David Howard Thornton in Terrifier 3

Movies are a uniquely collaborative art form. A painting, a novel or a song can be created in solitude, but you can’t make a commercial narrative film by yourself. That said, the original Terrifier came about as close as you can get: Writer-director Damien Leone is also credited for producing, editing, special make-up effects, visual effects, sound design and props. In addition to putting up money, producer Phil Falcone served as UPM, AD and stunt driver and also assisted with the effects. As for cinematographer George Steuber, he was the entirety of the camera department. He operated, pulled his own focus, dumped his own media and set up most of the lights.
As the Terrifier series has continued to grow in popularity—the third entry has made $90 million so far on a $2 million budget—so have the crews. On the newest film, Steuber had a gaffer, a grip truck, some ACs, an Arri Alexa 35 and an assortment of lights that extended beyond what he already had in his garage.
With the latest installment of Art of the Clown’s exploits now on VOD (and back in theaters on Christmas), Steuber talked to Filmmaker about crafting a gore-soaked seasonal slasher that makes Silent Night, Deadly Night feel about as transgressive as Miracle on 34th Street.
Filmmaker: You have a Tom Savini cameo in Terrifier 3. In the 1970s and 1980s glory days of Savini, those make-up effects guys were always trying to one-up each other. There are a lot of very artful, interesting horror movies being made right now, but gore is not a significant component for many of them. So, right now, you guys don’t really have a lot of competition. The bar for Terrifier 3 is really just the previous entries in the series.
Steuber: Right, but I’m not sure how long that’s going to be true. I suspect in the future people are probably going to create more [things like this series].
Filmmaker: I’m sure the Monday morning after the Terrifier 3 opening weekend receipts came out there were some old scripts getting dusted off.
Steuber: I’d say you’re right. Damien was saying the same thing, basically, that this was probably going to open the gateway to more slasher films coming out. We’ll see what happens.

Filmmaker: The evolution in scale of this series is fascinating. For Terrifier 3, the scope of production increased to the point where there’s a dedicated effects team, but on the first two films it was literally the director Damien Leone and producer Phil Falcone doing them. Walk me through how stripped down the approach was on the first Terrifier.
Steuber: Just to give you an idea, in my department it was pretty much me and two other guys. That’s not just camera, that’s G&E, that’s everything. Sometimes I had a gaffer show up and sometimes he would not. We were training the other guy. He’d never been on a film before, though he was very helpful. So, that’s kind of where I was at. I’d have to jump in and just light everything and go. For camera, I was the operator. We didn’t have a 1st or 2nd AC. We didn’t have a DIT. It was basically me.
Filmmaker: So, you’re pulling focus. You’re dumping cards. 
Steuber: Yes. And you’re right, we would pause and do effects. The whole thing was pretty wild. We shot that movie out in Trenton, New Jersey in a warehouse and wound up having to leave that warehouse [before the film was finished]. So, we had to recreate the warehouse somewhere else. The hacksaw scene, for example, was shot in multiple places.
Filmmaker: I can’t imagine the inefficiency of doing everything like that. Like, you have to run over and gel a light or flag it, run back around to the camera to see if that did what you wanted it to do. Did you have a little portable monitor or anything to help you work?
Steuber: A portable monitor? We didn’t have batteries for the camera sometimes. (laughs) 
Filmmaker: How many shoot days did you get for the third installment? 

Steuber: We had everyone on for around 45 days, not including the inserts after.
Filmmaker: That seems pretty generous for this budget range.
Steuber: It definitely was generous.
Filmmaker: And you’ve got some name people in this one. Jason Patric and Clint Howard both pop up. Is that a one-day thing where you get them for a small window?
Steuber: Yeah, more or less. They would fly in, there’d be another day where they would shoot, then they would fly out.
Filmmaker: What was the crew like for this new one? 
Steuber: Oh, it was great. Dan Peck was the gaffer. He was a recommendation through another gaffer who was actually supposed to work on the film, but he made it into the union and couldn’t do it so he gave us a recommendation. Dan was hesitant at first. He wasn’t really a horror movie guy, but our key grip Anthony Earabino told him, “No, you have to do this film.” Once we got into a groove they were great to work with. At first it was a little difficult, because Damien and I went old school with this one and did a lot of tungsten lighting. Now everything is [typically] LED and we didn’t use those pretty much at all. We stuck to old school lighting, which means you have to run a lot more power. We had generators constantly running. With the bigger crew, I know it was tough for [producer] Phil Falcone to not do more on set. He loves getting his hands dirty and I know I was tough for him to sit back and watch. I’ll be honest, it was tough for me too to walk by a light and not put my hand on it, because I’ve been so hands on all this time on these movies.

Filmmaker: Did you use mainly tungsten units on the first one too?
Steuber: Yes. We basically used what I had in my garage, which was a bunch of old tungsten units. I might’ve had one or two Kinos, but it was mostly tungsten just because that was all I had. I’m used to using those units. I’ve used those for years on music videos and I always liked the way they looked. Damien likes the way it looks too. It helps with that retro feel. So, basically the gaffer Dan had to adjust to using tungsten. He was pulling out LED lighting and I’m like, “We can’t use that.” After the first week you didn’t really see too many of those coming out anymore. 
Filmmaker: Well, they get hot as hell and if you want to change the color, you’re putting gels on there. If it’s too bright, you’re putting scrims or nets in front of them. Those older units are harder to work with.
Steuber: It’s definitely a lot more work, but I still think it has a different look. Don’t get me wrong, the LED units are pretty close, but there’s still a different quality to tungsten units and they give you great skin tones. 
Filmmaker: What did you shoot the Terrifier movies with? 
Steuber: We shot the first one on my RED Scarlet with Rokinon Cine lenses. For the second one, we jumped to an Arri Alexa Mini with Arri Signature Primes. For the third one, we got to use the Alexa 35. We did a bunch of testing. We looked at the Sony Venice and the Alexa 35 side by side with different lenses. We had a bunch of Cookes that we looked at. We had Zeiss Super Speeds. We wound up going with Panavision Primo anamorphics.
Filmmaker: The movie definitely has a gritty feel to it. Did you use the Alexa 35’s Arri Textures at all?

Steuber: When we did our testing with the cameras, we shot at all different ISOs to see which would yield the result we wanted in terms of grain and texture. We didn’t bake anything in [with the Arri Textures], but we had a LUT created for what we wanted the final to look like. We had filtration as well. We tested out a bunch of filters—Pro-Mist, Glimmerglass. Then this camera guy that we were working with mentioned something about Black Pearlescent filters. We put that on and it gave us more of a filmic look, a little extra texture. We didn’t go too heavy with it, because you can add more [of that effect] in post but it’s very difficult to take away.
Filmmaker: Are the interiors of the hero house a set? 
Steuber: That’s an interesting story. It’s an actual house and it belonged to somebody on the crew from part two.
Filmmaker: A crew person let you use their house? They should know better.
Steuber: He’s been doing it for long enough, he should definitely know better. (laughs) He knows what’s going to happen. So, yeah, it was a crew member’s house, but the stunts were done elsewhere. Obviously, we didn’t take apart his floor and have an [interdimensional] gate open up. That was constructed in a studio, and it was built up off the ground so that we had space for a person to fall through. We actually rebuilt the entire living room behind that set as well. So, we built it twice so we could work on both [simultaneously]. I photographed all the rigs, all the lighting, everything at the original location. We took notes on how things were exposed. We had that data, which we definitely wouldn’t have had on the first Terrifier. We just mimicked it and recreated it. 
Filmmaker: How about the Black Christmas homage with Art the Clown in a rocking chair in the attic with a pool of light coming down on him?
Steuber: It’s just a few Fresnels with some gel to get that look. A lot of times we would shoot a hard light through Opal, which is more transparent than Frost or a 250 diffusion. For the little patterns on the wall, we would use Lekos with gobos that Dan brought with him .

Filmmaker: Normally this wouldn’t be a question for a DP, but since you’re also a co-producer on the movie I have to ask about the mall Santa scene. Was it difficult to talk 20 parents into putting their kids in there?
Steuber: Actually, people really wanted to be in it. So, it was not that hard, believe it or not.