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Dec. 9, 2011
A classic goes digital
MetaMaus includes a locally produced DVD.
OLGA LIVSHIN
Everyone loves classic movies reformatted for DVD, which usually include extras – interviews with actors and crew members, favorite outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage. And, even though it’s not an old movie, the same holds true for Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, whose 25-year-anniversary is being celebrated with the release of MetaMaus, a behind-the-scenes look at the process of creating the original graphic novel. MetaMaus includes a digital copy of the original book plus an interactive DVD.
Creating a digital companion for a book is a relatively new concept, but Spiegelman is well known as an innovator. When he originally published Maus, the biography of his father, Vladek, a Polish Jew who had survived Auschwitz, in comic format, the book made a splash, turning the reading public’s notions upside down. Cleverly depicting Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, this non-fiction graphic novel tells the story of a father and son reviewing terrible memories of the Holocaust, a radical departure from usual comic book themes. Maus proved that the graphic novel genre was capable of tackling serious, even tragic, issues, and remains the only comic book ever to have won a Pulitzer Prize. The first volume came out in 1986, the second in 1991.
Spiegelman’s next innovation came a few years later. To write Maus, he had recorded a series of interviews with his father and, in 1995, his publishers at Voyager released a CD-ROM containing the complete Maus plus the transcripts of the father-son interviews, filmed conversations with the younger Spiegelman and a collection of his sketches for the novel. A precursor of the modern e-book, it was a huge leap ahead of its time.
Unfortunately, by 2008, technology had progressed to the point that practically no computer could read CD-ROMs, an outdated format. The year 2008 is significant – it’s the year Spiegelman visited Vancouver, just as the MetaMaus project was starting to take shape. MetaMaus hit bookstores in October 2011 and the companion DVD that is included in the package was produced in Vancouver by the 8 Leaf Digital Productions, owned by Ryan Nadel.
“In 2008, Spiegelman gave a talk at the Centre for Digital Media and later chatted with the centre’s director, Gerri Sinclair,” Nadel told the Independent. “She mentioned the CD-ROM and suggested a group of her students should embark on a project to create a new version, MetaMaus, using modern technology. Spiegelman agreed, gladly. He wanted a new digital version for the 25th anniversary of the first edition.”
It was only after a stint as a journalist for the Jerusalem Post in 2006-07 that Nadel became interested in digital media. “Digital media helps people experience a news story [and] get involved,” he said of the format. In 2008, Nadel enrolled as a student at the Centre for Digital Media in Vancouver to begin his master’s degree.
Graduating in the spring of 2010, he learned about the MetaMaus project, which was, at the time, going nowhere. Nadel approached Sinclair with a proposition to take over the project. “I wanted the challenge,” he said.
Although much of the material had already been generated, it took Nadel about a year to finish and produce the DVD. “Working with Art [Spiegelman] was amazing. I flew to New York to meet him many times,” he said. “The biggest difficulty was to translate his vision into the computer. He knew exactly what he wanted; Art is one of the greatest visual designers of our times. He designs every little detail for his comic books, including a barcode. We had to give him space to use his intuition.”
According to Nadel, Spiegelman is a demanding collaborator. Every line, every screen shot, had to look precisely so, with no deviation or distortion for the various screen dimensions of different computers or operating systems. Nadel and his production company were able to meet the challenge, completing the project to the artist’s satisfaction and by the publisher’s deadline.
Besides being a visual complement, the MetaMaus DVD is interactive. Demonstrating, Nadel explained: “You can [view] an original comic page and then call up the content associated with the page. You can listen to the artist’s father talking; even hear his stationary bike whirring in the background. You can click an icon and hear the interview with the artist. He answers all those questions: Why mice? Why comics? Why the Holocaust? You can see his sketches. All the supplemental materials enhance the story. There are also the unedited transcripts of interviews with Vladek. You can read them on screen.”
Nadel feels that his work on MetaMaus entails great responsibility. “I grew up reading Maus. It tells a true story, which is important for me as a journalist. But what’s even more important is that this digital version won’t fade with time. Digital media doesn’t fade.”
Degradation was the problem with the archival interview tapes, he continued. By the time work on the DVD had started, the tapes were so old they had already begun to disintegrate. “We had to restore them using some CBC equipment, [to] digitize them,” Nadel said. “My generation is the last one who can meet the Holocaust survivors, listen to them. The next generation won’t be able to, but this DVD will preserve the knowledge for them.
“With this project,” he added, “I have a sense of building something bigger than myself.”
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
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