Notes from a Composer

Even if you’ve only so far seen the poster(s) or trailer for “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre“, my musical short film adaptation of the classic Edgar Allan Poe story, you’ve encountered the above image of the protagonist hanging from the edge of the pit, with a monstrous eye waiting below for its quarry.

Day 8 of our shooting schedule is when we captured that shot – well, everything but the eye, photographed a previous day and added in post with VFX work. We would need an eight foot tube with the opening as wide (four feet) as the pit, in order to stretch out my body and arms within.

We wouldn’t be standing the pit tube upright for the shot. Usually in these “fake hanging from ledges” shots, the actor is lying on their stomach and the camera is placed level in the floor so that it looks like the shot is “looking down” at the character holding on for dear life.

In our case we decided we would tilt the pit tube about 45 degrees. In stead of a large fan, some gel and spray and styling would give my hair the right “downward” look. My acting would have to sell the rest. It felt a little like I was about to be shot out of a cannon.

There’s the pit tube below, angled up. Not all the flat sides – representing the walls of the cell which have closed in to force the protagonist into the pit – have been attached yet. That’s co-producer Henry Borriello at left.

For the whole film shoot we needed three separate versions of the pit. Most scenes required only the opening of the pit to be cut out of the floor of our set, raised just two inches above the studio floor. We placed a green screen or black cloth underneath (depending on the lighting). Both the inside of the pit shrouded in blackness and the reveal of the eye would be added in post with VFX.

Then we also needed to build a version of the pit that stood four feet off the ground, in order to allow shots from within the pit looking up, as well as shots of the protagonist as he is forced down into the pit by the encroaching, infernally hot walls.

For the shot of me actually hanging from the edge by my fingers we needed the big long tube. There was enough surface tension between me and the tilted tube that I wouldn’t slide down once lying down inside, but it was still very helpful that production designer Mariana Soares da Silva built a foot rest for me. Below the back entrance we at first placed green screen to aide Jimmy McCoy, our VFX guy, when he later adds the eye. But then we switched that out with black cloth to avoid the green light spill. The total darkness at the bottom of the tube caused by the black cloth was going to work better for Jimmy.