Meet Julia Tranfaglia | Filmmaker & Business Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Julia Tranfaglia and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Julia, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?

When I first moved out to Los Angeles, I started a production company with two of my good friends Michael Tessler and AK Moore. Starting Multihouse built a community for us and gave us strength as a creative team. We each had different missions we wanted to accomplish, that all fed towards a similar goal of making entertainment do more. We wanted to make entertainment do more for the community, do more for the people who work on the productions, and do more in the content we create. Multihouse continues on as an innovative creative engine, and each of us are working on new ways to make that original goal a reality. When we released Civil Defense: Red Rover, we sought to engage an audience in multiplatform storytelling so they would try a new app called Firework. For us, it meant dipping our toes into new mediums to tell grander stories. Red Rover was the first short to kick that off. And it certainly was a grand story!

Civil Defense: Red Rover is available for viewing on YouTube, with extended content on the Metaverse and Firework apps. Look out for the first book in the Civil Defense series, Hydrogen Wars: Atomic Sunrise by R.M. Christianson, available for Barnes & Nobles pre-order October 1st, 2022.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?

Cinema is changing, and the way we tell stories is expanding. As a young artist, I’ve embraced the crossovers between different mediums that were previously siloed. TV, film, commercials, new media, digital streaming… At the end of the day, story is story, and the need to foster empathy is only growing. Whether we watch it at home or in a theater, or even on our phones 5 inches from our face, stories will continue to touch our hearts and change our minds.

As an independent producer and director, you have to find creative ways to get your projects the funding and means to get off the ground, which is not always an easy task. With Multihouse, we often worked with historical societies, social media platforms, and other production companies to get projects made. But the single most important thing as a creative is to find a way to make it sustainable. For me that meant creating content for tech innovator Thought Industries, directing their commercials, case studies, and other brand videos. This gave me a chance to flex those creative and technical muscles to a confident level, which had reciprocal benefits with directing narrative work. Each project could feed the other.

Establishing yourself in Hollywood is another beast altogether, but I truly believe story wins out, what resonates will remain. Though I’ve primarily worked on short films, I’m writing my first feature. This time, instead of alt-history action, I’m tackling the drama of family and grief.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I’m the travel agent of my friend group and am very lucky to have many friends from the East Coast come to visit, so I’m uniquely qualified for this question. Definitely check out El Matador beach on a weekday to see the Malibu coves (weekends are insane). Same goes for breakfast at The Waffle. If you’re looking for a night out, Davey Wayne’s and No Vacancy are the spot. Instead of Venice or Santa Monica, the real locals go to Ocean Park. (Although Washington Blvd in Venice and Cow’s End will always have a special place in my heart, as that was where I stayed when I first came to LA.) For a cute date spot, try Moonlight Rollerway or Huntington Gardens in Pasadena. And of course, for my cinephiles, the New Beverly Cinema, which only shows movies on film and is owned by Quentin Tarantino, is a must.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I couldn’t have done any of it without the love and support of my family, including my parents Bob and Loretta, as well as my brother Josh Tranfaglia. They keep me humble but remind me of what matters most. My incredible producing partners Michael Tessler and AK Moore, as well as my wonderful DP Caitlin Brown, I can’t imagine being with anyone else on this crazy journey. I also need to shoutout my talented collaborators Nikki McLelland, Cooper Hardin, Kali Mutty, Mark Goodwin, Jake Shadrake, Mike Daecher, Dan Frank, Bandera Jones, Phil Tice, and so many others. Thank you for bringing your brilliant ideas and commitment to the projects we’ve worked on together. I’m grateful to have mentors along the way like Jessie Gold and Barry Kelly, leaders in the tech world, who have taught me to push to the next level and believe in the process. At the end of the day, it’s about the people you get to do it with, so thank you!

Website: juliatranfaglia.com

Instagram: instagram.com/juliatranfaglia

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/julia-tranfaglia