In Depth Q&A about “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre”

at the LA Indie FilmFest

After the well-received screening of my musical short film adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” at the LA Indie FilmFest October 13, the moderator (whose name I misplaced, sorry) did a lengthy Q&A with me and cinematographer Alexander Chinnici from the short film “Trying”. Fellow L’HIFF filmmaker Erin Carrere started filming when the attention turned to me (sorry, Alex). Here are some clips from the Q&A in bite size pieces.

1. We start with how “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” evolved from my having first done “The Tell-Tale Heart – a musicabre’, and that first as a theater piece.

And how at one screening at least one audience member – to my horror- didn’t realize the protagonist and the judges were (played by) one and the same person.

2. Then we talked about turning the character visually and musically into a “cubistic experiment”; and I praised the sound system in the theater.

3. The moderator calls the film “every nightmare I’ve ever had in my life, done in such a beautiful way”.

Then I talk about the differences between “Tell-Tale” and “P&P”, first the differing festival journeys, but then also the filmmaking approach, partly in response to some individuals thinking of “Tell-Tale” (unfairly) “merely” as a “filmed theater piece”.

4. “Take this as a compliment: it was maddening, like in a wonderful way.”

We start getting into major spoiler territory here about the ending of P&P… as well as how my husband Ed is becoming my “Alfred Hitchcock cameo”.

5. All about the mirror masks: conceiving them, designing them, practicing with them in pre-production, the mishaps on set that almost ruined the final mirror mask section, the post-production work putting together the final images. I’ll post a blog piece on this with lots of pics eventually, but this is a relatively thorough oral history.

6. Next, and this may be considered “spoilery” we talk about performing as the judges, specifically filming their final moment – pictured here:

7. We talk about the editing plan, and what was shot and edited according to a plan set in pre-production (a lot), and what was discovered on set or in post-production. I also talk about working with the miniature “pendulum”, and how we found we had to set up a second unit just to film all those miniature shots over 2 1/2 days. And my joy on set in discovering that this particular, most tricky miniature shot would be achievable:

8. Next we talk about the “Blue Heads” and I reveal some of the “Easter eggs” we put in the film for musicians (Erin caught one to my great delight!) and Poe afficionados. I also talk about shooting in our own Park Slope bathroom and permanently denting our bathroom door in the process.

9. We talk about “The Pit”, and how we built three different sets to get all the shots we needed for it (read about that here as well as here). And how my producer Henry volunteered to lend his eye for the uncomfortable photo shoot required for the pit’s “Eye” (which was already revealed in the trailer):

10. We talk about my musical influences, specifically in regards to P&P. I mention Kurt Weill and Bela Bartok, and also how Arnold Schoenberg’s opera “Moses and Aaron” influenced certain aspects of the work. I also digress and tell an anecdote about my mother singing Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s “Die Soldaten”, likely on my mind because of the radio program about my mother and 20th century music that recently aired (and is available on-line).

11. We talk about the sometimes tricky business of lip-syncing or performing along to the prerecorded and pre-edited vocals on set.

And I sing the praises of our VFX specialist Jimmy McCoy.

12. “You put a lot of work in this, man. I said before I hope you feel amazing, because this is quite an accomplishment.”

They ask me about my next project and I talk about it a lot but also a little more than I am willing to fully share here – so there are 44 seconds of redacted sound in the middle of this; unless you are a lipreader you’ll have to get your clues from my body language – and then eventually Erin’s recording stops, I believe because we were wrapping up at that point.