Back in January, I had the chance to shadow the independent film Saturnalia for three days, capturing behind-the-scenes photos of the Gearhead Camera production on location. After filming wrapped in February, I was fortunate to speak with producer, writer and cinematographer Max Fischer and director and co-writer Daniel Lerch. Their collaboration—a tale of a boarding school with chilling secrets—was born from a shared love of Italian Giallo films and the 2023 summer writers’ strike. We later connected over Zoom, where I had the opportunity to ask them about the filmmaking landscape in Virginia in 2024. Their responses have been condensed for this format.
Both Max and Daniel are graduates of the 1990s film school boom, each having emerged from high school media programs during a time when Pulp Fiction was in theaters and zombie movies filled VHS tapes and cable TV schedules. They quickly developed the skills and discipline to work on film and commercial production crews.
Max has since built a distinguished reputation as a Steadicam operator and cinematographer, his work now legendary in the region.
I had the chance to meet Daniel at the Southern Mystique Film Camp in Petersburg, VA, at New Millennium Film Studios, where I was the instructor. After he made a horror movie that summer, I was able to see his detailed and ambitious World War II films when he screened them at Project Resolution around 2005-06 in Richmond.
Saturnalia
The year is 1979, and Miriam Basconi is a teenager whose parents are killed under mysterious circumstances. As a result, she is shipped off to the prestigious Alstroemerias Academy, a preparatory school for America’s elite orphaned children. Miriam must survive the cruel and sadistic behavior of Headmistress Ms. Hemlock. From day one, Miriam can tell something is off with her new home. Now she must discover the truth of what’s happening to her fellow students behind closed doors. But instead, she uncovers the surreal world living and breathing inside of Alstroemerias Academy.
Saturnalia is a high concept homage to the cerebral and stylish world of Italian Giallo films and Italian Supernatural Horror of the ’70s. The score is composed by Claudio Simonetti of Goblin, who created all of the music for Dario Argento’s classic Giallo films.
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Max Fischer: I grew up in Philly and was lucky enough that my high school had a filmmaking class. I spent a lot of time doing still photography in the first couple of years of high school. When we were in 11th grade, you could start doing filmmaking, and I got my hands on a Bolex with hundred-foot rolls of film. I was hooked.
I went to film school at American University in D.C. I was a total film school geek—this was in 1993, and Tarantino was the hot thing. Every single person I went to film school with wanted to be a director, but I was like, “I don’t want to direct. I want to get my hands on the camera.” So I ended up shooting everybody’s film.
I don’t know if any of them were able to pursue anything in the industry, but fortunately, I got in. I started freelancing right away and joined the union in ’98 as a camera person. I began as a camera assistant, then moved up to operator, then DP.
I’ve been in Richmond since around 2000, so this is definitely home, and I love the filmmaking community here
Daniel Lerch: My interest in film goes a little further back into childhood. My half-brother, who’s ten years older than me, was a special makeup effects guy. When he’d come to visit on weekends, or when we’d go to his house, I’d see all these sculpts and molds. So I grew up around horror films and effects work from a young age. That inspired me, along with being a latchkey kid in the ’80s and ’90s. Once I got to high school, I was an aimless kid and started shooting skateboard and BMX videos, going to punk rock and metal shows—always being the guy with the camera.
Just like Max, I had a high school film program that I got involved in, with Sandy Silvestri at Meadowbrook High School. She helped me get set up in the International Baccalaureate film class, which I had to get special permission to join. After that, I knew, “This is what I want to do.” I went to film school with a concentration on directing. However, I was very interested in lighting and cinematography, so any chance I could get, I was crewing on other people’s films as a grip, electrician, or best boy—kind of always knowing that would be my trade to make money and learn the craft.
After graduating from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (it was called NCSA when I went there), I immediately joined IATSE in Virginia, around 2009 or ’10, and I’ve been freelancing ever since. I moved down to Atlanta and have worked as a career best boy for the past 15 or 16 years. On the side, I always had ambitions to direct, doing music videos, commercials, and any spec work I could for friends’ bands. Ultimately, I kind of gave up on it—until the strike this year [2023], when I started a boutique film production company with the intention of creating smaller commercials, music videos, and other creative projects.
With a production slow down and multi-departments strikes the return to watching movies was a respite for Max and Daniel had a practice of reviewing Giallo and Horror films online. Max asked Daniel if he had interest in batting around ideas and writing something in this time of uncertainty. Daniel went to work writing a script, within two weeks a first draft of Saturnalia was prepared and sent over.
Max: We’ve been Facebook friends for at least ten years, and Danny would always post horror movie reviews. I’d think, “He has the exact same taste in movies that I do.” I’d comment on his reviews here and there. Then this past summer, during the strikes, I was sitting around, feeling frustrated because nothing was happening. I was making a living doing commercials, which helped me get through the strikes, but I got on this kick—sometimes you go months without watching much, and then sometimes you just binge everything.
So, I started watching all the Giallo movies. I’ve always been a fan of Dario Argento films, but this time, I started digging into some obscure ones. I remembered Danny had recently posted a ton of Giallo reviews, so I thought of him as I watched Suspiria. I thought, “Man, I would’ve killed to make a film like this.” It’s just so visually engaging—that would be my dream job, shooting a movie like that.
Then it hit me: “Why don’t I just make it happen? We’re all sitting around doing nothing.” So I reached out to Danny and said, “Hey, I’ve got this crazy idea to make a movie. I know you love Giallos. Would you have any interest in directing?” And he replied, “Hell, yeah!”
I told him, “I’ve got an idea for a movie, I’ve got a location, and I have all these pieces that could work for a low-budget project. We just need a script.”
Daniel: To backtrack a bit, this past summer, even while working on commercial projects, I was doing some spec work and development for YouTube channels. I thought, “I’m going to start writing again.” I wrote one feature that’s a bit of a “shoot for the stars” ’80s thriller, and I’d just finished it two weeks before Max reached out. It’s funny because, when I posted those reviews you mentioned, I remember feeling serious imposter syndrome before hitting post for the first time. I’m not a critic—I consider myself intelligent enough, but I was doubting myself. If I hadn’t just said, “Screw it, I’m going to do it,” I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to both of you now.
That’s the biggest lesson I took from this process: there’s no magic tool in this industry; you just have to go for it. You have to write, you have to put yourself out there, because you never know how even a small thing—like a Facebook post—might catch the attention of someone interested in collaborating.
We really “no-life’d” it for two weeks. I locked myself in with my wife, my writing partner Darrell, and my friend Austin (who directs The Last Drive-In). He helped us with blocking, beats, and character development from the very beginning.
We knocked out the script in ten days. Max’s genius in selecting a location for us created a kind of sandbox, and we had some limitations around the number of characters and other factors based on budget. Working within those constraints actually helped. We decided, “Let’s make the most personal horror movie we can,” drawing from real-life experiences, which really flowed naturally into the story. Planning out all the beats and characters first, then diving into the story and plot, made it feel like it wrote itself. The excitement was high, which always helps, and we blasted through it—now it’s in post.
Max: And it was like the next weekend after he emailed me the script, I was like, “We’re freaking doing this. This is going to be awesome.” The project kept growing, and the script was massive. It was originally set for a $5 million budget, so we had to compress it, but we pulled off a lot given what we had to work with. He was extremely gracious in terms of compromising.
I’ve always thought the best way to approach a low-budget film is to find a location first, then build a story around it. Nobody wants to watch another movie set entirely in someone’s living room. So I figured, let’s find an awesome location and make it our baseline. That’s when I reached out to Dover Hall.
In a whirlwind three-month pre-production fast track, locations were scouted in person and online, casting choices were made, production design took shape, and cameras were ready to roll. Set in 1979, with the defining film traditions and techniques of that era, the project drew inspiration from the stylistic transition from the ’70s to the ’80s. Daniel and Max discussed the visual inspirations behind the film, providing a rich Giallo history lesson and sharing their approach to using today’s technology and skills to pay homage to that golden era, before the corporate takeovers of the ’80s and the recent streaming wars. Marathon screenings deepened their understanding of the Giallo style, which became embedded in the screenplay and production preparations.
Daniel: I have a love-hate relationship with Giallos, and I use “hate” lightly—maybe it’s just 1% of what I don’t like about them. They’re very plot-driven, so it’s hard to get attached to the characters. Many of these films were made during a pessimistic time in the 1970s, which was a golden age of cinema but also a period trying to subvert Hollywood tropes. Some of the characters are extremely misogynistic or unlikable, and there’s often a focus on the fetishization of violence against beautiful women, which I dislike.
But we get the benefit of a modern perspective. Many of Dario Argento’s movies, I feel, actually have a strong feminist message, whereas Fulci admitted to being a misogynist in real life. You can look at these films and ask, “What are the merits?” while acknowledging what’s problematic about them today. Now I get to take what I love about Giallos and make it with modern sensibilities. We were careful to be tasteful, not gratuitous, and to add a touch of modernization. It’s still very 1970s, but I didn’t feel the need to self-censor; rather, I embraced the style with creativity. It’s like working with Play-Doh instead of marble.
My approach was to write what I know, and real life is far scarier than anything purely imaginary. It wasn’t just me, though—Max had great input, my wife had awesome ideas, and so did Darrell, Austin, and our production designer Andrew Carnwath. Everyone seemed to be in the same movie as we brought them on board. I’m a huge collaborator; I’m not one to call this “A Daniel John Lerch Film.” If you assemble the right team, make your vision clear, and everyone embraces the challenge and understands the source material, collaboration is the way to go.
Whenever we had to scale back a big scene, we’d ask, “How can we make it more personal, weirder, or more surreal?” That was always the creative solution to what I call “scope creep,” where you start with grand ideas and gradually refine them to sharpen the focus of the story.
I love how these films pay homage to Hitchcock’s legacy, but we added elements beyond traditional Giallo confines. I love the Phantasm series, Spielberg’s lens choices, and the way he blocks his actors. So, we combined different aesthetics and created our own style. There’s no strict formula—it’s about who we are, our tastes, and reinterpreting what we love through our own perspective and ambition.
Max: Another aspect of classic Giallo films is the “whodunit” reveal at the end, which feels a bit like Scooby-Doo. You start with ten characters, four of them die off, and now there are six left. They make one of them seem like the bad guy, though he obviously isn’t, and it ends up being someone else when the mask comes off in that classic Scooby-Doo style. We didn’t want to do that. Our movie isn’t really a mystery in that sense.
We definitely wanted a surprise ending, and I think we outdid ourselves. There are actually three surprise endings—I don’t think I’m giving too much away by saying that. Danny always emphasized adding details that viewers might not notice until a second or third watch. “If we can make a movie that people want to see more than once and look for those things, then that’s awesome.”
Given both Daniel and Max’s deep connection to the Richmond, central Virginia, and East Coast film scene, incredible craft artists and crew members came on board to handle the technical and department work, bringing this colorful, mysterious, genre-blending horror-suspense film to life. Creative ingenuity, digital camera technology, bold LED lighting, sharp art direction, and rich costumes fill the frame. Every craft and tech department has a chance to contribute to this skewed world, born out of a love for highly stylized films and an intense study of various cinematic passions.
Max: Working in digital makes life easier. I didn’t want to go too crazy with modern lighting because it’s naturally soft, and that’s not the look from that era. Back then, they used hard lights and had to put on ridiculous gels to get those intense colors, with big hot lights to achieve the right look.
We were lucky because now you can get a small LED light, turn a dial to get any color you want, and adjust the brightness as needed. The cameras can actually capture more than the eye can see. This is a really dark movie, both literally and figuratively, so I didn’t want bright lights in the actors’ faces when they’re supposed to be sneaking around at night. That doesn’t work for creating the right atmosphere, and this setup really helped set the tone for the actors.
Daniel: You have leitmotifs with music, we actually had like “light motifs” with the lighting too. We sort of assigned that to the cerebral place that the film goes into; a headspace of a certain part of the film. The Fifth Cord was a big influence on that look for us. It’s not your typical looking Giallo, but it has some of the best cinematography in the genre. It’s a fun little Frank Nero whodunit crime movie. The story is decent and has a pretty suspenseful third act, but there’s something about the framing and lines that they use with blinds and stuff. It’s not even done in the typical film noir way, they’re always shooting through something. There’s always foreground elements and background elements.
Max: That was shot by Vittorio Storaro before he was doing big stuff. So imagine, a genius mind, a true artist, but not given all of the tools and budget. He had to be creative, put his name on it, his mark on it in creative ways and it’s amazing.
Daniel: He did The Bird with the Crystal Plumage with Dario Argento. He’s shot at least three Giallo films, and they’re all absolutely stunning—not in the typical way you’d expect with Bava or Argento-style lighting, but different in a good way. That was a huge influence on the visual style of this movie.
Giallo means “yellow” in Italian, named after yellow-covered pulp novels. The early proto-Giallo films were pioneered by Bava, who helped define the genre. There are several sub-genres of Giallo, like Poliziotteschi, the police procedural genre. In Giallo, it’s typically an amateur detective solving the case, and later, horror elements were woven in—Argento and Fulci were instrumental in that shift.
Most Giallo films weren’t supernatural, though a few broke that mold. Even American Giallo films like Eyes of Laura Mars and The Psychic introduced deeper or more complex storytelling techniques, departing from Hitchcock’s more logical structure.
I feel like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel now, having seen all the best ones. But even the lesser-known films usually have something interesting, whether it’s an exciting third act or a memorable intro. Torso is one of my favorites. It has the most suspenseful third act of any Giallo—it’s straight-up Hitchcockian. But, as Max mentioned earlier, it still has that classic Giallo “Scooby-Doo” reveal at the end, where the mask comes off, and you’re like, “Okay, well, at least the ride was fun.”
Our goal, going back to our story, was to stick the landing—to have a spectacular ending that no one sees coming.
When asked about the conventions of digital visual effects, blue/green screen work, and contemporary methods of image-building, and how to balance those with the “how they did it in the 1970s” philosophy, Max shared his perspective.
Max: It was never an option in my eyes. I didn’t want that look. Budget was a factor, and I wanted this to feel like a movie from the ’70s. There’s an opening scene that’s a hook but has some of the absolute worst “poor man’s process” you’ll see in a long time—and we did that on purpose. I kept saying, “I’m going to have to go out and shoot driving plates, and I’m running out of time to do this.” It was literally two days before we started shooting, and I still hadn’t done the night driving plates.
Finally, I decided, “You know what? Screw it. I don’t want to do driving plates or even use front projection.” I said, “Let’s just put some crazy lights outside the car windows, add some horribly fake rain, and let it set the tone.” And it works great. We wanted everything to be practical. They didn’t have digital effects back then. If there was gore, it was obviously makeup and fake blood. Look at a movie like Phantasm or RoboCop. We referenced those a lot. Danny’s an expert on both, and they use tons of “in-camera” effects. I don’t even want to call them tricks—they’re so simple that they feel like the natural way to do things.
Daniel: I’m a musician too, and I like to play late ’70s and early ’80s heavy metal. When I make that kind of music, I stick to the conventions of the time; we’re not using techniques that modern musicians rely on. This is a period film, so it’s not just about the costumes, wardrobe, hairstyles, and makeup. It’s about the cinematic language we use.
Sometimes, you might only shoot a page in a day if you’ve got a lot of effects or in-camera work, but in my mind, it’s totally worth it. I think you get better performances from your actors because you’re capturing something intrinsic and real. Our goal was never to design a shot or sequence around a piece of equipment. It was always about asking, “What piece of equipment serves this scene the best?” which often turned out to be the Steadicam—it was the most economical and straightforward choice for some scenes.
Max: That brings up one more thing with low-budget filmmaking. The location was amazing, but we couldn’t afford to shoot there the whole time. We had a 16-day shoot, which wasn’t long enough; we could only afford to shoot at Dover for eight days. So we figured out which locations in the script could be faked. The grand hallways and these incredible, ornate dining rooms, libraries, and ballrooms—we couldn’t fake those. But we thought, “Why are we going to rent this whole beautiful, 38,000-square-foot mansion just to shoot in a bedroom for a couple of days? We can fake a bedroom.” So, we built a bedroom above my garage.
Same thing with the Pump House. That place doubles as the basement of Dover. It’s a bit of a stretch—it’s like The Beyond. The Pump House stood in as some underground ruins of the place. We got creative.
Daniel: We did get Claudio Simonetti of Goblin to be our composer, which is huge. That brings a certain level of authenticity. He scored so many Argento movies, as well as George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, which is one of my top five movies of all time.
In this unique time in between the strikes, corporate restructuring mergers, and the panic around AI broaching into the industry we talked about this current time in film history unfolding that this passion work is being made.
Max: Our movie is coming out at a really good time, but I don’t know what the landscape will be in five years. Unfortunately, the average American moviegoer still wants to see a superhero doing some B.S.—a movie with no script, no plot, no real acting. It’s just, “It entertains me for 90 minutes, and then I walk out.” I don’t like those movies. I don’t watch them.
I do think there’s going to be a resurgence of storytelling, though. AI is… well, there’s no sugarcoating it—it’s pretty amazing what it can do. And as people keep saying, “What you see today is the worst it will ever be.” It’s only going to get better.
Honestly, I’m glad I don’t have 20 more years in this industry because I can’t imagine trying to start off in this field right now.
Daniel:It’s kind of scary. You know, Tyler Perry is just 20 minutes from my house. I’ve worked there on countless studio TV shows and movies, and a lot of people rely on those jobs. The expansion holds promise, but it’s sad to me that some see technology as a quick fix to replace the need for human manpower. Every craft in this business is creative, and people have devoted so much of their lives to honing their skills and producing amazing work. Having a computer that can just emulate what’s already out there, without bringing anything genuinely new, feels like a huge letdown to me. Maybe I’m being naive, but I believe people generally have good taste, especially those who really love cinema.
There will always be an audience who wants to see films that are shot on real film or made with real actors, real locations, and real props. It may be a smaller group, but it’s there—like how Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, and even Spielberg insist on shooting on film.
You’ll never get a movie like Jaws if it’s made solely on a computer. That film is brilliant because of all the problems they had to solve. The shark didn’t work, they couldn’t get the lighting right because the sun kept moving, high tides came up, and the fake shark kept sinking. But every challenge made the movie better, and now it’s one of the best films ever made. The same goes for Alien. The suit never looked quite right, so they only showed you just enough, making it one of the most suspenseful and terrifying movies ever made.
You can’t replicate that without real people in the trenches, solving problems, bringing the smartest minds together on the right set, at the right time. A lot of the best moments in our film came out of necessity, from problem-solving and figuring things out as they went wrong. A computer just doesn’t do that.
Max: There were so many times when Danny and I would look at each other and say, “All right, what do we do?” And it wasn’t like, “Oh, no, what do we do?” It was more, “Okay, we can’t do this, so what are we gonna do instead?” This happened throughout the writing process, during shot-listing, location scouting, and on the actual shoot day—and it’ll probably still happen in the edit.
You definitely lose that human touch in some productions, but I think there are people who genuinely appreciate and care about it. They can go watch an AI-prompted superhero movie every day if they want; they’ll probably enjoy it. But then there are those who want to watch real movies made by real people. It’s like the difference between listening to vinyl and listening to songs on your phone.
For us, this project is about much more than selling it one view at a time for $3.99 on Amazon. That’s not why we did this. I think it’s a really cool movie—it’s cerebral and has elements that horror fans, or anyone who enjoys weird and creepy stuff, would appreciate. And for those who enjoy a human story, there’s a lot of emotional depth here.
There were moments when the whole crew was in tears. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve cried a few times making this movie, and it wasn’t just because I was so close to it. There were some genuinely intense, powerful moments—in a good way.
When asked about the possibility of continuing exploring this world of Saturnalia Daniel shared.
Daniel: We’ve already outlined the first act, and I’ve started writing it. We’ve included Sophia Anthony, our actress who plays the main character, Marian Basconi, in this film. I’m being a little cryptic, but yes, we have an idea for continuing the story in a fresh way while staying true to the conventions of the first film. That’s always a challenge, but I’m excited to keep going now that we’re done shooting. It’s all still so fresh, and I feel like I still have a lot of energy to put into it.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Giallo film with a true sequel. There are spiritual sequels—Argento and Fulci have their trilogies—but none of the characters are recurring, and each story is separate. So it’s exciting to plan this and see where it goes.
It’s super fun to be writing the sequel while we’re in post-production on this one. Now, if there’s an opportunity to plant a seed—whether through music, sound design, or even a take we might have tossed aside—we can add hints for the second movie within the first one, and vice versa. This process is really exciting.
We’re pretty close to being locked in, and we’re finding unique opportunities to foreshadow things I hadn’t considered when we made the first film. We’ve set ourselves up for so many great ideas that I didn’t even think about initially, so I’m thrilled to explore those themes further and expand on the broader message of both movies.
Saturnalia is currently in the final stages of post-production and color correction. Cast and crew screenings, along with its general release into the festival circuit, are pending. Keep an eye out for more information coming soon.
Follow the film at @saturnalia_film
