Meet Victoria Fratz Fradkin | Co-Founder of Social House Films

We had the good fortune of connecting with Victoria Fratz Fradkin and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Victoria, how do you think about risk?
We’re constantly taking the risk of which production to green light. Being a small production company, even the decision to green light a new short film comes with risks — financial risks, limited resources, and stretching our team beyond their limits. But these are risks that any business owner will take when trying to expand their company and I think most people would agree that simply treading water in this industry isn’t going to propel you forward.

We recently took a large risk in taking our recent feature film to the Cannes Film Market. This risk was mostly financial–those prices really skyrocket at Cannes during the big festival and market! I reached out to every contact I had and worked double time to secure as many meetings as I could. By the time our flight took off, the number of meetings we had amounted to a whopping one. One single meeting. Leading up to Cannes, I was losing sleep, worried that I was redirecting not only our financial resources, but also our team’s time to a sunk cause.

We stayed the course and arrived in Cannes. It turned out that the only meeting we needed was one. We sold our film and secured another movie deal all because we took risk and had faith in our product.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Social House Films is mostly known for our horror films. We started out in the genre by making short horror films as a way to test our abilities building tension and crafting scares. It’s been an amazing process that’s shown us both how much we love the genre!

Completing our latest feature film– a truly bone-chilling horror movie — is our most recent accomplishment. It was a challenging process because the more you learn about horror, the more you realize there’s so much more to learn! Crafting horror can be tricky because you really want to give the audience a thrill ride that they’ll remember. When we’re creating new scares, they each come with their challenges of how to pull off. You want to create misdirection, style, and excitement. We often equate it to what it must be like being a magician. People always want to see a new magic trick that they’ve never seen before which sounds really hard to me. I don’t know any magic tricks, but I do know how to scare people at the movies.

I hope when people see the Social House Films logo pop up before their film, they know us as a team who’s going to give them a great time at the movies. That’s what I’d really like our company to be known for.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I love this question because I LOVE Los Angeles so I always hope that any friend visiting will fall in love with the city the same way I did.

First we’d begin with a hike up into Griffith park and take in those LA views. Good to get a lay of the land and survey all the fun we’ll be having tat week. To refuel we will go directly to HomeState in Hollywood and get as many trinity breakfast tacos that we can handle. The correct number is at least 3 per person with a doughy chocolate chip cookie chaser. To wind down the day, we’d take in a movie at the New Beverly cinema. I hope that you too will be geeking out beside me that we’re at Tarantino’s theatre and generally taking in the classic breeze of a longstanding cinema with a history of classic films on their marquee.

The remaining week will be a blur of different sections of LA– we’ll pop by Spirit House a little speakeasy cocktail bar in Echo Park for their fantastic happy hour menu and great craft cocktails, we’ll check out a UCB night in Franklin Village, we’ll houdini past traffic out to Santa Monica’s Elephante and definitely be ordering the whipped eggplant.

Just when you think you’ve had your fill, I’ll show you DTLA. We’ll eat the most delicious pasta at Macherroni Republic which just so happens to be right night door to club 10 1/2 where DJ Shyboy is spinning a night of Britney Houston mash ups (Britney Spears and Whitney Houston) and naturally the rest of the night will be spent dancing away.

The morning before your flight we’ll be hiking up to the Hollywood sign. All the way to the very top! There’s a nice little ledge above the sign that you can sit on and take in the full 360 of Los Angeles.

Naturally you’ll extend your trip another day and I’ll fleece us a special invitation to The Magic Castle. Your last magical night will be spent exploring the winding rooms and secret passageways, taking in magic shows all night. You will promptly move here.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My shoutout absolutely belongs to my partner in business and love, Aaron Fradkin. He’s the other half of Social House Films and if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be where I am today. His focus and persistence have guided me to follow through on tough projects, even when it’s overwhelming. There are of course many other shoutouts I’d love to include–my family for always setting the example of what hard work looks like, my friends for their constant support, and myself for staying strong even when I was starting from scratch.

Website: www.socialhousefilms.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/imvictoriafratz

Youtube: www.youtube.com/socialhousefilms

Other: www.instagram.com/socialhousefilms www.instagram.com/aaronfradkin

Image Credits
Chris Loupos