 "Photo: N/A")
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OSU doesn’t offer a degree in filmmaking, but that didn’t stop an OSU graduate from pursuing her passion.
English and screen studies graduate, Liz Tabish, said she found her interest in filmmaking at an early age.
“I was playing around with video cameras in the fifth grade with my friends,” she said. “Instead of going out and partying, we were making videos. We were complete nerds.”
Tabish was in theater and journalism during high school and continued to make film projects on the side.
Once she came to college, she worked in the theater department and on short films and film projects, which she said lead to what she hopes to be her first major feature film, “The Erased.”
The horror film features a group of college students in the 1960s performing an initiation ceremony for their secret society in an old, creepy mansion, she said.
The students must perform challenges, but when the students start seeing images of their deaths and older versions of themselves, they aren’t sure whether they can trust one another or if the house is haunted.
“It sets up traumatic tensions between characters and scary moments occur,” Tabish said. “There are some pretty great eerie images.”
Tabish said it’s always something random that sparks her attention for a movie idea.
“It never makes sense the way one thought goes to the next,” she said. “It always starts with something weird — some image or song. It hits you or strikes you a certain way that makes you feel something you usually don’t.”
Tabish said her first idea for “The Erased” came after seeing the blue and red title sequence of “Clockwork Orange.”
After finding that first inspiration, Tabish said the process of completing a film can be overwhelming.
“There’s so many elements,” she said. “You have to see it in these small increments, slowly putting the pieces together.”
Tabish said her biggest challenge so far has been executing the look and feel of the 1960s era while using a digital camera.
However, she said setting the film in the Marland Mansion in Ponca City has helped with having an authentic 1960s look.
“It’s an amazing building with tons of different styles,” she said. “It’s gorgeous and it’s huge, so we get to play with these wide frames to show the vastness of everything.”
Because she worked with the OSU theater department, Tabish said she also was lucky to have actors whom she was comfortable working with.
“Over a course of a number of years, seeing how actors grow and being friends with them and seeing everyone transform into being pretty confident with their craft, it’s nice to be able to use that and put that on film, too,” she said.
Brandon Moorhead, a theater performance senior and actor in the film, said he was glad to work with Tabish and she was helpful in finding his character.
“I was thrilled when she cast me and I saw the script,” Moorhead said. “She was pretty descriptive of what she wanted, so it gave me a good starting point of where she wanted to go.”
Other movies that inspired “The Erased” include “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Eyes Without a Face,” which she said is her favorite horror movie.
“It’s very eerie, and I like eerie,” Tabish said. “I’m not a huge fan of gore and violence, which my film has, but I like that eerie, creepy feeling that gets under your skin.”
Tabish said they are about one-third finished and she hopes the film will be completed in summer 2010.
After it’s finished, she said she will then have to start a new project.
“I get really depressed,” she said. “I mean, at first near the completion it’s this frustration, but once it’s done, it’s thrilling to have this piece, but it’s over. And knowing you have to start again on something else is daunting.”
However, she said she enjoys every minute of filmmaking and wouldn’t give up that feeling.
“Every moment of the entire process is an exciting experience,” she said. “It sounds so simplistic, but just doing it is constantly thrilling to me. It’s just like the act of filming is almost enough.”
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