Meet Eric Kochmer of West Hollywood

Today we’d like to introduce you to Eric Kochmer.

Hi Eric, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. When I was 20 I started acting in community theater while going to junior college in the country-side. I thought it would be a great place to meet girls. I decided to study acting in New York City and got into Marymount Manhattan College. While there I studied experimental theater with Elizabeth Swados while creating a musical at Lamama Theater. I performed in about 20 plays soon after college and had one play published as a writer. I decided after three years in New York, I’d move to LA and get into movies. After being in Los Angeles for a few years and acting in a handfull of independent films and commercials, I found a film collective called We Make Movies. I started acting in short films but more importantly I started writing/directing/producing/editing my own films. After several years of doing this, I started a screening series with the intent to meet other indie filmmakers in Los Angeles. This evolved into the We Make Movies International Film Festival that my friend Whit Spurgeon helped me run. As this was happening I evolved into a professional filmmaker, I learned how to produce films for others and I helped the WMM turn into a services company for short films. As a director durning this time frame from 2014-2021 I directed 3 narrative feature films, 1 feature documentary and dozens of experiemental short films. I feel like the pandamic really helped me to meet projects all around the country because of the normalcy of video calls. I started getting involved in projects everywhere and by 2023 I was working as a producer in 2-3 different states a year. In 2025, with Whit Spurgeon and Nate Lipp, I started a new production company called Cinesthesia Factory, dedicated to making art house and risk taking genre films. We are currently in production on our 6th feature film since our inception.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Nothing is easy. For me struggling and failing is what has made me a stronger producer and filmmaker in general. The whole essence of making art is constantly dealing with set backs and not letting compromises limit vision and scope, no matter if you are making a film with no money or a 3 million dollar movie. You will never have enough: enough knowledge, money, resources. You always need more and you always need to know more. I have dyslexia, so the essence of learning for me has always come from having to struggle to learn and deal with distractions. When I became an actor I just learned that the best way to learn a part was to go over it 100 times a day. That fed into how I learned everything. Sometimes I would read books twice in college just so I was able to take in all of it. As a producer and overall creator, often I will fantasize projects happening and I will practice planning them and map out a budget which informs me how I will manage the production. In the last 3 years I’ve produced over 20 feature films and more than half of them were budgeted less than $500k. A good amount of them were made directly with a distributor attached. Making a film with a bunch of artists and making a film for a network is a completely different scenario. With artists without a lot of money, often you spend as you go … this can be hazardous and often you are forced to raise money as you film (which is intensely stressful). Low budget network films are informative because you cannot go over budget unless you want to plead your case with a giant corporation. So you need to make due with what you have and get through it. As a producer this means you are forced to build strong relationships with vendors and crew that know that if they help you this time around you’ll get them back when you have more money.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m a producer and film director. I make narrative feature films. I am known for making genre films and dramas on low budgets in any state. You can blindfold me and throw me in the middle of nowhere and I can figure out how to make a movie there (where ever that is).

So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
Relationships. Truth. Love. You only live once. Being honest and having integrity is the most important thing to me. People have taken chances on me and I’ll take chances on people.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cinesthesiafactory.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emkfilmmaker/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emkochmer

Image Credits
Johnny LaValle