The third title in the ‘Penny dreadful theatre’ project ‘The Screaming Skull‘ has reached completion,within budget and on schedule and as previously announced the film will be released in two editions : a ‘Festival cut’ for the ‘Animated Exeter festival’ and general release, and a ‘Directors cut‘ which will be released later in the year. Running time will differ between the two cuts (an estimated two minutes of additional scenes and an extended opening title sequence) and as a result each version will vary slightly in tone and reading.
A key scene in the extended cut is the ‘Act III : End corridor ‘ – a sequence that showcases composer Mick Grierson’s extraordinary audio/visual textures.
“I initially had my doubts that it would work as I hoped, but I knew that we really had something with this sequence when the first reviewer was so unnerved by it that she was caught watching it between her fingers!” Director Ashley Thorpe.
He commented further on Mick Grierson’s work on the score.
“This particular score was a greater challenge than ‘Scayrecrow’ I suspect, as unlike that film, this has a significant change in tone about two thirds of the way through it…We start in Hammer / Amicus territory, quintessentially English horror evoked through the requiem,but soon descend into something far more textural and challenging…One of the things that amazed me was seeing how Mick physically composes to the film as he watches it,noting every movement within frame, and as he’s doing so he’s glancing sideways at me to get a reaction…a real artist at work. I’m very pleased with the end result. The score for ‘The Screaming Skull’ is immensely powerful…it’s rich, dark and painful, but scored very compassionately.”
The next confirmed general public screenings will take place on Saturday November 29th 2008 as part of the ‘Two short nights‘ film festival to be held at the Exeter Phoenix Arts centre. Screenings begin at 7:30pm and further details and tickets can be obtained via www.twoshortnights.co.uk.
Further screenings will be held throughout February 2009 as part of ‘Animated Exeter’. Additional preview screenings, dates and venues, will be confirmed here.
A number of select private screenings will also take place on Halloween 2008 in London and the South West.
WARNING : The Directors cut, should you be lucky enough to see it, is not for the faint hearted…