makeup/effects-heavy show on television and knew just the guy to call, his longtime friend and collaborator Mr. Nicotero. “Frank asked for my help on the show and told me, ‘The show will live or die based on whether our zombies are authentic,’” Greg disclosed.
Photo: Courtesy of AMC
As a pre-med student in 1984, Greg told his parents that he wanted to take a year off of college to work as an assistant in Pittsburgh on Day of the Dead, a choice his parents fully supported. “George offered me that job, and my initial thought was I would take a semester off and try it out since I always had an interest in the film industry but regarded it as a hobby. In reality, it became my career,” Greg recalled. “The next thing I knew, I was working in special effects and moved from Pittsburgh to New York City to Los Angeles within six months.” Greg learned the tricks of the trade working alongside special effects legend Tom Savini. Upon his arrival in LA, Greg refined his skill set as an effects coordinator on films that included Evil Dead 2, Monkey Shines, and Aliens. “I’ve been doing zombies since 1984. It just took everyone else a while to catch up,” Greg joked. In February 1988, Greg persuaded his friends Robert Kurtzman and Howard Berger to join him in opening their own studio, giving birth to the acclaimed KNB EFX Group. The company worked because each of the owners had a different strength. “One was an imaginative artist, the other a really good shop supervisor, and the third had a really good business sense with an artistic background,” Greg stated. “We complimented each other and provided a unique opportunity to meld into one creative force.” The company was named by combining the first letter in each partner’s last name, making it sound more like a law firm than a creative business, something the three men found entertaining. “We wanted to use Monsters Inc., but at the time we thought no one would get it,”
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SEWICKLEY SPEAKING
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Greg laughed. “And years later the movie came out by the same name. Damn.” Within a year of the company’s inception, it signed its first major film – Dances with Wolves. Prior to that, KNB EFX Group worked on a film called Gross Anatomy, which was about the trials and tribulations of students in medical school. The director needed realisticlooking cadavers to perform fake surgeries on. “Since I studied pre-med in college, it opened doors for us to be front runners to get the job because of my medical knowledge,” Greg said. Within two years of starting the company, Greg found himself moving from location to location and designing and supervising makeup effects on films alongside the very filmmakers who inspired him, including Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, and Wes Craven. He continued to drive KNB into broadening its abilities by creating hyper-realistic cadavers, replica heads, and articulated animals. As the company continued to grow, so did his love for movies and his desire to collaborate with the best artists in the field including Frank Darabont, Sam Raimi, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino. He provided 2nd unit direction on several feature films including Land of The Dead, The Faculty, and The Mist. In 2010, Darabont, famed director of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, began developing what would soon become an overnight mega-hit admired by some of the most die-hard (no pun intended) fans – The Walking Dead (TWD). He needed help navigating the unfamiliar process of budgeting and shooting a
SUMMER 2016
Six seasons later, the zombies are more than authentic to viewers. Even with the popularity and demand of the show, it still has its challenges. Characters don’t necessarily last for very long on the show, and it’s proven difficult to manage a constantly changing cast – professionally and personally. “When you work on a movie, you film for maybe 14 weeks and then when it’s over everyone goes home. But when you work on a TV show, you become close to the cast and crew. We’re now filming Season 7, and we’ve all been together for six years. We’ve watched each other’s children grow up and spent a lot of time getting to know one another,” Greg said of the television culture. “You lose the opportunity to work with people you’ve become fond of due to the grisly nature of the show, and that’s the hardest part. Jon Bernthal, who was on Seasons 1 and 2 with us, is a huge star now. He’s gone on to do great things, and I like to think our show is a great stepping stone for fantastic actors.” Season 7 will make its debut in October, when fans will finally find out who died in that cliffhanger season finale. Although Greg gave no hints or spoilers for the highly-anticipated season premier, he did say TWD is opening a lot of new worlds this year, and fans of the comic book will not be disappointed. He foresees the show continuing indefinitely. “You can tell a survival tale over a long period of time. The cast changes, the show evolves, and new characters are written in while others are cast off. But it’s a show about survival and relationships and how people live or die fighting adversity and the success of keeping society and the human race alive,” Greg expressed. “TWD has a lot of great themes and that is what resonates with people. We still have a lot of the story to tell, and we tell it very differently than normal TV. We want to take the audience on a journey, whether it’s fun or heart-breaking or gut-wrenching. It’s a mirror of what life would be like.” Besides showing off his infamous special effects work on the show, Greg has also tried his hand at directing. Currently, he has directed 17 episodes of The Walking Dead. He credits his job as a special effects artist to the successful and easy transition to the role of director, as he understands the relationship between