NFS: What was your initial inspiration for Strange Harvest?
Stuart Ortiz: The initial inspiration was actually the documentary Tiger King, strangely enough, as it seemed to prove to me that true crime had truly arrived in the mainstream. It was always my fear in doing a true-crime mock-doc that the audience wouldn’t be familiar enough / interested enough with the format to want to take the journey, but it became clear after Tiger King that there was a huge appetite for this kind of thing.
I’ve always also felt it’s a great way to tell a genre story, especially a horror story. It lets you stew in world-building and exposition and go off on wild tangents you otherwise couldn’t in traditional narrative. The immediacy of the found footage style makes it seem more believable in some way, and the more realistically a situation is conveyed in a horror context, the more effective it can be at scaring you. When everyday, bland domestic reality co-mingles with the uncanny, particularly in a found-footage movie, the results can be truly unsettling.
NFS: What were some of the primary inspirations for the true crime documentary style that the film pastiches?
Stuart Ortiz: I can’t say one particular doc was the inspiration we were aping on. I think the style is just informed via osmosis of all of these types of programs we’ve all seen over the years. There is a certain rhythm and pacing all the best ones share. Amazon’s series Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer is particularly well done, and the title sequence is art – I love a good title sequence! My first love of true crime was actually from the podcast, Sword and Scale, which goes particularly hard in the first season.
NFS: What cameras did you shoot on for the main interviews? What cameras and approach did you take for the archival and found footage sequences?
Stuart Ortiz: The interviews are shot on a Canon C300 Mark III with Sigma’s great art lenses. I chose this essentially because it was a “Netflix-approved camera” that these types of docs are frequently shot on. A large format Arri Alexa with sick lenses would look too good and cinematic. The C300 gave the perfectly appropriate “Professional interview look”. The C300 also has a very respectable auto-focus that can track objects pretty well in ideal conditions, which eliminates the need for a focus puller and AC when you’re running and gunning.
NFS: Can you share any BTS tidbits from the mutilated bodies and other effects in the film?
Stuart Ortiz: The mutilated bodies are the brilliant work of effects artist Josh Russell, who recently did the cenobites in the David Bruckner Hellraiser movie. Although we had a very low budget for making this movie, an unreasonable amount of it was allocated for a Hollywood-caliber effects artist (who also graciously did us a favor). I have a thing about dead bodies – in movies, I mean. I think there’s an art to the presentation, and very few filmmakers get it quite right. Ari Aster has the best dead bodies in the business, right now, so his work was a big inspiration. We spent a lot of time laying the death tableaus out and art decking the environments. The devil is in the details.
One of the funniest gags I remember shooting involves a hanging body and very graphic gore in a very domestic outdoor location, and although we had a permit, we couldn’t stop people who were there from stopping to take pictures and whatnot. That included small children who were there with their parents. It was just a very surreal sight, and very funny.
NFS: The film leaves open that the story might continue. Do you plan to keep the saga going?
Stuart Ortiz: I’d love to continue the saga! I love working in the format and have a million ideas for a whole cinematic universe of these strange true-crime stories. It really comes down to the appetite for more. Time will tell if this is a one-off experiment or the beginning of something bigger!
NFS: What advice would you give to any aspiring filmmakers looking to similarly explore this Netflix true crime-esque style?
Stuart Ortiz: My best advice is if you’re smart about how you do things, this is a great way to make a low-budget movie that will feel like it has a larger “big budget” scope and appeal. Much of the movie is editorial and created in post-production. I literally spent two years polishing it to death — re-editing, re-photoshopping, re-shooting some of the death scenes, and even adding a whole new interview that never existed in the original script. A mock doc is very “modular” – you can swap pieces in and out easily that don’t create major ripples to the whole piece like it otherwise would. It’s both highly practical and can lead to a product with a high gloss finish.
Strange Harvest hits theaters on August 8, 2025.
