
The Uruvatti International Film Festival
gives
“The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre”
awards for
Best Horror Short Film
and
Best Original Score / Short Film


CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARD
The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre
Directed by Danny Ashkenasi
United States
Best Film Score – Soundtrack
WINNER
The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre
Scored by Danny Ashkenasi
United States
HI Danny,
I am pleased to inform you that “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” was voted Best Horror Short in our May Competition.
It has also been nominated for Best Horror Short in our main awards ceremony on the 25th Aug.
I’ll be back in touch nearer the festival with the full details.
Laurels and certificate attached.
Kind Regards,
Ben Etchells
Event organiser
Last Saturday I returned to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to see the cherry blossoms in its famous esplanade in peek bloom. Took a lot of photos again, of course, as I have before (and before and before), but this time I think I took some of my best images of the cherry blossoms.
I hope you enjoy them too.
This is my favorite screenshot of “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre“, my musical short film Edgar Allan Poe adaptation.
I like its visual composition. I like the emotion that radiates from it. I like the mystery that pervades it.
Sharing it may be a bit of a spoiler for the film, but as long as I don’t say any more about the context in which this image occurs, hopefully not too much of a spoiler. And hopefully it will intrigue the viewer, make them curious to see more.
And maybe also stand by itself. Invite the viewer to read their own thoughts and feelings into what they see, beyond its placement within a short film, linked to the actions of the moment or the drama that precedes or follows it.
Just as a still image evocative and meaningful on its own.
Continue readingOnce again (as in then and then and then and then), Ed and I went to the Art Expo (it’s nice to get free tickets), this time not at a pier on the Hudson as previously, but at Pier 36 at the South Street Seaport.
Here are some impressions:
The other day I crossed Central Park from West 72nd to East 79th streets just as night was creeping. I had seen a horror film at the movies, and felt inspired to take some moody photos as I made my way through the dusky park.
And we’re back, ambling around the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Gowanus, Boerum Hill and Park Slope. Plus a little bit of Red Hook.
Walking around my neighborhood I’m sometimes struck by an image, a perspective, a detail that compels me to take out my phone and frame a picture. More often than not these shots are posted on my Instagram account. I’ll collect some of my recent favorites in this post (and the next). Most of these pictures were taken in the Park Slope, Boerum Hill and Gowanus sections of Brooklyn.
Spring is just around the corner, this Sunday officially. The crocuses and the daffodils are already blooming in our garden. But the trees are still bare, for now.
The first trees to bloom in our neck of the world, Brooklyn, are the ornamental pear trees. We have many of those aligning the streets and avenues of Park Slope, Brooklyn. They bloom in a splendid riot of white buds that celebrate the arrival of spring like a freeze frame of white fireworks. These blossoms burst before these any other trees show any sign of awakening from their winter sleep. Then when a week or so later the small, light green leaves of the ornamental pear start to appear alongside the white blossoms, the trees look like the most delicious risotto.
Then the blooms fall, covering the neighborhood in tiny white down, and the ornamental pear trees look rather plain, like any old street tree, for 7 or 8 months. Then in autumn their leaves turn a deep crimson red that depending on the year can be just as spectacular in their dark colorfulness as the blinding white of their spring.
This year’s white ornamental pear blossoms are still in waiting. I took these pictures last year. I post them now in anticipation of another riot of cotton candy blossoming.
I already shared the above picture in a previous blog post about the colors of “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre”, my short film adaptation of the classic Edgar Allan Poe short story. You probably guessed then (and found it confirmed by the trailer) that that close-up is from the scene where the protagonist is tied to a rack above which something very cutting and deadly swings back and forth – the titular pendulum scythe, natch – getting lower and lower to the protagonist’s chest, threatening death by eventual slow but certain slicing in two.
Above is a shot of me on the rack, as seen through the on-set monitor. My wrists are not yet tied to their restraints. Instead I am holding my folder with the script and story boards. So this is clearly a shot taken during set up. We started shooting the “Pendulum” scene in the evening of Day 4, and continued all through Day 5. In this case that meant all the shots of the protagonist reacting to the pendulum as it swings by again and again, getting lower and lower and lower.
The pendulum itself would be shot separately and added later. I’ll get to that in another post…
Above, Mariana Soares da Silva, our production designer, wraps the strips of cloth around my wrists that would then be tied to the metal attachments on the rack.
I would end up spending most of one and a half days tied down to that rack to get shot after shot, angle after angle. My wrists would only be untied when there would be longer breaks between shots.
The protagonist of The Pit and the Pendulum endures many tortures in Poe’s diabolical short story. The director/actor on the set of “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” would endure his own fair share (far less deadly but still uncomfortable). Yet whereas Poe’s protagonist could point to the monks of the Inquisition for his pains, I had no one but myself to blame.
Charlotte Purser, the assistant director, shows me the relevant script section for whatever moment we were shooting next. The on-set monitor would also have to be put in a position where I could see it from this prone and tied down position. The character may be on his back and in bonds, but the director still has to direct somehow.
Continue readingAs I was walking in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park towards the Grand Army Plaza exit, I caught this view through the trees and took a picture with my phone. I like this photo so much I decided it is worth featuring in its own special blog post. Especially since it comes out so evocatively in black and white too.
FYI, that’s the James S T Stranahan statue holding his hat by his side, and a Prospect Park entrance column and the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch of Grand Army Plaza in the background.
Continue reading