BENEATH Crew

BENEATH
(2013, 90 mins, color, Red Epic, dir. Larry Fessenden)

CREW

LARRY FESSENDEN, director, editor, producer – Larry Fessenden, winner of the 1997 Someone to Watch Spirit Award and nominee for the 2010 Piaget Spirit Award for producing, is the writer, director and editor of the award-winning art-horror trilogy HABIT (Nominated for two Spirit Awards), WENDIGO, and NO TELLING, as well as THE LAST WINTER (Nominated for a 2007 Gotham Award for best ensemble cast). Fessenden directed SKIN AND BONES for NBC TV’s horror anthology FEAR ITSELF. Fessenden was awarded the 2007 Sitges Film Festival Maria Award for his work as a producer, actor and director in genre film, and he won

the 2009 Golden Hammer Award for “being such an inspiring force in the industry.” In 2011, Fessenden was inducted into the “Fangoria Hall of Fame” and was honored by the UK’s Total Film as an Icon of Horror during the FrightFest Film Festival.

Fessenden has been a producer on various projects including Rob Kuhns’s forthcoming BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD and Adrian Garcia Bogliano’s LATE PHASES, as well as Rick Alverson’s THE COMEDY, Kelly Reichardt’s WENDY AND LUCY (Nominated for two 2009 Spirit Awards and on over 60 “Top 10 Movies of the Year” lists), Ti West’s THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL and THE INNKEEPERS, Jim Mickle’s STAKE LAND (Winner of the 2010 Toronto Film Festival Audience Award), Joe Maggio’s BITTER FEAST, Ti West’s THE ROOST and TRIGGER MAN, and Glenn McQuaid’s I SELL THE DEAD which opened the 2009 Slamdance Film Festival where it won awards for best cinematography and best actor (Fessenden). I SELL THE DEAD won the 2008 Toronto After Dark Film Festival award for Best Independent Film. In the fall of 2010, Fessenden curated and produced with Glenn McQuaid TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE, an ongoing audio series, radio plays for a digital age.

Fessenden has operated the production company Glass Eye Pix since 1985 (“one of the indie scene’s most productive and longest-running companies” — Filmmaker Magazine), with the mission of supporting indi- vidual voices in the arts.

PETER PHOK, producer – Peter Phok has produced a number of genre films with Larry Fessenden’s pro- duction company, Glass Eye Pix, the latest being BENEATH. A graduate of New York City’s School of Visual Arts, Peter co-produced Ti West’s TRIGGER MAN in 2006. Phok went on to produce nine other Glass Eye Pix films, including Graham Reznick’s I CAN SEE YOU, Glenn McQuaid’s I SELL THE DEAD, West’s THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL & THE INNKEEPERS, and Jim Mickle’s STAKE LAND. Additionally, Phok served as an IFP Narrative Lab Mentor in 2008, 2009, & 2011 and as a guest speaker during IFP Film Week this past year. He is currently posting Ti West’s THE SACRAMENT, which he produced with Jacob Jaffke and Eli Roth.

TONY DANIEL, writer – Tony Daniel is the author of seven science fiction novels, the latest of which is GUARDIAN OF NIGHT, as well as an award-winning short story collection, THE ROBOT’S TWILIGHT COMPANION. He is the author of STAR TREK novelization DEVIL’S BARGAIN. He was a Hugo finalist in 1996 for his short story “Life on the Moon,” which also won the Asimov’s Reader’s Choice Award. Daniel’s short stories have been much anthologized and have been collected in multiple year’s best compilations. In the 1990s, he founded and directed the Automatic Vaudeville dramatic group in New York City, with multiple appearances doing audiodrama on WBAI. He’s also co-written the screenplays for several horror movies, including one in regular rotation on the SyFy Channel and the upcoming Larry Fessenden directed BENEATH. During the early 2000s, Daniel was the writer and sometimes director of numerous radio plays and audio dra- mas with actors such as Peter Gallagher, Oliver Platt, Stanley Tucci, Gina Gershon, Luke Perry, Tim Robbins, Tim Curry and Kyra Sedgewick appearing in them for SCI-FI.COM’s Seeing Ear Theatre. Daniel has a Mas- ters in English from Washington University in St. Louis. He attended the USC Film School graduate program for one year before dropping out to write. Born in Alabama, Daniel has led a peripatetic life. He’s lived in St. Louis, Los Angeles, Seattle, Prague, New York City, Dallas, and Raleigh, North Carolina, where he currently resides with his wife Rika, and children Cokie and Hans. He is an editor at Baen Books, the science fiction imprint of Simon and Schuster.

BRIAN SMITH, writer – Until two years ago, Brian worked in the entertainment industry. He wrote TV movies, including ALIEN EXPRESS starring Lou Diamond Phillips (for SYFY Channel) and FLU BIRD HORROR. He also produced and directed full-cast radio dramas for on-line, CD, satellite and NPR. He worked with Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker to produce and direct radio plays of their stories. He launched an all-new series of radio plays based on the original EC Comic TALES FROM THE CRYPT. He cast and directed many talented actors over the years, including Stanley Tucci, John Turturro, Paul Giamatti, Brian Dennehy and Richard Gere. And as an audiobook producer for Random House, Brian directed President Obama reading his Grammy-winning book DREAMS FROM MY FATHER.

Two years ago, Brian changed careers and opened an artisanal ice cream shop called AMPLE HILLS CREAMERY in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Now, instead of spending his days dreaming up strange and terrifying creatures, he dreams up wild and fun flavors of ice cream. Brian’s shop has been featured in the NY Times, Newsweek, New York Magazine, the Cooking Channel, and NY1 News. His ice cream has been rated number 1 in all of NYC by both Zagat and the Village Voice. His cookbook, AMPLE HILLS CREAMERY, SECRETS FROM BROOKLYN’S ICE CREAM SHOP, will be published by Abrams in the spring of 2014.

GORDON ARKENBERG, director of photography – Gordon Arkenberg is a cinematographer with work in narrative, documentary and experimental films. Along with BENEATH, his most recent film with Glass Eye Pix, he has also worked with director Graham Reznick on the stereoscopic 3-D short THE VIEWER (winner of two Telly’s and Best Narrative Short at the LA 3D Film Festival 2010), which was photographed on a self-constructed 3D camera rig, and the critically acclaimed cult feature I CAN SEE YOU.

His documentary work ranges from the verité AS THE CALL, SO THE ECHO (chronicling a surgeon’s volunteering efforts in a hospital in Hue, Vietnam), to the lyrical THE MEANING OF TEA, (a portrait of tea production and appreciation filmed in nine different countries). Both have screened in festivals and on PBS. His experimental work on “still films” with New York photographer Dwight Primiano produced the film WATCH, which screened in galleries in SoHo and is housed in two private collections.

Outside of his work on set, Gordon teaches the course the Science of Cinematography at NYU, a class about the physics that underlie filmmaking.

BRIAN SPEARS, special makeup effects – Brian Spears is a special effects make-up artist who has been providing monsters, maimings and all around gore for the past ten years to projects up and down the east coast. Brian has supplied effects to several feature films, award winning shorts and countless music videos and is one half of the duo GERNER & SPEARS FX . After working on I SELL THE DEAD he’s had the opportunity to work on several projects with the powerhouse production company GLASS EYE PIX. He’s contributed plenty of nastiness to many of their pictures such as BITTER FEAST, STAKE LAND, HYPOTHERMIA, THE INKEEPERS and THE COMEDY. Other credits include JT Petty’s HELLBENDERS, Ti West’s THE SACRAMENT and Jim Mickle’s WE ARE WHAT WE ARE and the currently lensing LATE PHASES. Spears enjoys spending his down time with his little niece teaching her the virtues of spilling blood, painting zombies and howling like a werewolf.

FRACTURED FX, creature effects - Fractured FX, Inc. is a special make-up ef- fects studio that designs and manufactures prosthetics, creature effects, forensic effects, animatronics, props and specialty costumes for the motion picture in- dustry. Fractured is owned and operated by special make-up effects artist Justin Raleigh. With over 15 years of experience, Justin has been at the special make-up effects helm of such projects as WATCHMEN, TRON: LEGACY, SUCKER PUNCH, INSIDIOUS, THE CONJURING, and most recently 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE.

WILL BATES, original score – Will Bates is an award winning composer and founder of Fall On Your Sword. As a saxophonist, Bates has collaborated with a myriad of legendary artists ranging from 60’s icon Lulu to techno legend Marshall Jefferson. A prolific producer and composer Bates has collaborated with a similarly diverse bunch including Mike Rutherford, Roy Ayers and Morcheeba’s Skye Edwards. As a solo artist and multi-instrumentalist, Bates has recorded and toured under the name of his own post-punk band The Rinse and collaborated with Electric Six front-man Dick Valentine as The Evil Cowards. Bates’ first outings as a film composer bore fruit quickly as he scored Ry Russo-Young’s YOU WON’T MISS ME, which premiered at Sundance and won a Gotham Award.

In 2007, Bates created the first of a series of videos under the name Fall On Your Sword. His videos quick- ly went viral on YouTube, racking up hits in the millions and an explosive FOYS live act soon followed. In 2009 Fall On Your Sword evolved into a music production company and audio post facility with purpose built studios in Brooklyn New York. Since then FOYS has created music for commercials and feature films such as the critically acclaimed scores to ANOTHER EARTH, 28 HOTEL ROOMS and NOBODY WALKS.

Bates recently made his first steps into the art world with his highly acclaimed interactive installation piece Sea Of Fire, first shown during the 2012 Armory Art Week in New York. Also in 2012, Fall On Your Sword received the honor of a Discovery of the Year nomination from the World Soundtrack Academy. Bates’ most recent scores of 2013 include WE STEAL SECRETS: THE STORY OF WIKILEAKS by Alex Gibney and BENEATH directed by horror maestro Larry Fessenden.

GRAHAM REZNICK, sound design – Graham Reznick is originally from Delaware and currently based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. As a film student at NYU, Graham’s short films attracted the attention of NYC film icon Larry Fessenden and his production company Glass Eye Pix, where Graham directed the stereoscop- ic 3D short film THE VIEWER (featuring Lena Dunham, and winner of two Telly’s and Best Narrative Short at the Los Angeles 3D Film Festival 2010) and the critically acclaimed feature film I CAN SEE YOU.

Graham recently sound designed and mixed the Academy Award winning short film CURFEW, and has designed sound and music for over a dozen feature films, including Ti West’s THE INNKEEPERS, THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, and V/H/S, as well as Jim Mickle’s STAKE LAND, Glenn McQuaid’s I SELL THE DEAD, and the upcoming Eli Roth produced CLOWN.

Reznick’s latest directorial efforts include several short films (TWELVE DAYS OF BLACK MASS, and a pre- quel for STAKE LAND, starring Danielle Harris), and a dramatic radio program, THE GRANDFATHER, fea- turing horror-legend Angus Scrimm (PHANTASM) for Glass Eye Pix’s series TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE. Graham recently co-scripted (with Larry Fessenden) an upcoming major production video game, UNTIL DAWN, for Sony / Playstation 3. He is currently shooting a micro-budget, multi-narrative science fiction film, THE DESIGNER, over the course of the year.

MILAN RECORDS – Milan Records is a music label with major distribution through Warner Music Group dedicated to the release of film, TV, and video game soundtracks. The company has been around for more than 33 years and released albums such as GHOST, MULHOLLAND DR., THE USUAL SUSPECTS, RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE & RETRIBUTION, PAN’S LABYRINTH, DEXTER, ARBITRAGE, STOKER, THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES... In recent years, Milan worked with some of the most exciting contempo- rary composers such as Cliff Martinez, Clint Mansell, Nick Urata, tomandandy, Fall On Your Sword, Tyler Bates, Mike Patton, David Wingo and many more.

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