John Schaffer

John Schaffer was raised in Chester township in northeastern Ohio. He is the 3rd of the 4 Schaffer boys. He graduated in 1988 from West Geauga High School in the top 5% of his class. His passion for wanting to make a better world, lead him to a BS in Political Science, which he received from the University of Cincinnati in 1992. He graduated Magna Cum Laude with distinction. During a period of odd jobs, John made his first full-length short, "Plant This". At 45 minutes in length, it was an ambitious project but was completed with the help from family and friends. It premiered in Ohio in 1995. Soon after the completion of "Plant This", John relocated to Flagstaff, Arizona with his soon-to-be wife. He began working in a group home as a Home Manager for gentlemen with developmental disabilities. In 2005, John went back to school to pursue a Master's Degree in Special Education. While in his program, he met his mentor and future collaborator Susan Marks. Together, they developed a method to use the movie making process to help teach self-advocacy skills to people with cognitive impairments. A description of the method was published in the scholarly journal, "Teaching Exceptional Children Plus". The 15-minute movie, "I Have My Own Dreams", was the outcome of this method and was screened in a few film festivals in 2007. In 2008, John made the short, "Don't Mind if I Do", which had a similar theme of self-advocacy and was screened at the TASH at NAU Film Festival. In 2012, John completed his first documentary, "Vectors of Autism: a documentary about Laura Nagle". John directed, edited, animated and ran an additional camera on the movie. The movie was premiered in Flagstaff, Arizona in 2012. In 2013, it won the Heart of the Festival award at the Sedona International Film Festival and also the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD) Media Award. In 2013, it was also screened at the DocuWest Film Festival in Golden, Colorado, the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival in Chagrin Falls, Ohio and the Flagstaff Mountain Film Festival in Flagstaff, Arizona. The movie has also been screened at various conferences in California, Arizona, Washington DC and British Columbia, Canada.