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Eric Wesley Steelberg (born April 1, 1977, in Northridge, Los Angeles, California) is an American cinematographer and member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) best known for his decade-long collaboration with director Jason Reitman. He served as Director of Photography on both Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024), and has photographed two Academy Award Best Picture nominees among his more than a dozen feature credits.
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Steelberg grew up in Northridge during the years when Star Wars, Indiana Jones, E.T., and Ghostbusters were reshaping popular cinema. He developed a passion for photography in high school, taking formal photography classes and founding a student filmmaking club. Cinematographer Haskell Wexler visited the club to discuss the craft, an experience Steelberg later described as "a religious experience for me and instrumental in becoming the resident camera geek."1
He shot his first film at age 15, a short called The Quiz, directed by Carl Rinsch. After high school, Steelberg enrolled in still photography at Santa Monica College but left after two years without completing a degree, setting aside plans to transfer to UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television in favour of working directly in the industry.2
Steelberg entered the professional world through short films and commercials. In 1999 he photographed Jason Reitman's short film H@, beginning what would become one of Hollywood's most sustained director-DP partnerships.
His first feature credit as director of photography was Quinceañera (2006), a small independent drama that won both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance that year, giving Steelberg a prominent introduction to the feature world.1
The following year he reteamed with Reitman for Juno (2007), a low-budget comedy-drama that became a cultural phenomenon and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. Their collaboration continued with Up in the Air (2009), another Best Picture nominee at the Academy Awards, cementing Steelberg's reputation for shooting intimate, character-driven films with a naturalistic aesthetic.2
Other major credits from this period include (500) Days of Summer (2009), which received Golden Globe and Spirit Award nominations, and Bandslam (2009), Going the Distance (2010), and Draft Day (2014). He shot Draft Day for Ivan Reitman, Jason's father, expanding his connection to the Reitman family. Additional collaborations with Jason Reitman include Young Adult (2011), Labor Day (2013), Men, Women & Children (2014), and Tully (2018).
Steelberg was admitted to the American Society of Cinematographers in 2012 and is also a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.1
Beyond features, Steelberg moved into high-profile television with Star Wars: Ahsoka (2023), co-photographing five episodes of the Disney+ series alongside Quyen Tran, ASC. The assignment drew on his long experience photographing large-scale productions and required establishing a visual language distinct from existing live-action Star Wars entries.3
His most recent feature with Jason Reitman is Saturday Night (2024), a dramatization of the ninety minutes before the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live on October 11, 1975. Steelberg shot the film on 16mm using an Arriflex 416 Super 16mm camera loaded with Kodak 200T film stock, with a remote head mounted on a dolly. The film opens with a 3.5-minute continuous single take that moves through Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Center, filmed first on the opening day of production and then re-attempted on the final day once the crew had fully mastered the choreography. On the guiding principle: "The accuracy of what it felt like to be there was the utmost consideration."4 Saturday Night is the ninth feature Steelberg and Reitman have made together.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife was the eighth feature-length collaboration between Steelberg and Jason Reitman. The pair had first worked together as teenagers in the late 1990s and had developed a shared visual shorthand across many films before taking on the most technically demanding project of their partnership.
Principal photography took place in Alberta, Canada. To prepare the visual language, Reitman and Steelberg visited every filming location with stand-ins months before production began to create photo-boards, a pre-visualization technique the two had developed on Up in the Air and refined across subsequent films. The process allowed the crew to arrive on set with a detailed vocabulary of shots already agreed upon, compressing decision-making time during the shoot.5
For format, Steelberg chose to match the 2.39:1 anamorphic aspect ratio of the original 1984 film. The production used Arri Alexa Mini LF cameras paired with Panavision lenses, outfitted at Panavision Hollywood. The choice reinforced the visual continuity with Ivan Reitman's film while giving Steelberg the widescreen canvas the rural Oklahoma landscape demanded.5
The film carried a production budget of approximately $75 million, Steelberg's first project at that scale. Speaking on what the assignment meant personally: "You could have told little Eric in the '80s that this was going to happen, and he never would have believed it."6
For the sequel, directed by Gil Kenan (with Jason Reitman serving as producer), Steelberg maintained continuity by carrying over the same camera package: Arri Alexa LF bodies fitted with Panavision T Series lenses in the 2.39:1 anamorphic widescreen format. The shared equipment meant the crew could redirect testing time toward the significantly expanded visual effects workload.7
Kenan's directive was to maximize New York City as a location, evoking how the city appeared in the original 1984 and 1989 films. Steelberg's stated goal was to "capture the texture, color, and grit of the original movie so nothing seemed too new," blending rich hues with deep blacks for a look that felt both heightened and naturalistic.7
The film's central set piece, the iconic Ghostbusters firehouse, presented a particular challenge. The production designer built three connected floors on London soundstages, and the basement housing captured ghosts was filmed from angles that had never been seen in the previous films. Steelberg described reinterpreting the lighting for that beloved space as one of the shoot's harder problems: "It's such a beloved set piece, and people have expectations of what they want it to look like."7
On the practical effects side, Steelberg prioritized in-camera solutions wherever possible. Slimer was realized through in-camera puppet compositing, with performers creating movement on set to match the original film's techniques. The production also introduced the first in-camera slime discharge in the franchise, with practical gooey effects hitting actors as Slimer passed through them rather than relying solely on post-production compositing. The overall visual effects workload on Frozen Empire was, by Steelberg's account, greater "by a couple of magnitudes" than on Afterlife, requiring extensive pre-visualization and carefully planned photography designed to support the compositing pipeline.7
"Ahsoka Cinematographer Eric Steelberg on Lensing a Rebel Jedi's Journey Through Time and Space," The Credits, Motion Picture Association (2023) ↩
"Saturday Night DP Eric Steelberg Explains the Choreography of That Crucial Opening Shot," Variety (2024) ↩
American Cinematographer, December 2021, "Eric Steelberg, ASC and Jason Reitman Reunite for Ghostbusters: Afterlife" (archived at Spook Central) ↩ ↩2
"Who You Gonna Call? Eric Steelberg," SLUG Magazine (2024) ↩
"How Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Cinematographer Eric Steelberg Brought Slimer and the Firehouse Back to Life," The Credits, Motion Picture Association (2024) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
