About Pit & Pendulum

“Pit & Pendulum” is a 27 minute experimental film based upon Edgar Allan Poe’s horror classic.

The film is an experiential experiment.

The words of the author provide the texture for the Audience’s imagination.

It is the terrorizing story of a person sentenced to death who becomes the plaything of their jailers. They are sent walking through a dark room in hopes they will fall into a pit. When that doesn’t happen they are tied down on a table to watch the painfully slow descent of a swinging pendulum with a sharp-edged blade aimed at their stomach. Escaping from the blade did not mean freedom. The walls of the dungeon grow blistering hot first, then squeeze together to push them to the brink of the pit, before being saved at the very last second.

Each horrific moment is shared with the Audience in simple images for them to flesh out under the spell of Poe’s words.

Black-Box Cinema means minimalistic sets and props illustrate the original words, in this case making use of Poe’s own technique – The Telegraph Mosaic (as Marshal McLuhan termed it) – in visual form. The Audience’s imagination is the architect of the dungeon, its textures, and its smells, and can create far more terrifying images than any that can be made.

In this manifestation, the gender of the protagonist has been neutralized, and Poe’s text judiciously edited to remove references to time and place, making it universal.

This is an experiential experiment.

Edgar Allan Poe’s words provide the texture for the Audience’s imagination.

The story is about the unrelenting terror suffered by a prisoner at the hands of their jailers.

The film is about stimulating the Audience with cinematic techniques and the words of the author to provide for the Audience’s interpretation.

Black-Box Cinema advances Poe’s Telegraph Mosaic into visual form.

The film has 2 strands.

1) It demonstrates cinematic techniques in a simple context.

2) It challenges the Audience to become attentive participants.

Almost everything we watch spoonfeeds us without the need for our attentive participation.

See With Your Ears, Hear With Your Eyes

The writer gains attentive participation by surprising the Audience’s expectations.

The director gains attentive participation by letting the Audience fill in the details for themselves.

The Prisoner

Pamela Gardner

The Voice

Kristi Boulton

The Director

J. Aldric Gaudet

The Cinematographer

Evan Korn

The Screenwriter

J. Aldric Gaudet

The Editors

JAG Productions

The Make-up

Justine Taylor

The Wardrobe

Pamela Blackwood Marques

The Sound

David Angell

Alex Bernardi

Zach Forgues

Brett Robinson

Chris Kezar

Janice Morland

Azalea

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