KRISTEN TEPPER: "5 Shifts Filmmakers Who Are Done Waiting For Permission Can Make Today"

MARKET MONDAY #5

TRANSCRIPT:

Okay, I’m going to just be talking about Decentering Hollywood. It was actually a post that I had kind of started for Ted, and got very into the idea.

A little bit about myself: I make TikToks and Instagram and Substack. But my main goal is to be a screenwriter. Luckily, I got onto The Blacklist in 2022, and it’s been a really great journey since that. That’s kind of what kicked off me wanting to share on social media. I was doing a lot of film marketing and wanted to discuss the journey.

I’m going to talk about taking back a piece of the power while you wait for Hollywood or no longer want to wait at all if you’re like me. Or you could try to bring the studio to you, maybe, or find an audience that cares about what you care about and be able to show your film and work to them.

Also – sorry – I talk really fast, so I’m going to try to breathe. Okay. But the first shift that I want to talk about is embracing new avenues. I think we get so stuck in the idea of our filmmaking being the first and only reality of that film, but I think something that’s really cool, that I’ve seen a lot of different people in different places that their careers take over.

Gary Whitta is going to be the first one that I mention. He wrote Rogue One, in case anyone has ever seen that. He also wrote The Book of Eli, and he recently just released a fiction narrative podcast called See You In Hell. It’s doing amazing. He got like a bunch of his friends together to play the different parts.

It’s kind of like a F-you to Hollywood, actually, funnily enough. It’s doing great. He also posts about it on TikTok and it has gotten really viral there from doing that. And I think that just reminds me of all of the different ways in which you can see your work, whether it is writing it on Substack, whether it is showing it on TikTok, whether it’s just making the small pitch version of it on YouTube and then cutting it up into slices to let it go wild.

Also Wattpad, guys. I wrote Nancy Drew fanfiction as a child. And [Wattpad] is more popular than ever, especially for young women who are writing their romcom fantasies or their Harry Potter fanfiction. That is a place like where if you feel compelled to be creative in a different outlet and you have that passion like don’t, I don’t think, I think everyone thinks it used to be an ick or not seriously taken. I go into meetings now when people ask me constantly about how I figured out TikTok or how I figured out Substack and why I’m not scared to share things anymore, or why it becomes my own IP. And I think it’s actually a really empowering way to reimagine your IP in your work.

And then – this is kind of the next shift – is that IP is really what you make it. I have three – four – examples here of different people – that I absolutely love – and the different ways that they kind of work their IP. I used to work for QCODE (I did a lot of marketing). They do narrative fiction podcasts. Recently they just announced that Kenan Thompson and Lamorne Morris are actually going to be doing one of their podcasts as a feature film, and that was literally just a writer, making really funny action comedy. But more and more is attached to it. And then from there, for the last three years, they’ve been just taking it all in. It takes a long time, but it really is turning into something more.

Brooklyn Coffee Shop. If you guys are not watching Brooklyn Coffee Shop, it is like the sassiest Gen Z shit I’ve ever seen. It’s really smart takes on the kind of like – bless my heart – overly leftist queens that like, you’re just like eye rolling at all the time, and they have guests come into the coffee shop and it’s a really simple concept. It’s the same thing every time: a guest comes in and then the coffee shop workers interact with them in a very funny way. The way that they have mastered this kind of repetitiveness is an art form in and of itself. I think that’s really fun and freeing to almost exist within the constraints that she has and to do it so well. I put the names on here if anyone wants to follow them.

I’ve also got Caroline Levich here, who she has made – she started Tik-Toking about four months ago and she has 50,000 followers, her whole shtick – and she’s a writer. She wrote on The Bold Place. Or The Bold Type? I’m sorry. She makes all this content about how she is marrying into a Latino family and how excited she is, and all the cultural differences that she’s experiencing… like the wedding. Oh! I didn’t know that if you, you know, invited 100 people, 300 people are going to show up.

She’s really making a community and everyone is so excited and interested in watching her family grow and progress. She’s moving in with her – guys, I love everything about her – she’s moving in next door to her parents – or her family in law. And so she knows that all of this content is because she wants to make a show and she is proving that this is an IP that people are super interested in – super excited to see. I think it’s very smart.

Mackenzie Barmen is my next one. She is so funny, you guys. She has a series called “60s and 50s” and she puts on an old face – like filter – and then she just exists as two old couples fighting with each other. And it’s, again, she’s in her apartment. There’s nothing special, nothing fancy about that.

I know for people in this room, you’re kind of like, “I’m a filmmaker. I am not an actor. Like, I don’t want to be in that room.” But anything that you are hyper fixated on can be your IP. I’m going to go into that in the next slide.

Also, Chrissy [Marshall] is here who is like an expert in social media. She’s absolutely amazing. Follow her. She talks so much about working in the film industry. She talks about ASL in the film industry. She did a crazy Bad Bunny post a few weeks ago, so everyone should check that out.

Yes – and then I wanted to say audience development goes into that. Like when you find out what you are excited about, it’s part of the pre pre-production.

Markiplier is – guys, no one in this room… maybe you [do]. I’m not going to say that no one’s room has 38 million followers yet. We might all one day, but it’s like that is part of the goal.

Caro Claire Burke I think is phenomenal. She started talking about Tradwives on Substack. She started talking about them on TikTok. That’s how I found her. She wrote a book called Yesteryear that will be released this year. Anne Hathaway’s production company bought it. So there’s like a ton of different ways to exist and share your passions online.

Nic Curcio, my Hollywood Hang podcast host. He actually won Fantastic Fest. He’s been growing a following just by talking about horror. That’s what he loves – he loves horror films. He loves horror books. He loves anything about the horror community. He won that pitch fest. [The team] just produced their film. They already have the other horror creators in the community talking about how excited they are about his film. They are hyping it up for him because he’s really made that community and the audience believe in him and are excited for him. And I think it’s going to be very exciting to see his film be released and to see what that community is able to do for him at a much smaller scale than Mister Markiplier there.

Shift number four is just like, again, embracing detours and your multiple hats. I know it’s not fair that we ask filmmakers to do all of the other things, but when you can reinvent those things as fun, when you’re like, I could splice up my little, pitch-deck and it can be a fun YouTube. I could go viral just talking about the contents and the themes of my film. When you just reorganize your brain and realize, oh, all of this is actually my behind the scenes content. I’m telling people how I got there. I’m sharing the journey there. People really resonate with that. Or at least, that’s what I’ve found.

People want to support other filmmakers. I think it’s just like a fun thing to kind of share with the world – if you feel that you want to. And then this is the hardest part: I get asked a lot like, is it too late? Is the algorithm ass and is the algorithm negative – bad? Is the algorithm bad now? The algorithm is bad. It’s kind of trash. But I do think the most important thing is to just start now. Throwing stuff at the wall. It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to talk about most often, which ended up being politics.

I got a ton of meetings just from different producers, indie producers, the NonDē community. And like learning that all of these people are sharing their journeys and sharing their processes and like you get to meet people sooner than ever. And it’s very awkward and icky at the beginning and you feel cringe AF, but you meet other people who are also in the same boat as you.

And I just think if you’re questioning it, you’re going to be happier to start today and to fail today, and then to see the success in three years – and two years – whatever that is. You’ll look back and you’ll see how far you grew. And if it’s five-hundred, if it’s a thousand, if it’s fifty-thousand, whatever that is, everyone’s on their own journey.

And I just think if you’re pained about it or you’re thinking about it, I do think this is a future way to build an audience and like, it’s kind of the dangerous idea, but this is the bold – the dangerous thing to do. You have to be brave to try to do it, even if you feel a little icky about it.

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