Central Park was in fall splendor this recent November Monday as I walked from Sheep Meadow through to the Plaza at the 5th ave / 59 Street exit, but the hot sun and blue sky framed the autumnal scene in a nearly incongruous summery light.
There will be three opportunities to attend a screening of
“The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre”
coast to coast in the next 10 days.
plus an on-line screening opportunity
1st chance – NYC – 11/11
“The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” is helping kick off the first night of the CK Film Festival this Friday, Nov 11, in Long Island City, Queens. I will be there. [UPDATE: the festival decided to show my film again the following Sunday.]
CK Film Festival is dedicated to “creating an exclusive, safe and interactive yet intimate screening experience for filmmakers and artists alike. We denounce the “gatekeepy” nature of festivals and welcome a wide array of unique styles from Animation to Narrative Shorts to experimental Features & more.
We look forward to sharing some beautiful & memorable nights with you and the 30+ film’s from around the world!”
The next day, Nov 12, “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” is playing in Los Angeles at the Skiptown Playhouse International Film Festival, at 5pm at The Cat’s Crawl theater at 660 N Heliotrope Drive. Yes, I will be there too, having just flown in earlier that day from NY!
And then it’s back to NYC for me in time to attend the P&P screening Wednesday, Nov 16, 6:30pm for The Short Film Awards AKA The SOFIE Awards. All the nominees for Best Styling will be showcased in the same screening block at The Producer’s Club Theaters, 358 W 44th Street.
Incidentally, “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” is nominated for 2 SOFIE awards, Best Actor and Best Styling, with the awards event taking place Nov 18 at Symphony Space.
4. Chance – On-line until 11/27
Meanwhile, the Artist’s Forum Festival for the Moving Image, where “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” recently swept the awards winning five out of seven nominations, has moved its festival program on-line through November 27. You will find “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” closing REFLECTIONS: PROGRAM 3.
If you choose to watch P&P on your laptop, I recommend using ear buds for a more effective, immersive sound experience.
Edgar Allan Poe’s classic short story opens with the following Latin inscription and parenthetical annotation:
Impia tortorum longos hic turba furors
Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit.
Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,
Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.
[Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be erected upon the site of the Jacobin Club House at Paris.]
Curiously enough, Poe never offers any translation for this Latin quatrain. I had to look it up:
“Here an unholy mob of torturers
with an insatiable thirst for innocent blood,
once fed their long frenzy.
Now our homeland is safe, the funereal cave destroyed,
and life and health appear where dreadful death once was.”
Although the reference to the Jacobin Club House of Paris implies that this inscription refers to the worst terrors of the French Revolution, Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” actually imagines the deadly traps and tortures of the Spanish Inquisition. No exact time is given, but Toledo is mentioned as the setting, not Paris.
For my musical short film adaptation “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” the scene is set with an opening shot of a plaque on a wall, bearing this Latin inscription, translated by subtitles for the viewer (a courtesy not given Poe’s reader), while three cellos intone a mournful version of the main theme. I figured it would help set the mood and foreshadow “unholy tortures” as well as prepare the audience for more Latin to come (albeit sung, not inscribed).
Gaffer Ja’rel Ivory, D.P. Jason Chua and Key Grip Keisuke Nojima
Production Designer Mariana Soares da Silva made the plaque and we affixed it to a wall in the hallway behind the studio space at the Theater for the New City where we had built our main sets. At the end of our sixth day of shooting we took an hour to get some shots of the plaque. We shot in slow motion, experimenting with haze and smoke and lighting.
(The bulk of our Day 6 and 7 were spent on a much more complicated set-up, which I will talk about in the next On Set Diary post.)
I snuck some photos from the back of the screening room, but I don’t have any of the lengthy Q&A that followed, since I was busily engaged with providing the A.
“The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” in NYC & Orlando this Weekend
This Saturday, October 22, my short film musical Edgar Allan Poe adaptation will play during the Naked Mountain Film Festival at 253 West 28th Street in NYC, a “day packed with awesome films, as well as two discussion panels, visual artists, and live music.”. The event runs from 2:00-10:30pm, with P&P scheduled to screen at 5pm followed by a Q&A with yours truly.
You can get tickets here. There is a Discount code: NMfilm25 for 25% off.
But if you are closer to Orlando, head out to the Spooky Empire Horror Convention, running October 21-23 in the Orange County Convention Center, featuring “world class vendors, speakers and entertainment“, including tattoo artists, costume contests and a film festival. “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” will screen Sunday October 23 at 11am, closing out a program of “Arthouse Horror”.
“The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” is also nominated for awards in both festivals.
Spooky Empire
UPDATE: 10/31/2022
Just in time for Halloween the good folks at Spooky Empire sent me the laurel for winning the Monstrous Melody Award:
UPDATE 12/12/22 – The trophy arrived in the mail :
I arrived early at the state of the art Dolby Screening Room where the festival took place to make some arrangements with the technical staff at the theater.
Which allowed me to take these pictures of my short film musical Edgar Allan Poe adaptation being test screened in the empty theater before the evening’s program:
That evening, the third and final night of the festival’s live screenings, seven shorts were shown, with “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” scheduled last. Afterwards there was a Q&A with filmmakers, during which I (subtly?) took this selfie:
The main question directed at me from the audience, here and at pretty much every Q&A I have done so far, is regarding the “mirror masks”. Not surprisingly. I have written a little about the prep for this aspect of the film before, but I promise more elaborate on-set diary and pre and post production posts about the mirror mask imagery will be forthcoming on this blog. There is much to discuss…
While visiting Portland, Oregon to screen my short film “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival, I went to Washington Park with my cousin. Plenty of lovely nature and more to experience there. For today’s post I will please your eyes (hopefully) with the majesty of those tall tall trees on the Redwood walking trail.
SCREENING THIS SATURDAY at the DOLBY SCREENING ROOM in NYC
“The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre”, my musical short film adaptation of the classic Edgar Allan Poe story, has been chosen to close out The Artists Forum Festival of the Moving Image this Saturday October 15 at “the exclusive Dolby Screening RoomNYC — a state-of-the-art, ADA compliant screening facility at 1350 Avenue of the Americas at West 55th Street (Lobby Level) in Mid-town Manhattan”. Tickets are on sale at EVENTBRITE.COM .
Ed and I will be present Saturday for the screening and the Q&A.
“THIS YEAR’S THEME:
This year, Filmmakers were challenged to interpret our theme: REFLECTIONS ON THE NATIONAL PSYCHE.
The term “national psyche” refers to the collective thinking or attitude of a nation as a whole, and is not specific to any individual nation.”
The Festival screens October 13-15 at the Dolby Screening Room with on-line screenings running October 16 – November 27.
Oct. 15 Showtimes: 6 – 10PM. Doors Open at 5:30PM
Artists Forum promotional image using a still from the film “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre”
If however you happen to be closer to Goa, India, than New York City this Saturday October 15, you can see “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” at the 9th Goa Short Film Festival 2022 at Sankruti Bhavan, Panaji, Goa. 9 Am to 6 PM.
DreadRock: International Horror Film Festival in Little Rock, Arkansas
Horror Movie Freaks Film Festival in Walnut Cove, North Carolina
Unlike the judges of the Inquisition (see photo above), I am not able to divide into multiple versions of myself. So I will not be present at all three film festivals screening my musical short film Edgar Allan Poe adaptation this Saturday. You can find me doing a Q&A in Portland Oregon at the 27th Annual H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival – Cosmic Horror & Tales of the Supernatural, which is showing “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” at 9:10pm, October 8 and again at 1pm, October 9 at the Hollywood Theater at 4122 NE Sandy Blvd. The festival runs Friday through Sunday.
Q&A with fellow filmmakers Maria Colette Sundeen (Lifeless), Joseph Scrimshaw (Unboxing the Cosmos) and Orok Duke (Why We Don’t Visit Anymore) after the second screening of Short Films Block 5.
The H P Lovecraft Film Festival audience responded very well to “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre”.
It was actually much better attended than this photo suggests – most people sat in the back and not everyone stayed for the Q&As…Continue reading →
Yesterday “The Pit and the Pendulum – a musicabre” was the final film in the Autumn’s Dawn Film Festival four hour screening of shorts at the Film Noir Cinema in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. This was quickly followed by the Edgar Allan Poe musical adaptation winning three of the five awards handed out by festival director Tom Walsh (standing with me in the photo above). Awards for Cinematography (Jason Chua), Editing (Stolis Hadjicharalambous) and Sound (Todd Maki).
After that all assembled went to a local tavern, where we got shots of whiskey on the house.
UPDATE: Tom Walsh sent me the photos the official festival photographer took. Here are some:
But this post will also be heavily “two-fisted touristic“, as the train trip up to Albany all along the Hudson river is one of the most lovely trips you can enjoy in a train in New England, if not North America. And Albany also has much worth photographing, including the Schuyler mansion (birthplace of Angelica, Eliza … and Peggy) and Empire State Plaza.
So sit back and scroll – plenty of eye candy to be enjoyed with NYSIFF festival pics in the middle.
On the Amtrak train from NYC, me to the left, husband and co-producer/co-actor Ed Elder to the right.
And views of the Hudson to the West, all the way (two and half hours) up to Albany.
August 11 I shared a wealth of photos from our trip to the Bronx Zoo. What I left out then was the Dinosaur Safari, part of the zoo experience, but a little different, for obvious reasons.
It’s silly scientific fun, as you will see. Lots of photos and videos of animatronic dinosaurs follow:
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!
Notes from a Composer 