own stereoscopic camera to shoot their work. “There’s no real information out there about creating a miniature film in 3D,” she said. “It’s been a new endeavor for both of us.” They debuted their film at the College’s 11th Biennial Symposium on Arts and Technology on March 1. It was commissioned by the College’s Ammerman Center for Arts & Technology and shot in two lenses – one for each eye. The partners built their own camera attachment and experimented with mirrors and lenses to create different three-dimensional spaces as the characters travel through a variety of unique settings. “I feel like a lot of movies do all of the imaginative work for you, but I’m interested in leaving enough open spaces so that the audience can be a part of it,” she said. “I want to use film to transport people to another place.” The film takes place shortly after the first moon landing and has a 1960s homemade aesthetic. “It goes back to when people were excited about the future,” Stern said. When creating puppets and dioramas for films, Stern likes to use objects with texture like furry fabrics and Jell-O so that her audience wants to touch what is projected on screen. She often uses objects that “have some age to them” since they “contain built-in stories,” such as streamers from her eighth birthday and crayons she used growing up. “For me, many of these objects preserve a moment in time,” she said. By the time Stern began her four years at Connecticut College, she knew she wanted to major in studio art but was worried about the computer science course required for her arts and technology certificate program. To her surprise, she wound up enjoying the subject so much that she minored in it. “I had never used programming before but I realized it’s basically just math, and I like the patterns you find in math – the perfection of it,” she said. Before graduating, Stern also had initial exposure to film studies courses. She created her first picture, Pez Girl, in an advanced film course with David Tetzlaff, associate professor of theater and film studies. She earned her master’s in film studies at University of Texas in Austin, where she met Ragsdale and currently resides. Stern believes that one of the benefits of having a liberal arts education was that she was always able to find new ideas for her artwork through her courses and experiences. “I missed that in grad school when I was specializing in one topic,” she said. “I was running out of ideas for subject matter.” Sprout, which she completed in graduate school, will be playing at SXSW this month in Austin. Two of her other films, Les Malaventures de Zut-Alors and Piano Mouths, are touring with Heather Henson's Handmade Puppet Dreams Film Festival. To learn more about Stern, please visit her web site at www.jeannestern.com. | 