THE BRONX — If John Pyatt gets his way, a demon army will overrun the borough.
Pyatt, 44, is the mastermind behind a web series called "Clot," which begins as a Faustian bargain between a demon and a power-hungry man and develops into an epic battle for the soul of all mankind.
Pyatt, a lifelong Bronx resident who has been working in video production for 15 years, has been developing the back story of "Clot" for years and came up with the idea by thinking about how moral codes evolve and what can make a person turn evil.
In the series, a demon possesses the main character after appearing to him in a dream and offering to give him powers. Once inside, the demon goes searching for a tablet that will tell him how to walk the Earth in his own body, searching for other humans with evil hearts that he can turn into demon soldiers along the way.
"With command over a growing demon army, he gets closer to finding the evil that lives in the heart of man," reads the site's description of the series. "An evil so potent that it can bridge the gap between Earth and Hell."
"I thought it would be interesting if I gave that evil a face," explained Pyatt, "so that face became the demon soldiers, called Bloodhounds."
He added that the series uses the main character and his newfound demonic powers as a way to explore good and evil.
"What’s kind of cool about him is — other than him having a demon in him — he goes around, and if he looks into your eyes, he’s able to see the sin that you committed," Pyatt said.
Pyatt hopes to make four seasons of "Clot," each made up of about 12 to 15 10-minute episodes. He has six of the episodes written so far.
He plans on filming the show all over The Bronx and was particularly interested about the appropriately-named Hart Island near Pelham Bay Park.
"The organization that the soldiers are from is the Hart Corporation," he said. "There actually happened to be an island off The Bronx called Hart Island, and that to me was like, 'OK, this has to be a sign because that’s where they’re coming from'."
Pyatt hopes the series will help The Bronx reclaim some of the artistic dominance that he believes it has ceded to Brooklyn and Manhattan, especially when it comes to programming.
“The Bronx is so culturally explosive between the hip hop music and the salsa music, the graffiti art,” he said. “Now, in terms of today, nothing’s really coming out, and it’s almost like we’re a forgotten borough.”
His 17-year-old daughter Skaila Pyatt, a student at the Academy of Mount St. Ursula, also appreciated the series' links to The Bronx, as she said that many people just assume filming in New York City means filming in Manhattan or Brooklyn.
"Seeing that it's filmed where I live, that really makes me feel more connected to it," she said.
Skaila is listed as a creative consultant for the series on its website, and her father described her as one of the most important people involved with its creation.
Rikki Ricks, a producer on the series who has worked with Pyatt before on films and music videos, said he was attracted to the project because of how new the idea sounded and described the show's plot as very compelling.
"Once the viewer gets into the story, they’ll really be taken for a nice little ride," he said. "And it’s all about the experience. It’s all about the ride."
