After Effects: Memories of Pittsburgh Filmmaking (2005 Video) User Reviews

Making Effects

[Michael_Elliott · 30 July 2017]

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.

A must watch

[BandSAboutMovies · 10/10 · 9 December 2022]

In the late 70s, a group of ambitious Pittsburgh filmmakers decided to work together to make a movie called The Manipulator and later Effects. Due to a distributor problem, it was never released in theaters or on home videom with just two theatrical screenings. One was athe U. S. Film Fest - which is now the Sundance Film Festival - and then the world premiere at the much-missed and long-gone Kings Court theater in Oakland on November 9, 1979.

26 years later, Effects would finally be released on DVD and shown at the Warhol in Pittsburgh. Today, there's a gorgeous AGFA blu ray release of the film and you can watch it any time you'd like, but at one point - as Tom Savini reminds you in this documentary - all he could do was tell people about the movie because there was no way to see it.

Directed by Michael Felsher and featuring nearly everyone involved with the film - David Belko, Susan Chapek, John Harrison, Dusty Nelson, Debra Gordon, Joe Pilato, Pasquale Buba, Savini, George Romero and Marty Schiff - the bulk of this story takes place poolside at John harrison's house as the cast looks back on a movie that was hidden for so long. There are also moments filmed at the old Mind Over Media building, a place I worked at just a few years afterward.

This was a bonus feature on the releases of Effects, but this new blu ray has so much more, like an exclusive feature-length edition of AfterEffects with over 15 minutes of never-before-seen interview footage, commentary from Felsher, more interview clips with George Romero, deleted scenes, highlights of the evening Effects played the Warhol, the 2005 DVD trailer and a book with all-new tributes to Buba, Pilato and Romero.

I often think that so much of the culture that I love is disappearing, that the people who made it are fading away. This has been shown to me so many times this year. This movie allows me to look back on so many that are gone and sit amongst them, learning how Pittsburgh once made its own films. Great films.

This is worth the watch just to hear how much Pilato loved his first lunch at the Squirrel Cage.