Exclusive Interview: Gav Steel (The Shadow Of Death)
THE SHADOW OF DEATH (2012) was released from VIPCO & from BayView Entertainment in December 2023, are you satisfied with how your film has been received?
Yes it’s great to bring it back to the audience again as it was originally released to a handful of screens and only got a small audience at that time.
How did casting of the cast happen and did you have anyone in particular in mind when you began casting?
Not really at the time of making it I just knew the principal cast I required for the sort of film I was doing – that being a throwback to eighties slasher films, so I knew the type of characters and kind of what they would look like in my head so once I had locked the characters in it was a case of just using different resources to find actors, most came from recommendations or people I knew.
You managed to balance horror and comedy in your film THE SHADOW OF DEATH (2012) but which of these two genres for you was the hardest to bring to screen?
Hard to say really as I found both of them fairly easy to bring to screen. I think as I’ve gone on to do more horror than comedy I would take away from that that comedy is possibly a little bit harder to get right.
Did you use any special effects in THE SHADOW OF DEATH (2012) and if so, how did you create them (eg physical effects, CGI, a combination)?
Everything in The Shadow Of Death is in camera, because it was an 80s type of film, I had to make it like that. So my friend Mark came on board and created a lot of the fx from scratch without prior knowledge of what to do, they turned out brilliant too.
What would you do differently in THE SHADOW OF DEATH (2012) if you could go back and do it again?
I would have more of an arc for the antagonist and have a backstory filmed for him, which I intended to do but was just too hard to pull off with the time and budget we had available. Apart from that the only other thing would be to film it with a better camera. Everything else I really like in the film as is.
Are there any behind-the-scenes stories that you can share with us?
The cabin we used in the film was built by a man who owned the land with his brother, this man was really paranoid that his brother would take the woods, so he built a cabin in there and lived there so his brother couldn’t take his land! Eventually he ended up committing suicide by a shotgun just outside the cabin. We didn’t have anything spooky happen to us!
Who in the industry would you love to work with?
Peter Jackson, he is one of the people really made me realise you could make films yourself and I think he still has a sneaky horror movie that he’d love to make! Actor wise I would love to work with Jack O’Connell and totally different – Justin Long. Both would be fun to create with.
If you got the opportunity to remake a classic, which one would you go for?
That’s a crazy hard question and I’ll say a crazy hard answer and I’ll say The Thing! It’s my favourite film!
What are your Top 3 horror films of all time?
The Thing, Jaws and Halloween.
Finally, what projects do you have coming up?
We have just released Sanctuary Moon (a Star Wars horror fan film) over on YouTube (view HERE) and that took a while to make. We have another short film coming out in about three months called The Van then after that we are going to start prepping for our next feature.
You can stay up to date with Gav Steel and Deadbolt Films via the social media link below:
VIPCO & BayView Entertainment have released The Shadow Of Death on EST/VOD/SVOD Digital Platforms worldwide including to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and USA.
