Maya Deren and Marcel Duchamp's Witch's Cradle (shot in 1943 and left unfinished), as well as her Haiti Footage (shot between 1947–1954, later edited and finished by her last husband, Teiji Ito, and released by Mystic Fire Films in 1985), were Deren's contributions to Beard's The Unfinished Film. In Witch's Cradle, Duchamp's appearance, multiple takes of various scenes, and the extended raw footage of various 'special effects' scenes, amplify the inventive techniques used by Deren, to produce illusions of autonomous movement and fragmentations of perceptual space. Although incomplete, the film title's allusion to the occult and paranormal (the witch's cradle originating in the medieval era as an instrument of torture of alleged witches but then appropriated as a tool for meditative self-exploration) further extends Deren's repertoire. Strands of white twine are pulled across objects and bodies by a black thread tied in a miniscule knot to the ends of twine seen pulling and tugging (at :29–:48 seconds, for instance, or again, at 1:25, 2:03 or 2:55-3:08), until it disappears out of view, and we see the white string seemingly moving on its own. What do such fragments offer us, as Beard might ask? They demonstrate Deren's creative process in art direction, and are suggestive of the 'outsides of the frame' for Deren's other films where there is a seamless-ness to such effects.

In Andy Warhol's Batman Dracula (1964), this area outside the frame of the film is alluded to, specifically here with regards to actor Jack Smith's annoyance that Warhol would never tell him when he was in or out of frame and that some of his best acting happened off-camera (recounted by photographer Billy Name and filmmaker George Kuchar in this excerpt from Jack Smith and the End of Atlantis, below). Like in Deren and Duchamp's film, low-budget creative art direction is evidenced in this unfinished work, for instance when aluminum foil headpieces, masks and 'helmets' can be seen on Batman and Catwoman, and glistening effects of lights shining off saran wrap can be seen in excerpted film rushes.

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