After Effects: Memories of Pittsburgh Filmmaking

After Effects: Memories of Pittsburgh Filmmaking (2005)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Tom Savini, Joseph Pilato, Dusty Nelson, Bernard McKenna, John Harrison, Debra Gordon, David Belki and George A. Romero himself are interviewed for this fifty-nine minute documentary that takes a look at the movie EFFECTS. That movie was shot in Pittsburg but it never got an official release for nearly three decades but director Michael Felscher gathered up a good number of its cast and crew to talk about the picture as well as filmmaking in Pittsburgh.

This here is certainly a much more entertaining film than EFFECTS itself. I really loved how everyone was basically just sitting around telling their stories and it made the film quite memorable as if a group of buddies got together to look back on that time they gathered up a little money and made a movie. I really loved the interviews with the filmmakers as they discussed how they got the money and what connections they had in order to even know what to do. Romero is on hand to discuss some of the small sports documentaries that his company was making at the time and how these led to stuff like MARTIN. Several of the crew members here worked on not only EFFECTS but Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD.

Overall this is a highly entertaining documentary that fans of the film will love. Heck, even if you didn't like the film like me, this is still a nice little jewel that shines a light on Pittsburgh and its filmmakers.

It's. Dry interesting when a film after the making of a particular film decides to also be about the culture of filmmaking in an entire city, which is exactly what this film does to great effect. I've never seen the film the actual film is about but most all names in the film are very familiar to me as I'm a huge fan of director George Romero and he was a huge influence on the film industry in Pittsburgh. He plays only a small role in this documentary but everyone else displays the same love of filmmaking making and film culture just like he did (which is why so many of his films weee shot there). I truly hope that this film not only sheds more like of its film but also the legacy of the film culture it helped create for the film industry.