Community Highlights: Meet Josh Russell of Russell FX

Today we’d like to introduce you to Josh Russell.

Hi Josh, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I had a very “Stranger Things” style childhood growing up in the late 80’s and early 90’s in Metro Atlanta. By that, I mean we had a really strong group of kids in the same age bracket, the same suburb, riding bikes and dominating the neighborhood, just letting our imaginations run wild.

That era was the golden age of practical special effects movies. My friends and I spent all our time soaking those up, acting them out, and before long I became sort of the resident prop maker amongst us kids. Mainly because I was bossy and wanted everything to look like it did on screen and no one could do it the way I wanted, but no one complained when I showed up with the goods.

My mom was an artist of sorts and taught me a lot about creativity and materials. We weren’t poor, but we didn’t have money to buy me and my younger brother every toy we wanted, and the stuff we wanted most of the time didn’t even exist to buy! So I quickly gained a penchant for DIY method arts and crafts, using found objects and cheap techniques to reach an artistic goal, earliest examples of this the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle weapons, Lightsabers, things like that which are never quite right when you buy the toy version off the shelf.

In my early teens, I got into horror movies and started making masks/props from those scary icons and selling them online to collectors. That was the beginning of my career if I had to name it. Realizing I could make things with my hands and other people would pay me for it was an epiphany that kinda stopped the notion of ever having a “regular job” dead in it’s tracks, much to my father’s chagrin (my mother was always supportive).

I did work as a waiter from age 18-20 to get by while honing my artistic skills. My online prop making business started outpacing the serving job so I just quit out of the blue, bought 3K worth of materials on my credit card and got to working for myself full time.

There was no film business in Atlanta at this time. I became friends with a cinematographer (Michael Moghaddam) while waiting tables, and he brought me onto a couple of tiny sets – a music video, a no-budget indie film. Those were my firsts tastes of the movie business, but there was no real avenue to pursue it for a living in Georgia, so I kept making replicas for collectors, starting working at local haunted houses during the Halloween season, making friends, trying to have fun.

By 2008, there was some rumbling of filming coming to Atlanta and I was able to get on a few shows. I literally crashed the set of Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2 under the guise of a background extra, but by the end of the day I was doing makeup and getting paid. That was an exhilarating experience, but there still wasn’t enough work in Atlanta to sustain, so I got my nerve up and decided to move to LA alone in the summer of 2010.

I arrived in Hollywood to live on the floor of a stranger’s 1-br apartment for $300/month. The low overhead allowed me to hit the ground running with any and every makeup effects job I could find. I scoured Craigslist and Mandy.com, took anything that would have me.

I never worked for free, and I don’t believe that’s necessary for anybody unless you want to, but I did take an Art Director position on a film that paid me a flat $100 for a week of work (the gas far outsized the compensation). I ended up meeting one of my best friends on that set, a fellow FX artist who was older and established, had his own shop which he invited me to make use of. It never fails to amaze me how you never know where opportunities can lead, no matter how dismal they may look from the outside.

By 2011 I had a core friend group and network, and I got invited to come work at Studio ADI, a prolific creature FX company I’d grown up admiring. I never had any ambition to work for another shop – I like having creative input on my work and so much shop work is just a big machine – but I wanted that experience of working along side my heroes, so I gave them six months while still taking side gigs. There I met my partner, Sierra Spence, and by late 2011, the freelance work was outpacing the studio work so it was time to break off and form our own company, Russell FX. We’ve just been building a fun body of work in movies and TV ever since.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I never forget how remarkably lucky I am to have this life and career. You know the saying about luck being opportunity meeting preparedness? So I guess I had going, and it hasn’t been the easiest thing on earth but I really have no room to complain.

I moved to LA at 25. At that stage in my life, I was happy to sleep on a floor and survive on Del Taco $1 deals. I always felt that I had some momentum building, that I was on track to do what I wanted to be doing, so the sacrifice of comforts didn’t phase me. I spent the entire first year without a bed, but I didn’t care. And the momentum never stopped, the work kept coming and here we are. I couldn’t do it today at 40, start over again. I feel like I made it just in time.

As you know, we’re big fans of Russell FX. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Russell FX is a Makeup Effects and Creature shop since 2011. We’ve worked on films and TV of every budget range, from $0 that we’re investing our sweat equity in, to giant multi-million dollar studio films, to popular TV staples like NCIS, Narcos, but our passion – dare I say bread and butter – has always been horror movies.

We gained some recognition for the movie “The Ritual” (Netflix 2018), particularly the giant Nordic God creature we created for the film, and that has lead to lots of fun creature work in the creature space. In 2021, we were invited to create the Cenobites for the reboot of the horror franchise “Hellraiser” (Hulu 2022). To recreate one of the top 5 recognizable horror icons (Pinhead) is still surreal, and it’s continued to open doors for us.

Now in 2025, the state of Hollywood, fires, economic uncertainty, political turmoil, we still feel lucky to be thriving in LA. We are a full fledged production company at this point. We use our shop space in San Fernando for filming if it helps the show we’re on, anything to keep the team going. I think that’s how we all need to be thinking right now. This industry isn’t what it used to be, but it’s far from dead.

We’re writing/directing/producing our own anthology movie at the moment with other talented filmmakers we’ve become friends with. Another one we helped produce just got picked up by Eli Roth’s new venture and will have a wide theatrical release in August of this year. It’s not a brag, hopefully it’s inspiring, but we didn’t expect that. We were doing it for the love of the craft just hoping it would work out.

I think that’s the kind of thing we all need to be doing to get through this changing of the guard. Make movies with friends, don’t worry about prestige or accolades or what your parents think qualifies as legit. The only way this keeps going is if we all collectively refuse to stop. You really never know where the smallest opportunity can lead. That’s what Russell FX was built on.

What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
It would be lovely to say my best qualities, how I’ve succeed thus far, is all about talent or my magnetic personality. But in truth, I think it’s about nothing more than my persistence and willingness to sacrifice comfort to get somewhere I want to go.

I like to think people ultimately do what they want to do. For instance, you watch a wonderful piano performance and say “I always wanted to play piano.” Well no, you didn’t, right? I mean what stopped you if you really wanted it? I wasn’t willing to let anything stop me, but that’s also due to the luck of so few obstacles. Many people get saddled with life before they really know what they want. You could have a partner with a job that doesn’t leave room for your dream, a sick family member that needs your care, a sheer lack of economic mobility – so many things can get in your way, so I have to feel grateful that I wasn’t so burdened and had the freedom to pursue my goals. There are a lot of alternate universes where I never even got that chance.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.RussellFX.com
• Instagram: @russellEFX