He has worked in multiple production companies and on multiple productions including commercials, live events, music videos, and short and feature films. Most recently, he started working for Pixelogic and Lionsgate as a Project Coordinator for the Marketing and Home Entertainment departments while still working on his filmmaking projects as a director, producer, and screenwriter.
Known for writing and directing horror/drama films, he has written, produced, edited, and directed multiple short films in both Mexico and the US since he started his studies in 2011. As a Mexican filmmaker who grew up admiring both the Hollywood industry and his national filmmaking industry, he has found inspiration to direct films from his unique culture and identity. It’s his dream to one day represent his country as an internationally recognized director, producer, and screenwriter who works mostly in the Hollywood and Mexican filmmaking industries.
His most recent project “A Lovely Death” has been chosen to participate at different festivals such as FirstGlance LA Film Festival 2023, and The North Film Festival 2023 and got nominated for Best Horror Short Film at the Love and Hope International Film Festival 2022.
Thank you for agreeing to catch up with Occhi Magazine. For readers unfamiliar with you and your background, what drew you to a career in film?
I have to say that I love this question because it always brings me back to one of my favorite memories. I remember, when I was a kid, I went with my family to a movie theatre to watch Toy Story 2. I remember going down the electric stairs to go to the box office, the smell of popcorn as we walk next to the concession stand, and then finally going down more stairs to finally enjoy this masterpiece. After the movie ended, I remember going up the stairs and I just felt overjoyed with so many emotions that I decided that I wanted to become a film director. Of course, by that time, I used to think that the film director was the one holding the camera. Later, I would discover that I shouldn’t be allowed to get close to any expensive equipment.
While I was growing up, I started watching more diverse movies from different countries. Once I started my studies at the University of UPAEP in the city of Puebla, Mexico, I realized the real function of the film director. However, this didn’t change my pursuit of becoming a film director. During the duration of my studies, I directed, wrote, and produced some short films and I worked in a few productions outside school.
After I graduated as one of the best in my class, I realized that there was so much more that I could learn, so I applied to study for a Master’s Degree at the New York Film Academy. I couldn’t believe it when I got accepted because studying abroad was one of my biggest dreams. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a scholarship to afford this program. Getting a scholarship in my country is extremely difficult, especially for something related to arts. I was feeling very desperate, but I’ve always had a loving and supportive family. They decided to make a lot of sacrifices to help me achieve this dream. I couldn’t afford to study for a master’s degree, but they helped me to afford a 1-Year Program in Los Angeles. During these years, I improved my filmmaking skills and I directed a few exercises. Not to mention, all the incredible connections and friends that I made. Everything was going great until the COVID pandemic affected all our lives. In my case, half my program had to be done online and I had to come back to my country because spending money on an apartment when my classes were online didn’t make sense. Nevertheless, I still graduated as one of the best in my class and, after that, I applied to get an OPT which is essentially a work permit to stay in the US and legally work. I went back to LA and I worked on some productions including a music video, commercials, events, a feature film, and a bunch of short films. One day, I found a full-time job working as a Project Coordinator for two amazing companies called Pixelogic and Lionsgate. Although, I spent most of my time at Lionsgate working in the Marketing Department.
When my OPT ended, I tried to get a working VISA to stay in the US. However, I couldn’t get one at the time, but my companies decided to keep me hired remotely. So, I’ve been working remotely for these two great companies since almost a year ago. I believe this says a lot about my hard work and passion, but also about the incredible companies and teams that I work with. They’ve always been very kind and extremely supportive of my filmmaking career.
It’s incredibly hard to work your full-time job and work on your filmmaking projects, but no matter what. I’ve always found a way to keep growing as a filmmaker and working on projects that I feel very passionate about. My biggest aspiration is to one day become a full-time film director and producer, and to represent my country as one of the best filmmakers with films that talk about themes from my point of view as a Mexican man. I would also love to represent my country in the Hollywood industry because I still have a big place in my heart for those movies that I grew up with when I was a kid.
Who were your early influences and how did they impact your career?
As I previously mentioned, I’ve always loved Hollywood, so I grew up watching a lot of Hollywood films from studios like Disney, Dreamworks, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, Universal, etc. It’s easy to say that I was in love with most of the Hollywood films that I watched because I used to go to the movie theatre as much as I could. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t love productions from my own country, I watched a lot of Mexican films growing up and I’ve always admired Mexican filmmakers who are recognized for their work in other countries. While I was studying for a career in Filmmaking, I started to get to know more about different directors from multiple countries as well I was watching more national films, especially films from the Mexican Age of Golden Cinema. Some of my Mexican influences are Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñarritu, Emmanuel Lubezki, Guillermo Navarro, etc. I also admire the work of directors such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Celine Sciamma, Quentin Tarantino, Hayao Miyazaki, James Cameron, Charlie Kaufman, Francis Ford Coppola, the Coen Brothers, Denis Villeneuve, Akira Kurosawa, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Charles Chaplin, Billy Wilder, Spike Jonze, Alex Garland, Robert Eggers, Sergio Leone, Mike Flanagan, Satoshi Kon, Sidney Lumet, just to name a few.
I’ve been very fortunate to study with so many wonderful teachers who taught me everything that needs to be known about the filmmaking process and the industry. Many people like to say the famous quote from Quentin Tarantino: “When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, no I went to films” this trashes the experience of going to film school. This is such a great quote, but I feel that people took that out of context. Tarantino didn’t watch just blockbusters at the movie theater, he educated himself by watching films from the best filmmakers of all time. I think that history has proven that he did learn everything he needed without attending film school. However, a lot of great filmmakers did attend film school. A great example of this is Steven Spielberg. If you ask me, the best thing you can do is to learn from every single opportunity that you get. Some people have the opportunity to work on sets from an early age while others have to go to film school as I did. This is why I always say that I wouldn’t be here without the guidance of so many wonderful teachers from Mexico and the US.
I’ve also had the amazing opportunity to work with so many directors and producers in multiple productions. I’ve been a production assistant and an assistant producer for a very long time, and I’ve been able to learn what to do, and what not to do, on a film set by simply being there and letting everyone know that I’m always available to help no matter what they need. Being a production assistant (PA) is probably the hardest job on a film set because you have to help multiple departments that are rushing to get ready for the next shot. I’ve never been on a set on which I’ve been able to sit for five minutes as a PA. Although it’s a very exhausting job, it’s also a great way to make connections and learn more about the filmmaking process directly on set.
My work at the marketing department at Lionsgate has also been very helpful for my career because I’ve been able to learn more about this extremely important process of the filmmaking industry that unfortunately most people never get to learn more about. I don’t like when people call some filmmakers “sell out” when they do multiple things to make people watch their films or when they work for big-budget films. You can make the biggest masterpiece in the world, or you can make a big action blockbuster, but if you don’t know your audience or know how to move your product, then it will be meaningless. This is why being on this side of the filmmaking process has felt so rewarding. I believe that it’ll ultimately make me a better filmmaker because I´ll know how to reach my main audience, what they’re expecting from me, and how to subvert their expectations.
At the end of the day, I think the best to learn is by doing everything yourself. The only reason why I’ve been able to become the filmmaker that I am today is that I failed multiple times spectacularly. Every single person fails, but not everyone is willing to stand up and keep fighting. Working in this industry is extremely heartbreaking because even if you try your best, you’ll be rejected most of the time. Our job as filmmakers and creative artists is to learn what we did wrong and keep working to make our art pieces better and better.
Which three traits define you?
If I’m being honest, I’ve never been very good at saying good things about myself, but I’ll give it a shot. The first trait would be passion. Passion to take a good look at myself and my work and see how to make it better. I think that it’s getting easier to spot which films are being made with passionate filmmakers behind them. I remember that one of my teachers at the University UPAEP told us: The good news is that these days anyone can make a movie. The bad news is that these days anyone can make a movie. I think he meant that given the technology that we have these days is very easy for everyone to make their own films which is amazing because before you needed to buy the most expensive camera in the market if you wanted to start in this industry. Now, all it takes is your phone and decent editing software and that’s it. Unfortunately, not everyone has the knowledge or the passion to learn about the filmmaking language, the history of this industry, or the films and filmmakers that revolutionized this wonderful art. I like to consider myself someone who constantly tries to learn more about the things that I am passionate about, especially everything related to the filmmaking industry. You can find multiple ways to do this these days. You can watch films from different parts of the world, you can read more books about the topics that you know or even topics that you never read before, but the most important thing is that you stop dreaming to have a filmmaking career, and start treating it as a career. If you can’t work one day because you feel like the worst person who’s ever lived and feel that you can’t keep going, that’s fine. You don’t need to take huge steps every single day. Sometimes you can just rest, and sometimes you can simply take baby steps. The important thing is that you follow a path, your path, and that you love it and wouldn’t change it for anything else.
The second trait would be perseverance. I think that most people will have more failures than successes. No matter your line of work. Sometimes life puts you through more obstacles than you deserve, but I think that filmmakers need to have perseverance if they want to make it in this industry. A big challenge for me was when I wasn’t able to stay in LA because of my VISA situation. I felt like a big failure because I felt that I disappointed my family after they made multiple sacrifices to get me there, I used to see how some of my ex-classmates managed to stay in the country while working as producers or directors and I used to get mad at myself because of my poor decisions. Nevertheless, I knew that I couldn’t stop working despite these negative feelings. So, I continued working on my full-time job with Lionsgate as well as with my personal projects. Because of that, I was able to finish writing my feature film script, I’ve been able to get accepted in a few festivals for my short film “A Lovely Death” despite getting more rejections than acceptances, and I’ve been able to continue working for a couple of amazing and recognized companies in the US.
Finally, I would say that my third trait would be creativity. I don’t believe that these days you can’t make anything original. Not really. Every single theme that we could film has already been filmed. Love, friendship, revenge, life, death, etc. However, this doesn’t mean that there are no more stories to be told. We can always retell these stories from a different perspective, genre, location, characters, etc. Every time that I’m writing something, I always think about those wonderful films, books, video games, or TV shows that inspired me, and then I think about how I can use what I’ve seen to tell my own stories. Something that I like to do is to think about how to make a twist on the themes that my films talk about, or maybe change/combine film genres, and maybe even how to use all the filmmaking techniques that I learned over the years to create something visually different. I also believe that as a Mexican man, my perspectives on these themes can make something that’s both creative and interesting for an international audience.
Please tell us about your latest project ‘A Lovely Death’ and its origins.
While I was a student in the 1-Year Filmmaking program at the New York Film Academy, we had to film an exercise for the end of our first semester, and I remembered an idea that I had for a feature screenplay that also involved the character of the Grim Reaper. I was planning on doing something very similar to that idea. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough budget to make a big production like some of my classmates. Being a foreign student in the US is extremely hard, especially because Los Angeles is a very expensive state and I was planning on saving most of my money for my thesis film at the end of my program.
So, I decided to make something small while playing with the idea that I had for my feature screenplay. In the end, I decided to make a non-dialogue horror/drama/musical short on which the music would help guide the audience through the emotional and romantic journey of the characters. As I said, I had to give up on a lot of ideas because of my budget restrictions but thanks to my amazing cast and crew, I was able to film something very small but effective. I told the story that I wanted to tell, but at the moment, I couldn’t pay a music composer to create an original composition so I had to use music that I found on the internet after a lot of research. After I presented the short film to my class, I never expected to work on it again.
After the COVID-19 pandemic started, I had to continue my studies remotely and this also meant that I wasn’t going to be able to film my thesis film. I was able to graduate thanks to my hard work, and after that, I started working in production to pay for my living expenses in LA. I spent a few months struggling because of how hard it was for me to find a full-time job. After I was able to find a full-time job, I took a look at my thesis film and I felt terrible that I wasn’t going to be able to send anything to festivals anytime soon. So I had an idea and after I received a lot of amazing advice from our festival department at the New York Film Academy and the help of my amazing producer Fatima Alshamsi, I decided to pay a music composer and a colorist to continue working on “A Lovely Death” and, after months of hard work, it was finally ready to be sent to festivals. So far, it has been accepted in four festivals. Although the Oaxaca Film Festival was canceled, it was accepted to participate at the FirstGlance Festival a few months later and I’m happy to have the opportunity to watch this film on the big screen at the Laemmle Noho 7, this March 18th at 3:00 pm.
The film has been selected for the FirstGlance Festival, North Film Festival, and the Love Hope International Film Festival, where it was nominated for Best Horror Short. Congratulations on your achievements to date. With these accolades what advice would you give to other young and emergent filmmakers?
Thank you so much. If I had to give some advice to new filmmakers, I would tell them not to confuse money with passion. While I was studying, I always felt terrible that I couldn’t afford so many things that my classmates could. They could rent bigger and better locations and equipment, and they could make stories that were bigger in scope. However, I’ve never felt that you need the best equipment to make the best stories. At the end of the day, a good filmmaker can work with any budget that they have. Just work with what you have, with what you can afford, and don’t think of what others do. Concentrate on telling the best story that you can, your story. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be ambitious, but you can always find ways to do extremely creative things with such a low budget. I remember that for this short film, I decided to use the music during postproduction to tell a creative and different story about the Grim Reaper. For the first time in my life, I wrote something that was also a romantic short film which was extremely rewarding because I got out of my comfort zone and learned from this experience. So, I would encourage new filmmakers to write and direct as many small projects as possible, and to try working with different genres to one day be able to subvert these genres to create something that only they can tell.
What other projects are in the pipeline?
I just recently finished writing my feature screenplay titled “La Parca” which is Spanish for “The Grim Reaper”. The idea that I had for more than 10 years since I was a student here in Mexico. It took me two years to write it since I finished my studies at the New York Film Academy. If I’m being honest, this might be my most passionate and personal project that I’ve ever worked on as a filmmaker. This is a drama/horror/romance feature screenplay that draws inspiration from films of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema as well as from Robert Egger’s horror films such as “The Lighthouse” and “The Witch”. I like to think that this is a love letter to my culture as well as a twist on a specific horror sub-genre. Not only this, but it also touches on themes such as depression, death, love, loneliness, and transcendence. Themes that I believe everyone can relate to, but with a special touch from my point of view as a Mexican filmmaker. I’m currently sending this screenplay to competitions and film festivals, and I’m hoping to film this amazing and ambitious project in the near future. Hopefully, its festival run will help find people who can make this dream happen.
The other project that I am working on is the short film that was supposed to be my thesis film at the New York Film Academy. I’m continuing to work on the screenplay, but it’s practically ready to start production as soon as I can find more people to help with the project. Unlike the other two projects that I told you about, this is a dramedy short film that tells the story of a Mexican actor who receives the opportunity to finally get a shot at a big production only to find out that the racism that still exists in the industry and society might be too big to fight against. I would love to film this project this year and send it to festivals starting next year.
Where can our readers find out more about you?
If there’s anyone who wants to find out more about me, my director’s Instagram account is @directedbymigueldelcampo. That’s the social media that I use the most because I find it very easy to share all the updates of my work and to connect with more talented filmmakers around the world. I also just started a director’s Twitter account which is @DirMiguedlCampo. I’m hoping to start using it soon with all the upcoming updates of my current and future projects. Finally, I also have a LinkedIn account which is simply called Miguel del Campo. This is the one that I use to contact my current and possible future collaborators. It’s not as updated as my Instagram account and I might not be able to accept everyone because of my time, but I would love to find more collaborators for future projects.
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