Short Film Round Up: Marc Lougee's The Pit and the Pendulum and Andrew Seman's All Day Long

Lougee's effot first. With Ray Harryhausen on board as an executive producer and the source material lifted from Poe's famous short story you should know basically what you're getting. The only question is will it be good? The answer is a resounding yes. Stop motion animation is a demanding discipline, one slowly fading away in favor of newer technology but Lougee proves there's still life in these bones. As obviously artificial as stop motion is on a surface level there's still something compelling and just plain creepy about the form in the right hands, probably because these are obviously real artifacts moving about in equally real, physical settings. There's a weight to stop motion that you just don't get with other mediums and Lougee knows how to use it to great effect. Clocking in at only seven minutes the story has been stripped to its bones but it's an effective, atmospheric piece of work driven by the realistic animation, exaggerated and highly detailed design work and the master stroke of casting his model's face from pliable wax rather than the typical clay or plasticine to give that extra bit of Poe pallor. Very nice.

Seman's work is purely live action, a short film about teenage lovers cutting class to spend the day together only to gradually realize as the day slips away that they're really kind of boring. This sort of mood piece is one difficult to synopsize, the sort of thing that a film maker either gets absolutely or just plain doesn't - there is no in between. Semans gets it. The excitement and anticipation, the first rush of indulging the forbidden gradually fades until all that's left are these two kids who don't really know each other, have nothing to do and even less to say. Photography is stellar and Semans coaxes very realistic performances out of his leads.