Holiday season favors the splendor of lights. So how about I share photos of the splendid chandeliers hanging in the Met Opera?
“Most photographed chandeliers in the world”, the woman next to me said wryly as I raised my phone to take my first pic.
But I would not be discouraged. After all, had they been photographed the way I would photograph them?
Well, yes, they probably had.
It’s a Holiday Treat!
Today and through the end of the year my musical Edgar Allan Poe adaptation “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” will be viewable on-line at the Festival Angaelica. Signing up for a 30 day free trial will allow one to view it and all other films for free (CLICK HERE TO BE SENT THERE).
In addition to the film you can also watch an interview festival director Breven Warren conducted with me.
This week we set up our new book cases, and I went a little crazy with my phone’s camera.
Some context: perhaps you heard in the news that much of Brooklyn got massively flooded during unprecedented (but likely to be more commonly repeated – thank you, Climate Crisis!) rainfall last September 28? Well, our garden level apartment was not spared despite many mitigation efforts (I won’t go into detail…), and the result was the need for remediation and reconstruction – new floors with tiling, dry walls replaced with cement board, and all the old pressboard bookcases had to be thrown out and replaced with metal and glass bookcases. (There is far more to the story of the damage and ramifications of the flood, but I’ll spare you and me the telling of it all …)
After I saw what those new book cases looked like against the wall, so geometrical and catching the light, like the model of some futuristic bridges or highways, I took out my phone and took some pictures of the artsy fartsy variety.
And decided to share them here.
A little quiz:
How many pics are vertical instead of horizontal?
How many pics show a TV screen?
How many pics include moving boxes?
How many pics show me in some way?
(Answers in the tags at the bottom)
We visited the famous uncompleted cathedral, the magnum opus of genius architect Antoni Gaudi, celebrated native son of Barcelona, while in town attending the Love and Hope Film Festival.
Signs at the site project completion for the cathedral – for which construction begun in 1882 – to come as early as next year (or at least the final, tallest tower should be completed by then).
At this time visitors can only enter the cathedral from the Nativity side.
All the sculptural and decorative details on this facade reflect the Nativity story.
A model of the completed cathedral. The main tower – representing Jesus – will be the final major element to be completed. The second highest tower represents Mary, the next four represent the Evangelists, then there are 12 more spires for the apostles.
Let’s go inside now.
“The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre“, my 30 minute musical Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, is playing at the FFTG Awards Film Festival thru December 12.
Here is the link to the festival.
Here is the direct link to P&P at the festival.
From the festival website:
You will need to log in and register to watch and vote.
The festival asked me to make an “interview video” for them. I talk about the film, including some details on the “mirror masks”, while music from the soundtrack plays in the background. And then there is a little wink at the end…
I will share the video here as well:
I know I only just posted the third installment of my New Yorker Cartoon caption entries, but I already have six more lined up, having been submitting much more regularly lately, and not being chosen as a finalist just as regularly…
My friends and family at least seem to enjoy and even occasionally prefer my captions… 😉
Our tenth and final day of shooting my short film musical Edgar Allan Poe adaptation “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” was all about the three doppelganger judges of the Inquisition, but not as they appear to the unlucky protagonist in his trial but as they appear in his imagination as his situation goes from dire to worse to just plain horrible.
To create the particular look I wanted for the judges, we filmed me wearing special headgear we called mirror masks. This ended up leading to imagery that has been the most commented and queried upon in the many Q&As I have given in film festivals that screened P&P over the past year and a half.
Above is a glimpse in the monitor as we shot a particular moment that is featured in the trailer for “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre”. Below is a better view of VFX specialist Jimmy McCoy looking at the monitor (as well as D.P. Jason Chua behind the camera, gaffer Ja’rel Ivory beside him, and make-up artist Sami Eddy and me blocked from view behind Jason).
In the photo below you can see how what’s in the monitor above got translated into the final version: as with many of the shots we filmed this day, the mirror mask look would itself get mirrored in post production.
Here is a pic of one of the first mirror mask shots we filmed, with me wearing the mask made to fit horizontally just under my nose. This is the first time in the film we will see the judges wearing mirror masks.
In this clip you can see us shoot a take of the middle judge wearing this mask. In later takes I will be performing to the same music but moving my head differently for the judge who will be placed to the left in the screen, and differently again for the judge who will be placed at the right.
Here is a screenshot of what that eventually looks like:
The same idea for when the judges are wearing mirror masks that divide the face diagonally, from below the left eye to above the right eye and also from below right to above left.
The festival season for “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre“, which began in May 2022, is coming to a close at the end of 2023, but before that happens, we have a very special surprise: not just simply one more live screening of P&P in New York City, but one in tandem with its Poe musicabre forerunner “The Tell-Tale Heart – a musicabre”, both scheduled for back to back screenings Friday, November 17, 1-3pm at The North Film Festival.
That’s right, a Poe musicabre double feature! And for free!
Both of my short film Edgar Allan Poe musical adaptations back to back!
For free!
Doesn’t that make your heart beat hard?!
Doesn’t that just flip your pendulum?!
Doesn’t that just make you say “i MUSt, I must, by CAB or caR, gEt there!”?!
(There being the Harlem Community Center, at 220 East 125th Street.)
Additionally, both films have received award nominations from the festival, Tell-Tale for Best Horror Short and P&P for Best Experimental Short. The awards gala will be Saturday, November 18th, 4-6pm.
So if you’re in New York City or nearby (or if you are not, get yourself to NYC!) come join me at this very special one of a kind screening of both Poe musicabres 1pm, November 17 at The North Film Festival.
It’ll be a musical horror extravaganza!
And it’s free!
Oh Canada!
The Ravenwood Film Festival has named “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” Best of the Fest (of all films, short and feature length) at the 2023 edition of their festival.
That’s a particularly exciting honor as P&P nears the end of its festival run.
Thank you, Ravenwood Film Festival, and thank you too, Canada!
Well you know what they say about trilogies: the third installment is always the best in the series, right?
Look up the first and second installments of my unselected New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest submissions here and here.
I had two ideas for this cartoon; I submitted the top one. What do you think, should I have submitted the one below instead?
… as in new moon … which is in shadow… I know, if you have to explain it…
Two Fridays ago, when I spent a day in LA for a screening of P&P, I walked to North Ardmore Ave to take pictures of the house where my mother grew up many years ago, and then walk to her old high school, Hollywood High. Turns out to be an hour long walk (which my mom would do with her best friend, eating ice cream, when they chose to not take the school bus).
Along the way I wound up taking a lot of pictures of palm trees on Sunset Boulevard. I figured that would make a nice niche little blog post…
It’s been a busy October for my horror musical short film Edgar Allan Poe adaptation (deep breath), but if there is any month in the year to show that film a lot and all over, this would be it. We started in Hamburg, then got a music award in New York, in the middle of the month we gave a Q&A in LA longer than the film itself, then we received another music award in New York, and now at the end of the month P&P is screening in North Ontario, Canada, just across the river from the Michigan Upper Peninsula, this Thursday at 9pm as part of the Ravenwood Film Festival’s Short Block #1 (wheeze, sputter, “Oxygen!”).
But it’s not over. There’s a special surprise in store in November… (stay tuned).
“The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre“, my (deep breath intake) short film musical adaptation of the classic Edgar Allan Poe story, was nominated in three categories at the Pitch To Screen Film Awards, music, editing and cinematography. The awards gala was last night.
Ed and I arrived early at the Dolby Theater on 6th avenue and 55th street.
Joining us were Stolis and Christine Hadjicharloambous. Stolis edited both “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” (and therefore nominated tonight) and my first short film”The Tell-Tale Heart – a musicabre“, also a (breath intake) short film musical adaptation of a classic Edgar Allan Poe story.
UPDATE: P2S just sent me some pics from their official photographer:
This was actually the first time Stolis and I were in the same room since 2016, a weird tidbit considering in that time we had made two movies together – but all that work was done via the internet. Stolis did come out to do the Q&A for the ChainNYC film festival with Ed, but at that time I was in Cleveland for the Indie Gathering Film Festival.
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.
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:
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Notes from a Composer 