A Quick Chat With Indie-Horror Director Stephen Tramontana

Every year I make it my mission to watch as much new horror as I can whether it’s big budget, indie or international, and while many complain about Hollywood constantly remaking or rebooting movies that nobody asked for, those same people seem to not want to check out any of the indie-horror gems that get made every year that would help signal to the big studios we want some new content in our lives. In 2023, one of those small-budget movies was Bride of the Killer Piñata which I found out about through Instagram [read the review here], and while I’m well aware it sounds ridiculous, it’s no more ridiculous than a movie about killer gingerbread men or a certain haunted doll that’s made millions at the box office.

Now that 2023 is coming to an end, I thought it would be cool to have a quick Q&A with Killer Piñata director Stephen Tramontana about all things pinatas, film making, the writer’s strike and what we can do to help support the indie film industry.

I’m going to start off with an easy question: What’s your all-time favourite horror movie?

I have two. First is A Nightmare on Elm Street. It was the movie that made me want to make movies. I thought Freddy Krueger was just the most brilliant design for a movie monster and it was around the time that Freddy-mania was hitting and he was just an icon. And then The Thing. For me it’s the best horror movie ever made. I love everything about it.

B-Grade horror has quite the selection of killer inanimate objects from tomatoes to condoms to car tyres. How did you come up with the idea for a psycho deviant piñata?

Ha. Well, it started more as a challenge. Kinda similar to those 48-hour-make-a-movie challenges, where we basically said, you know, “with today’s technology, would it be possible to make a feature film for $2,000 or $3,000?” We didn’t know the answer, but we wanted to find out. At the time, we were watching a ton of low budget and micro budget films on Amazon Prime, back when Amazon was rife with them, and one of us asked if there had ever been a film about a piñata seeking revenge on humanity. To our surprise, there was not.

And then it became, oh, that’s the movie! The concept is so silly, even if it didn’t all work, it would be part of the fun. So we crowdfunded $2,500 and shot the movie in 8 days and somehow, it not only found an audience, it thrived.

A lot of great film directors started out in horror: John Carpenter, Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, Guillermo Del Toro and James Wan. Compared to other genres, do you think horror allows more freedom for filmmakers to experiment and find their own style?

That’s a great question. I think it’s more that horror is a great training ground if you want to be a filmmaker. The folks you mentioned above, and others, like Spielberg or Hitchcock or Snyder, their style and instincts are so strong, it’s just baked into their DNA. It’s like how certain basketball players just know how to handle the ball – it was always there.

But horror as a genre, you don’t need a ton of money to make something amazing, so I think it’s very attractive to people who want to be filmmakers, because it’s very technical. For any kill or moment of tension, you really need to hone your instincts with shot placement, editing, sound design, lighting, practical effects coverage, etc. So it’s truly like being a magician, you’re trying to make the trick work.

The filmmakers you mentioned above, they’re all amazing technical artists, so I can see why they entered the industry with a horror film, honing instincts that would serve them well on their bigger films.

Investors Vs Crowdfunding: Does working with investors ever conflict with your goals or is crowdfunding a better way for independent filmmakers to realize their vision?

I think the important thing about working with investors is being very clear about your goals with the film, and not just saying yes in the moment to get the money. This is a relationship, and like all relationships, you have to be forthright, but also a little flexible.

With Bride, I was very upfront that we were making an ambitious movie. It was just going to be all jokes and puppets killing people. It was going to have this kind of grand arc, and I didn’t want them to be surprised by the final product. I was also upfront that we were going to have an unconventional shooting schedule. Usually, you’ll shoot for 2-3 weeks in a row, on these budgets. On Bride, we filmed over 9 months, taking three months off in the middle to edit and get a sense of the film and if we needed to change anything or reshoot anything during our final months of shooting. We took our time and now that I’ve made a couple of horror comedies that have worked, it’s definitely easier to have those investor conversations, because they can see what we do and that we can deliver a film for a budget, etc.

With crowdfunding, you obviously have more creative freedom, but a lot of your money gets tied up with creating and shipping perks, taxes, and the cut that IndieGoGo or Kickstarter takes, not to mention the time it takes to make and deliver everything to your backers. I’m not sure what the future of crowdfunding holds for indie films. I think it’s tougher than it once was, as it seems the only projects getting funded are ones from people or studios with a significant social media presence. I think too many people have thrown money at projects that didn’t happen, or happened but they didn’t get their perks, or they didn’t like the final product or whatever. If that’s the only avenue that someone has to get their film funded, then they should definitely try it, but I don’t think it’s the solution it was even 5 or 7 years ago.

During the writers strike, I saw a few filmmakers coming forward about issues they faced with streaming services. As an independent filmmaker, what has been the biggest issue you have faced and how do you think streaming services could better support filmmakers?

Definitely the issue of availability and reimbursement. Back in the 80s, the 90s, you could make a little horror film and sell it to the thousands of video stores across the country. It’s how Charlie Band built his Empire Films (and later, Full Moon, with Paramount’s help) and even around 2010, up to 2015, you could get your film streaming on Amazon Prime and make some good money from it. That all changed when Amazon slashed their streaming reimbursements and then purged most microbudget films off the platform. Cut to today and more streamers are becoming selective, and I understand that. There’s a ton of micro-budget films and low budget films out there, and I don’t know that there’s an audience for all of those films, so they started cracking down. It’s just a bandwidth issue.

Now, Amazon will still let you list your title for rent or purchase, but the truth is, for micro budget horror, most people want to stream. They don’t want to roll the dice on losing their money on a rental. So that’s why Tubi has now become the home for most streaming efforts. And Tubi pays out pretty well, all things considered, because of their ad model. But I certainly think, with its rising popularity, there will be a time that Tubi purges as well, and that’s going to be a pretty dark day for most indie horror filmmakers.

One thing streamers could do is highlight indie titles. I think all of the streamers have a user interface issue, in that they only highlight, like, the same 30 titles on their main carousels. There are some classic movies that are streaming that no one knows about, because they always seem to focus on the same 30. And our culture is currently a scrolling culture, not a searching one, so there’s no way those titles are seen but if they had a “new indie horror” section that people could check out, that would really help. If they have users who watch films like Killer Piñata, CarousHell, Killer Sofa, etc, then send an email to those users when a title like Bride comes out. It’s good for the viewer, it’s good for the movie. Last time I was on Tubi’s app, they were rolling out an AI assist to help you find titles based on what you like, so I think that’s definitely a step in the right direction.

With the recent news that A24 and Blumhouse are wanting to buy the rights to resurrect Michael Myers, if you were going to make a Halloween film, what would you have Michael do?

Take a long vacation and get some rest, haha. I don’t know, it certainly feels like we’ve had enough of Myers for a while, right? It was really interesting reading the reactions to that story, because it’s the first time I can remember horror fans pleading with the studios NOT to make another movie in a big monster franchise and with the underperformance of Exorcist: Believer, horror fans may be signalling that they’re okay with these franchises resting for a while.

For me, when it comes to Halloween, simple is best. If you’re going to make a new movie, just return to a faceless man stalking teenagers from the shadows. No big lore, no legacy characters, just a lean, mean little horror film.

Last question: any plans for the future?

Plenty! Now that Bride is in general release, we’re working on securing the next project. It won’t be Piñata-related, for once, haha. But we have a couple of scripts we’re working and chatting with producers about, so hopefully we’ll have some fun news early next year!

You can stream Killer Pinata and Bride Of the Killer Pinata for free on Tubi TV