Live Cinema Projection 

The Fall of the House of Usher is an operatic adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's classic short story by Phillip Glass. Set in a dark and gloomy ancestral home of the Usher family the story chronicles the self destruction, not only of the family home, but the implosion of the Usher family. A bizarre tale of madness, murder, supernatural revenge, and possible incest, The Fall of the House of Usher, takes its audience through both harrowing and unsettling territories.

 

In this partnership with the Calgary Philharmonic we sought to create a haunting video backdrop that would carry the audience through the eery storyline by translocating them within the House of Usher, moving them from room to room to view the spectacle in person. To balance the mood of Poe's rather gothic short story with the inherent minimalism of Glass' music we shot the scenes in throughout the Alberta College of Art and Designs brutalist inspired industrial architecture. Sequences were filmed in scale to create a sense of first-person habitation of the space. The audience was transported through the building along with the characters, sometimes in slow and fast motion, literally experiencing the decent of the family and their home into the abyss of madness.

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Directed by kurtis lesick

Line Production by Greg Debicki

Live Cinema Coordination/Performance by Mathew Lindenberg and Kaylee Novakovski

Music Composed by Philip Glass

Music Performed by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra

Performed at the Jack Singer Concert Hall, Calgary, Canada, October 30, 2015