One DVD release we agregiously overlooked last week is Ray Harryhausen Presents: The Pit and the Pendulum, a stop-motion film exec produced by the master animator and vfx legend behind the enduring success fo such classic films as The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans. Harryhausen oversaw various creative aspects of the production, which puts an animated twist on one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous short stories.
Directed by animation veteran Marc Lougee, director of animation for the television series Celebrity Deathmatch and Dinosapien, the film portrays a solitary prisoner in the cold grip of the Spanish Inquisition. Condemned and entombed in darkness, he’s left to suffer a fate worse than death in the dreaded dungeons. He struggles with hope and faith while his captors employ fiendish machinations in their efforts to unhinge him.
‘I felt our short film would touch on one of the bigger questions of humanity: Is there anyone there for us after we’ve done all we can do?,’ says Lougee. ‘This question resonated with me, and I wanted to get it across in the story. In the end, the best he can do is stay alive long enough to find out. It’s there, in the toughest times, that we find what we’re made of, what we really believe.’
The traditional stop-motion animation was shot in HD using Nikon DSLR still cameras and Mac Mini computers, and was augmented with cutting-edge digital visual effects and sound design. Susan Ma produced the film on location in Toronto. It has since made the film fest circuit, winning Best Short Film at the Toronto Hispano-American Film Festival 2008, Best Short Film at the CRYPTICON Indy Film Festival 2008, Best Adaptation at the International Sci Fi and Horror Film Festival 2007 and an Art Direction Award at the Short Film Festival of Los Angeles 2007. The film has been an official selection in more than 170 film fests worldwide, including AFI Dallas, Worldwide Shorts in Toronto, and the Tokyo International Film Festival.
Special features found on the DVD include exclusive behind-the-scenes of the production process from conception to final post production, as well as interviews with members of the crew including Lougee, writer Matt Taylor, composer Philip Stanger, stop-motion animator Mike Weiss, e 5.1 surround sound design team from Urban Post Prods., and visual effects artists Gudren Heinz and David Alexander from Switch VFX in Toronto. Additional features include of the foley studio at Urban Post Production, a sound mixing session, production stills, storyboards, a conceptual art gallery and hidden links to online materials. Learn more about the film and where to purchase at www.thepitandthependulumshortfilm.com.
