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The Tell-Tale Heart
(Das verräterische Herz)


Short Film // 2022
Drama, Horror, Period // Austria
Director

Kathrin Told
Production

Battitude Arts
FH Salzburg


“True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.”
- E. A. Poe


Title Intro,
Poster
& Film Props

Title intro of The Tell-Tale Heart

A man driven to madness by his obsession with an old man's "vulture eye" murders him and is ultimately undone by his own overwhelming guilt, which manifests as the imagined sound of the dead man's still-beating heart.


Stills from the title sequence
This title sequence introduces the main protagonists with ghostly animations and sets the mood for the film's atmosphere. The subtle movements are reminiscent of a cat sneaking up on its victim - just like the younger man in the short story.






Film poster
Based on the tragic short story about a gentleman who, fearing the wrong eye of his older companion, murders him one night and hides the body under the floorboards, the strategic placement of the title suggests a cross-section of a room. 

Pluto the cat, a protagonist of the short story The Black Cat (1843), also appears here. The Gothic-style lettering and the illustration, which resembles a pen and ink drawing/etching, refer to the classification of Poe's works as "Gothic" literature.

Death and decay are represented here in colour by a cold green, while the strong red represents life on the one hand, but also the manic, paranoid behaviour of the younger man.
Poster for The Tell-Tale Heart


“Nevermore”
This allusion to Poe's poem The Raven (1845) is stylistically modelled on Füssli's Nightmare (1781). The background is colour-coordinated with the bedroom of the doomed old man and its greenish sheen is reminiscent of the poisonous arsenic that is said to have adorned Napoleon's wallpaper in exile on St. Helena and ultimately caused his death.

In the film, the painting can be seen above the old man's bed, watching over him like a harbinger of death.



Approach


First test of the title intro
Painting process in Procreate



Painting process of the poster illustration
The painting process of Nevermore
Digital sketch of the painting




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