Thanks again for submitting The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre to the 13Horror.com Film Contest.
It’s an extremely accomplished short. You have some very nicely worked camera movements (most notably at the desk and during the inquisition) and – for all of the claustrophobic horror contained within it – it is very easy on the eye. The visuals of the pit were particularly impressive.
I understand you also composed the music. It was perfect – very haunting and surprisingly catchy! It felt like a character in its own right.
You have done a superb job in capturing a nightmarish quality. With your spin on it, you have retained the element of hope that underpins the original short story with the inclusion of a (potential) savior in the form of a Lasalle.
We will officially announce the winners on the 13Horror.com website on November 15, 2022.
Thanks again for submitting your film and good luck!
Ed and I went up to the Bronx and came back with this.
“The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre”
receives the award for “Best Music Score”
from New York True Venture Film Festival
The day after the screening of my musical short film Edgar Allan Poe classic short story adaptation (how long can I make this?) “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” at the New York True Venture Film Festival, Ed and I made our way to the Elysium Community Center for the NYTVFF celebration and awards ceremony.
Ed and I had wondered why a festival that screened in Midtown Manhattan was wrapping up in the Bronx, but we learned that the NYTVFF is run by Albanian-Americans and this part of the borough is an Albanian neighborhood. Many of the sponsors of the festival have Albanian roots. Stone Castle wine is from Kosovo, for example. I tried their Chardonnay later – it was quite good.
I knew “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” was nominated for an award, but I didn’t know in what category. Nonetheless I resisted the temptation to look more closely at the trophies.
“Opera Kids” is a documentary about the Creating Original Opera program that I had taught and also helped develop starting in 1990. I write about the film, directed by Max Sturm, who first experienced the program as a participating 5th grader, in more detail in this blog post.
It can now be publicly seen. On television September 5, as well as streaming on several websites beyond that date.
Here’s the info from Max’s email to me:
“Excited to share that OPERA KIDS will premiere on WNET’s ALL ARTS on September 5, 2022 @ 8pm EST.
For those in the New York tri-state area, the film can be seen live on the ALL ARTS Television Channel — Optimum 144, Verizon Fios SD497/HD498, Comcast 958/1156, Spectrum 1276, Digital Antenna 21.4.
For those everywhere worldwide, the film can be streamed September 5th and beyond on the ALL ARTS Website or App — via computer, TV, smartphone, tablet, Apple TV, Roku, or Amazon Fire TV.
The 3rd International Fotofilm Short Film Festival, based in Turkey, is screening 90 films from 45 countries free of charge from today through August 31, including my musical short film Edgar Allan Poe adaptation “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre”, which they also nominated for Best Horror Short Film.
Over the course of five days this past week “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” screened in film festivals in Cleveland, New York City and Nyack. This blog post is about all three.
I was in New York for the opening of the Chain NYC Film Festival (see previous post), but then made my way to Cleveland for the Indie Gathering International Film Festival to represent my short film Edgar Allan Poe musical adaptation “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” there as well.
Above is Ray Szuch, who founded the festival 27 years ago, and after this year officially retires as its executive director – but expect him to still be around shmoozing and advising all comers next year.
Below is Christina, who ably manages the festival even when the hotel elevator breaks down. She is so averse to taking the spotlight that a photo portrait wasn’t possible. I finally suspected the mask was less about Covid than a desire to assiduously avoid being the public face of the festival. Because that would be Ray.
This is me with Eric William, host of Saturday Night Theater, where he interviews “the best independent film makers, directors, producers, composers, and actors from all over the world.” So he naturally interviewed me too. 😉
I like his sense of style. The “something orange” is his signature accessory.
I was also interviewed by Zombiepalooza’s Jackie Chin. Here she is interviewing composer Munenori Kishi, winner of a special film scoring competition.
This is Munenori with me at the tailgating party … more on that later.
I went to Cleveland knowing that “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” was an award winner in its category, Experimental Short, as well as nominated in two crafts categories – Cinematography and Editing for Short Film.
The film screened Friday, August 12, to an enthusiastic audience followed by a lively and detailed Q&A. Among other things we discussed the mirror masks – that I more than once have now heard described as “something I’ve never seen before” – and how those images were achieved. The practical nature of the VFX work was also discussed in length, especially the for pendulum and the eye in the pit.
You can see some of the images I allude to featured in the P&P trailer and read about their creation in some of the on-set diary posts already posted via the P&P home page.
P&P’s Chain NYC screening was August 13. The only way for us to represent at both festivals was to send me to Cleveland and for Ed to do the Q&A in New York. P&P’s editor Stolis Hadjicharalambous joined Ed.
Ed and Stolis doing the Q&A with Chain NYC’s Rick Hamilton. Stolis talked at length about our detailed and meticulous editing process and later reported that the film “played excellent”.
Last Friday and Saturday “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” screened in festivals in Cleveland and New York City respectively (more on that in a-soon-to-be-posted blog piece), but Wednesday just said “hold my beer”, because on Wednesday, August 10th, you can attend screenings of my musical short film Edgar Allan Poe adaptation in both Kolkata, India, and Nyack, NY, just across the Hudson river from the Bronx.
The Kolkata screening is sponsored by the Royal Society of Television and Motion Picture Awards (who gave the film an Outstanding Achievement Award) and will take place 10:30am at the Rotary Sadan (full address is above). It will the second screening for “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” in Kolkata to date.
The Nyack screening is part of the Nyack International Film Festival currently taking place at the Hotel Nyack JdV by Hyatt 400 High Ave. “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” will screen at 9pm.
Ed and I will be present at one of the two screenings. I’ll leave it to you to guess which.
Ed and I took a day trip to the Bronx Zoo. Never been before, or at least not been since childhood, many decades ago. It is over an hour’s ride by subway from our place in Brooklyn, but well worth it as the park is quite wonderful. I expected it to be very large and full of attractions. What I didn’t know was just how many gorgeous examples of species we’d never even heard of before we would encounter. And we both took some spectacular pictures of many of them.
We entered at the Asia Gate (bottom left on the map) and made the Wild Asia Monorail our first stop.
Our monorail driver and guide Vladimir.
The rail twice crosses the Bronx River into an area only viewable from the monorail.
I’ll do better naming the animals we’d see later (because we photographed most enclosure’s animal labels to remind ourselves), but while Vladimir told us about these large Asian bison-like animals and all the others we could see (or not see if they were hiding well, or choosing to stay in their air-conditioned optional cells during this hot summer day), I did not record what he said to type here later.
We didn’t see the tiger for example, at least not yet here…. (just wait…), and it was hard to get good pics of what we did see (again, just wait)…
Still, I can vouch that this is an Asian elephant…
This fella rather impressively chose to stand with all four legs on top a narrow tree stump.
Our next stop:
The superbly adorable Tree Kangaroo with offspring.
Well, hello there Mr. Turtle.
Ebony Langurs are usually black, but the Bronx Zoo also has some rare reddish brown ones.
“The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre“, my second musical short film adaptation of a classic Edgar Allan Poe short story (large intake of breath, then continue), is being presented by the Chain NYC Film Festival, celebrating their 10th anniversary. The full festival runs August 5 – 14.
The film, classified by the festival as a short, musical, experimental and a thriller, will screen August 13, 1:30pm at the Chain Theater in 312 West 36th street in Manhattan. You can order your ticket here. (FYI, the listing four shorts collected in the “Sound and Music” block is alphabetical, and not necessarily the order of screening, so “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” may screen first or last or somewhere in between, I don’t know – i.e. don’t be late. 😉 )
Me and Ed at Chain NYC
Last night the festival organized a meet and greet for the filmmakers. Here are some candids:
That’s me and Ed with fellow filmmakers Carly Wilkins, Kristin Papadopoulos and George CarilloContinue reading →
The most famous image from Edgar Allan Poe’s classic short story “The Pit and the Pendulum” is of the sword swinging back and forth, coming down ever closer over the hapless protagonist tied to a platform below. The titular pendulum, in other words. I tease a few glimpses of the pendulum as envisioned in my musical adaptation “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” in the trailer for the short film:
At top and right above I’ve included two screenshots from the trailer showing the protagonist being menaced by the pendulum from high above and at close clothes cutting distance. I wrote about shooting my performance as the victim on the platform in the previous shooting diary entry P&P – Day 4(&5) – On the Rack. When we shot those set-ups we had to imagine the actual pendulum blade. It wasn’t on the set. It was a miniature set piece to be added later into each shot where it appears in life size dimensions in the frame. And while I on the rack was being filmed in one corner of our set on day 5 of our shoot, the pendulum miniature was being filmed by our second unit in another corner of the set.
Below you can see the miniature pendulum on the track that was built for it to swing past the camera. Production designer Mariana Soares da Silva is putting some finishing touches on the blade.
You might notice that in our version of “The Pit and the Pendulum” the sword looks like a cello bow, except rather than having bow hair running parallel to the wood like for a typical bow, here there is a blade running perpendicular.
The pendulum not only looks like a cello bow, it also sounds like three cellos moving towards each other and then moving away in an eerie glissando, like a pendulum arc, modifying the cello chord to get musically closer in harmony with every approach as the blade gets closer and closer to the victim’s torso. In other words the pendulum’s action is revealed musically as well as visually, as you can see from this excerpt of the score. The music is as important to telling the story as the images. The film is a “musicabre” after all.
Producer Henry Borriello with Marian Soares da Silva and the miniature pendulum
Assistant D.P. Jennifer Liu was promoted to 2nd Unit D.P. for the days the pendulum miniature shots were filmed. In this shot the miniature is angled in such a way towards the camera that it will appear to the audience like they are looking up at the blade as it swoops by.
Each pendulum shot was filmed in slow motion. This would allow us later to adjust the speed of the film perfectly to match the timing of the music describing the progress of the pendulum.
In the shot below the pendulum is swinging by even closer to the camera/audience’s point of view.
Overnighting in the Far East of Long Island to Attend the Screening of “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” at the Offshore Art and Film Festival
Me on the Long Island Railroad last Friday – a three hour plus ride from Brooklyn to Montauk in the far far corner of Long Island.
A poster for the Offshore Film Festival greeted me on the train platform as I disembarked at the final stop.
My AirBnB host generously offered to show me the Lighthouse at the far corner of Montauk (and Long Island – so far east one can see Rhode Island across the waters of Long Island Sound, past Connecticut’s eastern border.)
According to my host, George Washington himself commissioned this lighthouse. My host also called it the only tourist attraction in Montauk. Outside of the beaches, I suppose.
Notes from a Composer 