Meet Caitlin & Christina Kleppinger | Filmmakers

We had the good fortune of connecting with Caitlin & Christina Kleppinger and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Caitlin & Christina, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
We started writing together nearly 16 years ago, and the most important thing we learned right away is the value of collaboration. We firmly believe that filmmaking is a team sport, and the the idea that serves the project best should win. Obviously as a writing and directing team that begins with us. We workshop every idea together, and remove ego from the process wherever we can. This has been helpful even as we work with producers and receive their notes and feedback. We approach that not as criticism, but as another voice helping us to improve a project.
We carry collaboration through to the production process as well. Every role on set is crucial and we want to ensure that every voice is heard in support of creating something great together. From casting, to our lighting and camera crews, to the actors that we work with – everyone shares a North Star and everyone’s work is important. We’ve also found that people do their best work when they share in the creative vision.
Of course that doesn’t mean that we take every note as necessary or change the project based on every piece of feedback! But understanding where those ideas are coming from and at least considering them has been a crucial element of our success so far. It’s a tough lesson to learn as a filmmaker – balancing your own creative vision with the fact that you’re working with a team of incredible artists all the time.
We do also spend a lot of time also mentoring younger artists and filmmakers. It’s important to us to reach a hand down to the next generation of creatives. We’ve really tried to instill the value of collaborating and working as a team to the emerging artists that we work with.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
We are horror writers and directors, and we work as both sisters and a creative team. On its own, that makes us a little unique! However, we’ve found over and over that we produce more interesting work as a team than either of us could do on our own.
We’ve been writing together since college, and we’ve worked incredibly hard to get to where we are today. For us, it’s a combination of continuously working on our craft and building a community of artists that support each other and collaborate.
We tend to focus our work on complex, challenging characters put in the extreme circumstance of horror. Whether it’s a haunted house, a creature, or a psychological thriller, what makes us tick creatively is seeing the humanity in all of it. It’s fun and rewarding to challenge genre standards at the same time that we use them to get an audience on the edge of their seats.
This is a tough industry. We’ve learned a huge amount along the way about trusting our instincts, doing our research, and standing our ground when necessary. We’re believers that all of film comes down to the team you’re working with, and it’s vital to us to work with great people, not just talented artists. So we really focus some energy on making sure we like and can trust the folks we collaborate with.
For us, horror is important because it is so expansive as a genre. There is a space for all kinds of storytellers here – the more varied the voices, the better and frankly more interesting the stories will be. Horror is the way we respond to the hard things in our world, and it tells us so much about what people fear, what they’re willing to fight for, and who we are at the core.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
We should start by saying we absolutely love LA and you can’t really go wrong in this city. That said, we love to go off the beaten path. Any time we have family or friends in town we like to take them places you might not see everywhere else. The La Brea Tar Pits and Museum are always a hit, and we love to take people to shows at some of LA’s historic concert venues like the Troubador. It’s a real effort every time to tear Christina away from the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach so that’s definitely a favorite, and we love to see a midnight show at the Nuart. Our favorite beach to take folks to has always been Topanga State Beach and we’re looking forward to being able to go back there when recovery efforts are wrapped up.

Our local taco truck is the best food in the city, but you really can’t go wrong with anywhere along Sawtelle’s Japantown for dinner. Basecamp in Burbank is a great spot for coffee and writing, or we also really love GoodPeople on Santa Monica for breakfast.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
We are incredibly grateful to the team at WIF (previously Women in Film) for their past and ongoing support of our work. We were WIF fellows in 2020, and had the chance to see the way that the organization pivoted around COVID to continue to uplift and support filmmakers. Through WIF, we’ve had the chance to meet so many other amazing artists, and even had the chance to collaborate with some of them. We’re so grateful for their continued efforts towards better gender parity in the industry.

Website: https://www.908south.com

Instagram: @908south