Pittsburgh's Godfather of Gore, has a new project, and even though it is centered mostly around death and horror, it's breathing new life into the Pittsburgh film community.

OnQs Mara McFalls has the story.

[Car Driving] [Music Plays] It might look like we're in Hollywood, but we're actually in Hopwood.

It's right outside of Pittsburgh, where they're shooting a new pilot for a show called Tom Savinis Chill Factor.

I don't have no money to pay, no hospital.

But I need to know what's wrong with my boy.

This is the Tom Savini.

That's me!

Tom Savinis Chill Factor!

This is the new DVD series that were producing with New Perspective Productions in downtown, and it's going to be a horror series like Tell Us From The Crypt Tells Us From The Dark Side, amazing stories, that kind of vein.

And why?

Why bring it into Pittsburgh?

That's where we are!

That's where we live!

And that's been the dream of those of us who have stayed in Pittsburgh and have careers in movies.

Most people, the friends of mine, always have to leave town to go work on something.

But there was a time when you were looking for a movie to movie.

You worked here because there were so many movies being done here.

So that's what we want to do.

We want to start getting the production back going here.

Action!

Tom Savini is no stranger to these sets.

Hes actually a Pittsburg legend in independent filmmaking He's an actor.

He does stunts, he directs, and he's most famously known for his makeup and special effects.

And even though he's worked all over the world, he still calls Pittsburgh home.

My dream and my goal would be to provide steady work for everybody around town.

The actors, the crew, you know, everybody.

Let's get back to work.

Tom's longtime friend Marty Schiff, has the same goal to keep production alive in Pittsburgh.

He's the producer and co-creator of The Chill Factor, and they're planning on shooting this series right here in Pittsburgh.

There's a lot of talk about how do we get production back in Pittsburgh.

Everybody's talking about it, you know, and there's there's groups and there's symposiums and there's organizations.

You know, it's like Palestine.

You know, everybody.

There's the Palestinian Liberation Front, there's the PLO, there's the you know, if you look at Pittsburgh, there's there's seven different factions out there.

Everybody's saying that they want the same thing.

We'll stop talking and get to work.

And that's just what these guys did.

They came up with an idea.

They put together a team.

They're keeping the budget low, and they're getting to work.

Mr.

McCullough drove up to tell us.

That would be a cool place!

Okay, but it all starts with a great story.

And that's where Jef Monaghan comes into the picture.

Just like Marty and Tom Jeffs, also a Pittsburgh native who spent years living in New York as an actor and a writer.

And he wanted to move back home to Pittsburgh, but he didn't want to give up his career in show business.

And then he realized that maybe he could have the best of both worlds.

And Marty and I just ran into each other at an audition at Deb Daugherty's downtown was like, what are you doing?

Well, doing this, I'm waiting for that.

And, you know, I've got some feature scripts in the works in Los Angeles.

It happened like just they're like, we should do something, you know?

We should, you know, what do you want to do?

I don't know, you want to do something like this?

A series of cool stories.

Yeah!

You know, something like they Tell Us On The Dark Side or Tell Us From The Crypt or Alfred Hitchcock or, you know, Night Gallery.

All those things have worked, and we've always been big fans of the genre, and we want to do something that's really scary.

They've written over 100 stories for the series.

The first episode has been shot, and it's all been done.

Mean and lean.

Using the new technology i filmmaking that allows the crews and the budgets to be stripped down, whether we need independent filmmaking or not, we've certainly got it.

Okay.

And I'm glad as hell.

Because it out of that sprung Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, anybody I mean, so many people have the little, little video cameras.

You know, anybody can go out and make a movie.

You know, look at Blair Witch.

That was two guys, you know, what's $140 million later?

So those success stories, I think, make other potential filmmakers bring up and become independent filmmakers.

And this style of independent filmmaking is reshaping the way TV and film is produced.

One of the things that was tough about the film industry is you store at the beck and call of Hollywood in the studio to choose to come to Pittsburgh, and that marks the biggest difference between that and what we're doing here, because we are originating the content.

It's our ideas, it's our people.

We control it all, which means there's no chance that it ever goes away.

So we're really trying to grow the television industry not by begging people to come and shoot here, but by generating the content ourselves so we can control it.

This is me having the urge to scare somebody and using wonderful Pittsburgh technicians the technology of digital filmmaking, this great crew, the makeup, costumes and and and scare you with something that we're creating actually.

Action!

[Music Plays] And Mara says the crew has now finished shooting the first episode of Tom Savinis Chill Factor, and it should be available soon on DVD.